Celebrate or Celeberate?

Especially if you are single, your birthdays give you an occasion to look back at life and friends you made (intentionally and or unintentionally) and use the opportunity to bring them all under one roof and ensure they will be around for the remaining journey. To singles who’ve lived in the company of loneliness these occasions can also work to dispel their insecurities, validate their choice of singlehood wasn’t a bad one and also provide a quick check on the lifelines that you can count on for the journey ahead! Doesn’t it sound a perfect life-check at 40?

The very moment I received the email invite from a friend, I called him to find out the reason for the gathering and who would be there to decide if I should attend or not. After much deliberation I decided to attend the party and after a long thought haul I decided against a gift certificate because I thought I knew my friend well enough and that I should be able to get something that would keep us more easily accessible and connected. To make our friendships feel more connected and accessible, I picked up a smartphone for a gift to this gadgetphobe. Would the gadget bring us closer or keep us apart was yet to be seen.

As people started to trickle in, the islands of tables surrounded by the chairs in the lush green lawn under the star light sky quickly metamorphosed into a continent of people who were soon to engage in unrelenting gobble and gabble.

The invitees spanned across his school days, colleges days, and first job and there was also someone who had met him for the first time two weeks back – so from roots to shoots the camaraderie looked perfect, complete and more in-line with “Facebook” timeline. And when you there at such a gathering everybody wants to exchange notes on one person – the host. How do you know him and where do you know him from seemed to be making more rounds than starters and alcohol. I anticipated this question and a week before the gathering I shared my answer with my friend and rehearsed my lines to make sure we had no conflict.

In the gathering, some of them were funny and nice, some reserved and reticent and as usual there was an obnoxious one. In the gathering there were a few people who went to the same school and 20 years later we had an opportunity to crib about our unhappy schooldays.

Very soon a tall women (definitely 50+) in a starched and neatly ironed cotton saree arrived. I knew I had seen her before, but could not recollect from when and where we had met. She settled in a chair and got busy with her how do you know question, and then moving on to discuss weather, politics and her shopping spree on Flipkart. I felt there were big time and elders who pedaled websites and technology like child’s play and I should use their support to help my friend overcome his gadget phobia.

Some in the crowd had known each other from before and this gave them an opportunity to discuss other people who were not at the venue. My friend was busy ensuring order were taken for drinks, table filled with food and people were comfortable finding their comfort spots and people in the crowd. Since most of them had come with their better half, they didn't have the need or necessity to find conversation buddy.

I sat with the 60+ year old couple, who reminded me of the couple from Balachander’s movie “Pudhu pudhu arthangal” and I seemed to have more in common with them than the rest. They were so warm, welcoming and un-intrusive.

Everything seemed so primp, proper and perfect, until I became the target for the women in the starched and ironed cotton saree across from me. She never introduced or smiled, but kept starring at me at me from the moment she occupied the chair. While people were busy eating fish fingers, paneer, methu vada, and cheese balls, she decided to catch me unaware and make me a part of the evening menu.

A stranger asking me my marital status in a public platform, almost turned the munching jaws silent, all eyes on me and ears awaiting my response went up like those of German Shepherds. May be it is easy to ask personal questions to a stranger, but I felt like I was in a family courtroom and she was getting ready to validate her curiosity and make me testify in front of the April gathering.

And before I could respond, she justified or made an excuse that she was being a typical Indian women. I looked at her and said, “Should I answer personal question from a perfect stranger?” and I corrected her by saying that she was more like a Marriage Obsessed Mylapore Mami (MOMM) who thought RTQ (right to question) is an act passed by Indian Parliament and it was their birth right.”

At 50+ women lose elasticity around of lot of their muscles and today I added her mouth to that list. I could never understand the intention behind her question and very soon at the dinner buffet I had another nosy mami who wanted to know why I choose to stay single. I always avoid gathering around married people and that evening I realized I had made a mistake to be a part of a married crowd who always want to pry. I could never understand what my friend meant when he said he hated fruit salad with ice-cream and today I did after being a part of this crowd.

One of the invitees liked my idea to get each of the guests infront of the camera share how they knew the host and share one incident that made their friendship special or reveal a secret about their friend. And I decided to salvage the remaining evening with this idea.

