PDA: PUBLIC DISPLAY OF AFFECTION

All those medical & engineering nerds who are claiming PDA to be the acronym for Patent Ductus Arteriosus or Personal Digital Assistant, please don't give a frowning expression for this full from of PDA. Brain says I am going to generate numerous emotional enemies by writing about this version of PDA but heart whispers me to ignore the brain !

Richard Gere did it with Shilpa Shetty in New Delhi ! Christiano Ronaldo did it with Bipasha Basu, Former Vice president of USA, Al Gore set off a media storm when he kissed his wife after accepting his party's nomination of president in 2000 & it was quoted as a 'Can't-wait-to-get-back-to-the-hotel' type of kiss by the Time.com. Many people argue that Ronaldo, Gere & Gore have been groomed in western culture so it is unfair to drag them into controversy but undoubtedly these are some of the classic examples of PDA. Though the on-stage PDA is not very common & not very intentional in our society, the online version of PDA is a sky-rocketing phenomenon. Believe me or not, the most common & the cheapest platform for PDA is Facebook. In the pre-facebook era, Photography was a very limited activity but in this era of Facebook (& digital cameras) photos are becoming a significant catalyst for the PDA. The frequency & intensity with which newly married  people are posting their marriage pictures makes me feel as if marriage is a highly audacious & challenging job. I have personally seen people getting married within a month after a break up with the ex-boy/girl friend & posting updates like 'Finally married to Ms/Mr X, really a DREAM come true' !! There are others who give so many pre-marital romantic updates in Facebook that their marriage seems bigger than the news of Rahul Gandhi defeating Magnus Carlsen in Chess. Since last 2-3 years, there is a growing trend for hiring struggling photographers to freeze some of the artificial romantic moments in the camera. Those photographers seem to have a great symbiosis with the PDA aspirants as both have something for display i.e Talent & affection respectively. 

I know that many of the recently married couples have already started giving nasty looks towards this article. OK hold on, let's discuss about honey moon !! During school days I came to know about this sweet & hot word only from the movies; now I can feel it from the Pictures posted by newly wed couples. Honeymoon pictures in hill stations/lonely beaches along with hyper-romantic updates in Facebook must be giving an orgasm to Mark Zuckerberg ! Small faced girls with over-sized goggles & Sindhur of 0.05 mm diameter look funky in the Honeymoon pictures with their husbands wearing shorts & sleepers !! It is great to share happiness but I have seen few people sharing this kind of happiness even if they are in the borderline of infidelity. Honeymoon over !, Let's celebrate the birthdays/Anniversaries now! The nascent couple, candle light, cakes on the cheeks; what else do you want ?? LIKEs, oh yes we like it, but again too much of anything is good for nothing ! Ok, Whats next?? Frankly speaking, after marriage these ultra-romantic pictures usually appear in Facebook till 1st birthday/anniversary. What happens to them is only known to them. Facebook gradually turns into an abandoned planet. I am afraid, I have gathered many online emotional enemies !

[The above article is typed just for fun with a free spirit without targeting anyone. I apologize from the core of my heart if this has hurt anyone's sentiment, ; even I am going to post same pictures so you are free to take the revenge in future ;) ]

MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDING !

                           

Nothing is more pleasant than getting some free moments in the day after a long time. Utilizing that free time in doing one of your favorite activities is even more exciting & personally rewarding. Fortunately, today I am refreshed because of the aforementioned reasons. Expressing the old frozen thoughts on a new unadulterated day in the background of the Kishore Kumar songs is ultra-soothing. You must be wondering about the title of this article as the words ‘Mutual’ & ‘Misunderstanding’ usually don’t coexist. But if you try to have a deep sneak of modern era relationships, very often you’ll witness these two words happily coexisting.

