True Tales that are Stranger than Fiction!!

When I sort of hung my boots and left active work life in May 2011, I was pretty sure that I would have immense time to pursue my new found hobby as a blogger. Each day, I used to have a conversation in my own mind that tomorrow would be a better day to sit down and seriously make an attempt at writing. The justifications my mind presented were so convincing that I kept patronizing and never got down to writing.

The family’s visit to the temple town of Lord Venkateshwara at Tirumala in July’12 made me quickly pen a few paragraphs. This post received good feedback from friends and acquaintances and I was hopeful that the Lord had finally given me the much needed push. Well, to cut a long story short, it was just that I had indeed been procrastinating pretty well; the divine intervention had nothing to do with my laziness factor!!

But surprisingly, it was a pilgrimage trip to Sringeri Sharadamba’s abode in Oct’12 that did the trick. Although a faint memory, now that we have moved three months into the future, what stands out is the connection between this trip of ours and the previous one undertaken some fifteen years back. It must have been 1995 or 96, when we decided to travel by our first car – a navy blue Maruthi 800. Just as we were entering the outskirts of Kunigal town on Bangalore – Hassan highway, my younger son pointed the dashboard meter showing the engine temperature. It took me a couple of seconds to comprehend what was odd in the meter reading! In unison, both my sons said that the pointer was standing steady at ‘H’ and not the usual midway between ‘C’ & ‘H’!! It was a deserted highway with no possibility of help if the engine were to cease – that it hadn’t was in itself a miracle. We decided to take a chance and keep driving till we could find some help. We were lucky to hit a petrol bunk which had service/washing facilities. The attendant/mechanic first cooled the engine down in a phased manner and then made an attempt to check what could have gone wrong. We found absolutely nothing wrong…but not wanting to push our luck further, and much to the disappointment of the family, it was decided that we should head home.

Back safely in Bangalore I left the car at RNS Motors in Yeshwantpur for a couple of days to enable them find out what had gone wrong. It was quite surprising when nothing untoward was reported at the time of taking delivery of the car. Assuming that this was a one-off aberration…I let go of any stray thoughts, including the corny ones about God being unwilling or having helped us avert a major disaster/accident.

Fast forward into the future, fifteen years later, the same foursome team in a completely different car that was seemingly fit as a fiddle we encountered an identical problem, this time much beyond the ISRO city Hassan. My wife was in a way pretty convinced that providence had something to do with a second and identical incident. It appeared that the Goddess was indeed sending us a warning signal. The threesome team - both my boys and myself, were however willing to take some calculated chance. Also, I did not want my wife to carry on with a belief that some superior force was behind all this! We continued our journey and I kept a continuous and watchful eye on the temperature indicator. What helped was switching off the air conditioning system and running the car on neutral on a downward incline or flat stretches. In spite of the set-back we did reach the temple town of Sringeri only an hour behind schedule. We got the car checked for any problem, but like the last time, there was apparently nothing amiss. As a precaution we kept a liter of engine coolant handy and kept topping the can as we traveled from Sringeri to Hornadu to keep our date with Goddess Annapoorneshwari. On the return leg we took a detour and spent a night at Vihangama Holiday Resort in Tirthahalli.

Without air conditioning it was mightily warm and humid for the inmates; however the engine behaved very well and did not give us any more cause for worry. At best and on hindsight, I thought that the Omni-present superior power did have a role to play – quite clearly, it made its presence known to all of us and we are eternally grateful for the kindness and blessings showered on us.

New Year Greetings!!

If there is one thing I like…it is finding a common thread that binds diverse subjects together. I am sure most of you, if not all would have admired, perhaps liked or loved seeing the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ and hope that you know that it was Michael Crichton who wrote that thriller.

Michael Crichton was born on 23^rd October 1942, just under a year after US joined the war (World War II) on 7^th December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Standing tall at 6’ 9” he indeed made a mark as a best-selling author, producer, director and screen writer. He is best known for his work in science fiction, medical fiction and thrillers. In 1994, he became the only creative artist ever to have been a No. 1 in Television (ER), Film (Jurassic Park) and Book sales (Disclosure).  A graduate of Harvard Medical school, he never obtained a license to practice medicine and preferred devoting himself to a writing career. Two novels brought him immense fame as a writer: The Andromeda Strain & The Great Train Robbery which were later adapted into film.