I sold the idea to a reluctant few and got them out of their chairs, and put them under the flood flights and infront of the camera. I know I should have taken permission from the host to do this, but I felt I was capturing memories and I enjoyed the liberty of friendship to record and surprise him. When he heard someone share what they said infront of the camera, he didn’t enjoy a wee bit. I came all the way to make him happy and make him feel special, but now I felt I had disappointed him. Neither the gift I got him nor did my idea of filming nostalgia excite him. I felt I was walking on eggshells and with no more tricks in my bag I decided to call one of my lifelines and execute the Cinderella act.

Lying in my bed that night, I was swarmed by mosquitoes aka questions and thoughts that I could never kill with the electric bat. From the moment I handed the gift over to my friend, he kept saying I should take it back and not let it pair-up with his unused iPod at home. As friends dont we all derive our happiness from making and seeing our friends happy? My smart ideas failed and I felt more disconnected with my friend than ever before. As my other friend says, "I am the cause of my happiness and sadness."

So, who are friends? Are these the ones who you don't know much about? And are these the ones who should feel satisfied with after a mere 15 minutes conversation every other week and meet up every two months in a coffee shop for an hour. Friendship that night sounded like a service contract that you make with the mechanic to service and repair your home electronics.

I realized that evening celebration turned into a cele(beration) for me! And for a man who hated reunions, marriages, a singles birthday party became a perfect landmine. At my 40, I would prefer a health-checkup to a friendship-checkup!

Where are the General Practitioners and Family Physicians

We live in an age where there is too much information available online for patients to self-educate and there are too many specialties in medicine that often delays patients from knocking the right doors at the right time. But where are the family physicians and general practitioners who can give them the right answers and guide to the right doors.

It has been 9 months since I had an inframammary incision to correct the venous drainage in my heart. The wound healed very quickly, but the tightness and pain associated with the movement of my rib cage was something that never seemed to go away. During my first visit, 3 months post surgery, I shared my concerns with the doctor and again during my last visit 3 months back I raised the same issue. The cardiologist put a steth on my chest to hear my heart beat, performed an echo to check on the re-routed pulmonary vein but never bothered to address the issue of pain and stiffness. Cardiologist and surgeons both had the same answer; it takes time for the intercostal nerves to heal and inframammary incision is much better than median sternotomy. None of them could suggest a remedy other than prescribing painkillers and in short I had to live with the pain until it vanished on its own.

In the last few weeks the tightness around my left chest returned and I had pain along the ribs under my left armpit. One day last week, while at the gym I felt my ribs were shrinking and strangling my left lung and I felt lifting my left hand would tear my sutured skin and expose my lungs underneath. Was this pain from skeletal movements or was it a result of something going wrong inside the fist-sized four walled chamber called the heart? I had no clue and I didn’t want to visit another cardiologist. Where do I turn for help next? Who should I talk to?

I was tired visiting the doctor and asking the same questions again, so I decided to turn to google for help. I typed “Pain post inframammary incision” but didn’t see too many answers under this topic.

This is when I pinged my friend, a General Practitioner (GP) in UK. I laid down in my bed thinking I was an examination table and I narrated my pain areas as I inhaled, exhaled, moved my left arm up and down and I laid on my right side. Call it telemedicine or chat medicine, all I needed was someone to figure out what was causing the pain. I remembered enduring the same pain a week after surgery and suddenly after 9 months the pain seemed to have returned. I experienced pain only when the diaphragm and ribs moved to fill my lungs with fresh air. A few minutes later the GP said, “It looks more like muscular and skeletal pain” and a physiotherapist would be of more help in this case than a cardiologist. GP’s diagnosis of my issue seemed absolutely on the money and none of the cardiologist who I visited in the past even referred to it as muscular or skeletal pain. He simplified the terminology, the reason for the pain and prescribed to see a physiotherapist than visit a cardio surgeon or a cardiologist. He also advised me to consult a family physician/general practitioner before I went a physiotherapist or cardiologist. His words gave me the confidence and strength that none of my other doctors gave.

8 months ago when I mentioned about my GP friend in the UK to a cardiologist, he smirked and said, “GPs don’t have much work/case load and they make money by just examining and referring patients” and he made it sound as thought it was a compounder’s job and these guys were making free money. I was shocked and surprised how the medical fraternity viewed and under-valued the role of GPs and FPs in the society.