Most of the people (with normal IQ) on this planet will agree upon the fact that the most common non-scientific phenomenon occurring in the society is ‘Love’. People fall & rise in their life either for something or for someone. If you want to read the issues regarding ‘Someone’, you are reading the right article (If you want to read issues regarding ‘Something’, follow Rahul Gandhi/Rakhi Sawant in twitter). Believe me or not, 90% of the people on this planet fall in love with someone (rest 10 % are liars). Now- a-days it is not surprising to see the rates of break-ups exceeding the rates of falling in love with someone. If you go back to the 1980s or 1990s, you will find one little beautiful thing which used to be a recipe for an ever-lasting relationship i.e. ‘Tolerance’. But it is hard to find the material called ‘Tolerance’ in the anatomy of modern relationship. The word ‘Sorry’ used to carry plenty of values & feelings in the past but in the current situation it is just another word. Most of the relationships end in the fashion similar to the breakup of Saif & Deepika in the movie ‘Love aaj Kal’. With slightest of baseless micro-mistake both the lovers create a hidden desire to end the relationship but they wait for their counterpart to commit another mistake that is good enough to fetch an allegation. They mutually & manually want to end a relationship but wait patiently for misunderstandings. That is what I mean by‘Mutual Misunderstanding’. Now you can think why this mutual misunderstanding is much more common than it used to be in the past. I personally feel that the social phobia among lovers & the strong sense of commitment that used to be an integral  component of a lover in the era of Kurt Cobain is lacking in this era of Justin Beiber. I am not at all blaming the people with current mindset as I am also a part of the infected crowd. The factors which have drastically reduced the tolerability factor in a modern relationship are pressures. Yes all kind of pressures; Peer pressure, Beer Pressure, Shear pressure, Gear pressure. People want to be fast & furious with plenty of options surrounding them both personally & professionally. The term ‘Break up’ is no longer a mental/social stigma; rather it has virtually become a connecting link between a bitter life & a better life..

[If you feel this article is Cardio-toxic/Neuro-toxic to you by any means, then close the browser & get back to Disney & Pogo. I am not in a mood to apologize as I don’t find anything wrong in it ;)]

The Doctors & the Cheap medias!

[PS: - I am not directly or indirectly associated with any news channel/print media/political party/student union etc. There is no conflict of interest while framing this article]

Some say doctors are second only to god, some say doctors are the noblest professionals. For some, the

above beliefs may not hold true all the time & the reason is amalgamation of variety of factors like; quality of treatment, behavior of doctors, work load etc. Because of the diversity in working atmosphere & payment structure, we shouldn’t expect every doctor to be second only to god. Frankly speaking, no doctor wants that tag too. It doesn’t matter whether you are in cricket field or in Operation Theater; you would be either over-praised or over-criticized. We, the Indians are emotionally extreme. We can worship & kick the same person in different situations. You can well visualize the situation in the scenes of old Hindi movies where the actors scold the God while facing crisis but deep within they tend to carry limitless devotion. The same thing happens in real life of doctors. People will praise you when you successfully remove gall bladder in 99% of the occasions, but they will voluntarily & seriously defame you if you injure the bile duct in 1% of the cholecystectomy surgeries. One single mistake turns the God into a Dog!

            Mistakes are unavoidable byproducts available free of cost in all types of professions. But the

mistakes committed by the health professionals get the unwanted limelight because they are in direct contact with society. If a software engineer commits a mistake while programming something, it never affects the general population directly. On the other hand, doctors don’t get the privilege to rectify the mistakes they commit. So these factors project a pseudo-magnification of a doctor’s professional/personal mistakes. Now coming to the term ‘Cheap media’, I admit that I have developed life threatening allergy to them. These are the ultra-low profile TV news channels & news papers owned by some of the illiterate & tadpole-brained politicians. Government hospitals are bread& butter for some of these Medias. Their journalists are well aware of the fact that people are highly sensitive towards news related to health professionals. Believe it or not, in >90% of the educated Indian families you should find someone who has prepared for medical entrance exam & >90% of them don’t get through. So I don’t rule out the jealousy factor out of my equation. The cheap medias always take this advantage by negatively exaggerating a news related to doctors. When the relatives of a patient beat a doctor for a wrong reason, it is never telecasted/ printed in these channels/news papers. But when the reverse happens for self defense, the reporters run faster than Usain Bolt to publish the news. There is nothing called ‘Self Defense’ in a doctors life! Nobody realizes the amount of workload & stress a doctor has to handle in real life. Guess what is the biggest joke by the judiciary system? It is the act that if someone beats a doctor on duty, there will be non-billable arrest warrant against the person. I have never seen/heard it being implemented anywhere in India.