Just the other day, I was a bit early for a meeting in Café Coffee Day at Barton Center and instead of aimlessly walking around the MG road boulevard, I decided to spend some time browsing at ‘Bookworm’ – it is undoubtedly one of the best places to get your pick of a 2^nd hand book in Bengaluru. I picked up Michael Crichton’s ‘Five Patients’ and my all-time favorite author A J Cronin’s ‘The Citadel’. This novel of A J Cronin was adapted into a Hindi film in the year 1971 by Dev Anand and his elder sibling Vijay Anand – ‘Tere Mere Sapne.’ Literally translated from Hindi to English, it stands for ‘Our Dreams’. While the novel can be read innumerable times, the Hindi movie adaptation can but be seen just once; that kind-off summarizes the difference between a ‘best-seller’ and ‘an also-ran’.

Coming back to where I started…there is an interesting piece of information on Massachusetts General Hospital in Michael Crichton’s book ‘Five Patients.’ Mostly familiar as ‘Mass General’ or ‘MGH’, it is the teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. Named the No. 1 Hospital in the US in 2012 by US News & World Report, this hospital is the 3^rd oldest in the history of US having been established in 1811. Only Pennsylvania Hospital (1751) and New York – Presbyterian Hospital (1771) are older.

Altogether the hospital had 1,000 beds in 1967; this figure stands marginally higher at 1,057 today, but what stands out is the efficiency with which patients are treated:

1.      16,000 operations were performed by the surgical staff in 1967. Today, it stands at 34,000.

2.      27,000 patients were admitted in 1967; Today, it is 45,000.

3.      Research budget has gone up from 10.5 Million USD in 1967 to more than 500 Million USD now.

However, what probably stands out are the stats of our own AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences). It is a teaching and research hospital and came into existence only in 1956 through an Act of Parliament – it is nowhere near the 201 years of Mass General’s existence.

1.      150,000 operations are performed by the surgical staff yearly.

2.      160,000 patients are admitted in a year; no. of beds: 2,424.

3.      Research budget: Funding is mostly through grants and from collaboration with overseas institutions, and can never match the figures of Mass General, I suppose!

Every word and every institution has a story to tell; and so is the word ‘hospital.’ It is derived from the Latin hospes, meaning host or guest and the same root has given us “hotel” and “hostel.” In fact the evolution of hospital has been going on for more than two thousand years, beginning with the ‘Aesculapia’ of Greece around 350 BCE (Before Christian Era) taking the form of temples. The Aesculapian temples were not so much hospitals as religious institutions where patients came on pilgrimages, hoping to be cured by a visitation of the gods.

The hospital in the more modern sense began in late Roman times, and coincided with the spread of Christianity across Europe. Medicine was practiced by monks and priests. The Renaissance and Reformation loosened the Church’s stronghold on both the hospital and conduct of medical practice. St. Bartholomew’s hospital (also known as ‘Barts’), London’s first hospital was established in 1123, while its associated medical college was established in 1843. However, the first school to be granted official charter for medical teaching in 1785 was the London Medical College Hospital. Those of you who like trivia…here is one on Barts: Dr. Watson – Sherlock Holmes’s companion and biographer, first meet in the pathology laboratory at Barts and, Dr. Watson is its fictional alumni.

Well, so much about hospitals, Michael Crichton and his book ‘Five Patients’…if you get an opportunity, please read this book – it is a ‘must-read’ for anyone associated with the medical world or otherwise.

When I set out to write a few words to all my friends as a welcoming new year message, little did I imagine that it would get this big. I hope you make yourself some time to read this piece, either today or tomorrow, which incidentally, has the unique distinction of being a year apart!!

As we end the year today, I wish to quote from Sai Baba’s message to his devotees: “The second is the very basic unit of Time which we measure, in what we designate as a year. Sixty seconds, make a minute, sixty minutes make an hour, twenty four hours constitute a day and thirty days make a month; twelve months pass and we say a year has passed! When twelve months are over, we come back again to the first in the list of months, and call it the New Year Day. We go on a spree to celebrate the occasion.

Really speaking, nothing new has happened on the “New Year Day” - it is not the year, but every second that follows the present that is new. Hence, do not wait for the celebration of something new in Time, until minutes, hours, days, months and years add up! Celebrate the immediately succeeding second, and every one after it, through honest effort and attain everlasting joy. Do not waver in your determination to live in joy and peace.”

With warm regards and here's wishing you all Happiness, Success and Good Health in the year ahead!!