As specialist doctors, almost all of them are forced to rely on machines and recommend tests (hospitals are run like corporates and for profit) to pin point the problem and not on the art of clinical examination. While GPs and FPs are the only set who strongly rely on clinical examination, but with dwindling population of GPs and FPs the art of physical examination is almost coming to an extinct.

Before you head out to see a specialist or start your search on google, visit your family physician or general practitioner. Remember the art of physical examination is where medicine and remedy starts!

Here are a few must read articles on this topic.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129931999

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/health/12profile.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-m-berwick-md/health-care-waste_b_1411281.html

Why are we singled out?

After having filed seven Form 1040 in US and seven Form 16 in India, I honestly look at the perks and exempts married people and people with kids get. Governments across the world are inconsiderate towards single people.

If China put a cap on the number of kids a couple can have, India must provide incentives to people who decide to stay single. It is married people with kids who add to governments responsibility, bring them a bad name and eventually their downfall. Governments across the world are constantly lambasted for not feeding all mouths, providing free primary education, providing health care and affordable health care to citizens, and provide infrastructure to bungling and bulging metros.

1. I don’t procreate and add to India’s population read as misery. Though many economists feel our population is our power, but you can’t deny that our population is also a peril.

2.I don’t have family and I don’t bring family dispute/ divorce cases to already overburdened and miserably slow judicial system.

3.I don’t amass wealth for my next generation, buy multiple homes for each of my children. I live for my need and not for my greed. I don’t consume as much as family people do – natural resources, cutting down forest or swallowing agriculture land for urban development.

4. I don’t bring family to politics and family politics to Parliament.

Just look around and you can find more reasons in my favor. Even characters in Mahabharata and Ramayana had family issues that eventually wiped out a race then trying to teach morals to this society.

Yet I pay more taxes with no exemptions for my single status. Why am I not getting any exempt or entitles for any perks when I am not adding to their worries and troubles?

Why this Kolaveri di? Why are we singled out?

Venues change but stories remain same

With London Olympics just a few months away, are the host on track to win the gold? Have they done a better job compared to our 2010 Common Wealth Games (CWG)?

Finances: The cost of hosting London Olympics is grossly underestimated and misrepresented – originally pegged at 2.4 bn pounds, it touched 9.3 bn pounds by 2007 and now it is estimated to cost 13 bn pounds and with upgrade of public transportation it is expected to touch 24 bn pounds. Private-sector contributions are expected to cover only 2% of the expense.

CWG disaster: 2010 CWG was hosted by India and the cost went up by 1575% since the bid was floated. In 2003 the estimated cost was USD 323.19 mn in 2010 the expenses totaled up to USD 11.97 bn, making it the most expensive CWG ever!

Olympic Village: The Olympic village was originally planned to by sponsored by an Australian firm, but the 2008 economic meltdown melted the sponsorship and has now fallen on the taxpayers head & shoulder. Tax payers get to bear the brunt and shortfall of such extravagant affair.

CWG village – stained and un-green: The village was not green and was constructed in the flood plains of Yamuna, flouted norms and was constructed in an ecologically sensitive zone. We know what happened even before the CWG village was thrown open, from pan stains, leaky plumbing to unready apartments. We know how and why building contracts were awarded to certain companies (benamis of politicians) and how the village was allotted to kith and kin of politicians and government officials in the name of lottery.

Murky land deals at London Olympics: The land was sold to a Qatari development company at a subsidy to develop a new urban jungle for the games at a loss of 275 mn pounds to taxpayers. Government and Secretary in-charge have successful created an illusion in the mind of taxpayers that London will inherit a new urban jungle at the end of Olympics and have not been questioned. England or India, doesn’t matter if you are ruled or were ruled by the Queen, the state of affairs seem to remain status quo.

In the name of games: Procure high technology gear, precision weapons, light drones, ammunition and surveillance gear and militarize the city in the name of Olympics. Does the competition for gold and silver require an whopping 1+ bn plus military expense? And next time when someone gets on the podium and say “I declare the games open” you know all about the “games they’ve played!”

There is an underlying belief that games will bring in money, improve trade & tourism, and accelerate the economy, but have we seen any such development in India post CWG?

Even before the game let us look at the medal tally: so, who leads and who won? Is it us hosting CWG or the Queen hosting Olympics? Click here to read more on the Guardian. Venues change but sadly the stories remain the same! For now I look forward to the audit committee reports, court trails and a few officials behind bars for life, that is the only sense of closure for a honest taxpayer.