I am not saying that doctors are universally innocent. But the way these cheap medias are projecting doctors makes me feel like being a criminal. Even the relatives & friends of cameramen/drivers/sweepers/peons of the news agencies show their red eyes to doctors while coming to hospitals. Unfortunately there is no media coverage for the red eyes. It is hard for the doctors to remain tight-lipped when these kind of people unnecessarily abuse in the stressful working atmosphere. So it is time for the people associated to TV/print media to have some introspection. They should recheck their credentials before prematurely abusing doctors without any evidence. What our health system badly requires now is a healthy relationship between the doctors & the patients; it will be great if the media can act as a vital cog in the wheel of the relationship.

[If you are related to TV/print media & you find this article offensive, then I am NOT AT ALL SORRY. Because I am writing my heart out & it feels true]

COMFORTABLY NUMB !!

13^th January 2013, Fatehnagar station, Hyderabad… I was on the way to the Prasad’s imax to watch the ‘Life of Pi’ with my cousins. It was a cool sunny morning & was pretty refreshing because of the fact that one of the important exams was over not more than 17 hours ago. Not many thoughts were banging my tired brain while waiting for the local train. While my little cousins were busy playing the angry birds in their phones, I was somewhere else in my world. Nothing was going through or coming from the grey/white matters. I felt as if I have voluntarily attained a vestigial state. Well, now I realize that, I was drowsy at that moment secondary to the exam & travel stress ;) Hmmm 25 minutes & no train!!! So we had to wait…. & that is the thing I am highly allergic to: ‘WAIT’!

Suddenly a well dressed (I still remember his Louis Philippe T-shirt), but ill-organized man appeared in front of me. He gave me an impression of being a frustrated person (he was somewhat looking like Ravindra Jadeja) .Beyond my expectation & imagination, he asked me ‘Sir, give me one rupee sir’. Not in Telugu or Hindi, he asked me in PURE UNADULTERATED ENGLISH. For a moment I was stunned. This reminded me of the beggars in the busy streets of New York & Boston few months back (Beggars wearing baseball caps & holding Coke/Coffee & Cigarette). To be very honest, my wallet was running out of chillers at that particular time. So I politely refused him to pay anything. But that refusal created a wave of anger inside the stylish beggar. After this, whatever he said to me was irritating enough to get printed in my memories.

Beggar to me: ‘‘Ohh, you don’t have the chillers or you don’t want to pay me!! You must be working in a Software company, must be earning lakhs/month!! Still you can’t pay one rupee to me!!….That is a shame to you & your bloody software company!!…. You guys are coming from states where people have nothing to eat…you guys are looting Hyderabad…. Thu..thu…thu (Spitting..) ….Shame….. A serious shame!!!’’                    [I must remind everyone that he said the exact sentences in Pure & sensible English!!]

After being abused by the beggar, I was no longer sleepy. I couldn’t remember when I got such kind of abuses in the past! For a moment, I was tremendously irritated because nobody expects such behavior from a beggar. I couldn’t understand how my polite refusal provoked him but I was seriously numbed by those 30-40 seconds of rudeness, yet I was comfortable in the sense that I was sure about him being a drug addict (Not a typical beggar).Another thing that didn't provoke me is the fact that he was abusing software professionals, not young doctors like me!!  In short, I was comfortably numb!! Thank God, the Train arrived shortly & the movie was a pleasing one too. But the way the person behaved is still making me numb...Coincidentally my cousin is currently listening to the famous song ‘Comfortably numb’ by the band Pink Floyd.