Why do we wait so long to honour our legends?

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: We recently saw the veteran thespian Pran getting the Dada Saheb Phalke award for his contribution to Indian cinema over nearly five decades.

As a child I used to think that he must be the meanest and vilest person on earth as I used to see him only as the traditional ‘bad man’ who could do no good. That was until I grew up a little to see him doing some good too in his later movies where someone perhaps thought of transforming his character!

But what all grownups now agree upon is how nice a gentleman he was in his real life whenever he was off the film sets.

While all his fans are very happy that he got his due when he was selected for what is considered the highest and most coveted award of the land in his field, I fail to understand why the honour was bestowed on him so late in his life when the ravages of time and old age have ensured that he can never relish the happiness of the honour in full measure or for long?

When he had stopped acting more than a decade ago and had retired and when we all knew what a magnificent innings he had played, where was the need to wait so long before recognising his contribution to the film industry?

It is not just with Pran that this has happened.

We routinely see many honours being awarded to many very accomplished and talented people long after they can feel fully rewarded for their roles. On many occasions we have seen the person passing away very soon after receiving the honours. And it is not just in our country that this happens.

Even in the case of the Nobel Prize we routinely see that many laureates are given the award years after their contribution to their fields is recognised when they can only totter to the stage in a confused daze supported by others or in wheelchairs.

Is it necessary for us to wait decades before we acknowledge their greatness in a much belated show of magnanimity that holds no meaning for them? I think if we love someone we should say so when it can make the person feel happy. Otherwise what purpose does it serve?

Do think about it.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where an enlarged version of this piece first appeared)

Photograph: courtesy Press Trust of India

Why have Doctors stopped making house-visits?

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Most of the books that recount the experiences of medical practitioners from a bygone era, which I re-read from time to time, invariably tell us about their very interesting house -visit experiences.

A.J. Cronin’s autobiographical masterpiece Adventures in Two Worlds and his novel The Citadel are two very notable examples while James Herriot’s four omnibus editions are in no way inferior or far behind, although they deal with a vet’s adventures with animals and their very interesting owners.

In yester years, almost every movie would have a scene where a doctor, clutching his signature black bag, would make a house visit to see a patient. Interestingly, on his way out the bag would invariably be carried, by the patient’s son or other relative who would see the doctor off!

The mortifying diagnosis that the doctor would announce almost in a whisper would be TB, which then had no cure. And when a cure for TB finally did come somewhere in the early 1960s the diagnosis promptly changed to cancer, to heighten the impact of the patient’s helplessness.

Another thing that intrigued and amused me then was why while a doctor was shown making a house call even to see a mildly sick patient, almost no movie ever showed a patient being taken to see a doctor in his consulting room as is the practice now.

***

While making house calls was almost standard practice for most doctors in the past, these days house-visits by doctors are almost unheard of and now even in a serious emergency it is almost impossible to get a doctor to come home and see a patient.

Very often when death comes calling at home and the relatives are not able to say with certainty whether the person is dead or only deeply unconscious it helps if a doctor sees him or her to dispel any lingering doubts. But to get a doctor to make a house visit even to do this is not very easy and anxious relatives have no other option but to shift the person to a hospital only to be told there that he or she is beyond any help.

It is also not very easy for elderly persons who stay alone without their siblings or other relatives to seek and get medical help in an emergency. These days this situation has become commonplace, with children working far away from home being unable to attend to the medical needs of their elderly parents on a day to day basis.

And most elderly people have some medical problem or the other which needs periodic attention.

Even for those aged people who have their relatives with them it is not very easy to go over to a hospital if they happen to be very infirm or bedridden especially if they live in an apartment block where a stretcher trolley cannot be accommodated in the elevator.

Considering all these difficulties it will certainly be a very great boon to society if some doctors are available who would be willing to make house calls in an emergency.

Very often I have told many doctors who have not been doing very well in their practices that they can certainly improve their standing by agreeing to make house calls and I have found that those who followed this advice seriously quickly became very successful. But the sad part is that once they become well known and patients start coming to their clinics they invariably stop going to patients’ homes in times of need.

There is indeed a very great demand for house calls in our society and doctors would do well to include this service in their daily practice.

***

Some years ago I met a very successful doctor in Bangalore who is doing very well financially without any postgraduate qualifications. Very surprisingly he has no clinic. He only makes house calls every day and is busy from morning till evening six days a week.

He has a very organised approach and he registers all his calls in a diary and at the beginning of each day he prioritizes them according to the seriousness of his patients and the traffic conditions so that he does not waste time in traffic jams.

Every patient’s number is called back and recorded for safety’s sake and it is also messaged to another mobile phone at home. His driver doubles as his secretary, maintaining his diary and holding on to it at all times. He never accompanies his master into the patient’s house and he never leaves the car during the calls to preclude any compromise to their safety.

This doctor has become so popular that he gets regular referrals from consultants who can keep a better watch on their patients’ progress through him. He has now narrowed down his area of operation to what he can manage best and he told me that there is certainly much scope for many more players if they can co-ordinate their operations.

I hope this trend picks up and helps in getting medical care to bedridden patients’ bedsides in the comfort and convenience of their homes, saving them the bother of going to hospitals for every tiny problem. Thankfully this kind of medical care seems all set to make a beginning in our own city too.

A very close friend of mine and a fellow-physician with very good qualifications and a good deal of experience too called me up recently to tell me that he has seriously thought of starting this kind of practice as an act of public service. I was overjoyed and wished him well as I knew that he would indeed be doing some much needed good to ailing humanity.

I hope he does not get disillusioned by any initial teething troubles that are bound to be there and more importantly I also hope that other members of our fraternity see the sense in what he is embarking on and encourage him. Three cheers to the man who has decided to step out of the box to put some good cheer into the lives of those who need it most!

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

FREE: Four sure-fire steps to ward off Swine Flu

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Whether we accept it or deny it, it is a fact that Swine Flu cases are on the increase in our country.

It is a potentially dangerous and often fatal affliction with a very high degree of infectivity brought on by physical contact and droplet transmission through coughing and sneezing. Anxious patients and their accompanying persons ask me how they can avoid getting infected.

Here are the most effective measures that can arrest its spread.

# Firstly, avoid shaking hands with all the persons you meet in a show of great Western warmth. A very Indian ‘Namaste’ or ‘Aadab’ can be an equally warm way of expressing your affection and regard without endangering yourselves and the person you are greeting.

# Secondly, avoid hugging people and pecking them on their cheeks as most members of the fair sex do these days. It is certainly more dangerous than shaking hands.

# Thirdly, avoid very crowded areas and air-conditioned halls without good cross-ventilation. Air conditioners are notorious for ensuring that all those present receive a fair dose of the infection they are trying hard to avoid!

# Lastly, if you are in doubt, use hand sanitisers liberally to keep yourself safe after shaking hands, especially with your doctor!

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where the full version of this piece appeared)

Also read: FREE: Five easy steps to a stress-free life

A doctor’s prescription for a happy, new year

Once upon a time, when my doctor was an angel

The doctor who dissected the body of J.B.S. Haldane

Esther Preethi and the true meaning of education

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: The week that has gone by had a mixed bag of events that have left me with mixed feelings, both happy and sad.

The news that really stirred my soul and elevated it to an unusually lofty level of happiness was about the Sri Venkateswara University in Andhra Pradesh postponing its engineering examinations by a full week to let the students of one engineering college collect donations to save the life of one of its students — Esther Preethi, the daughter of a poor taxi driver from Madanapalli in Chittoor District, now doing her final year engineering at NBKR Institute of Technology in Nellore.

She reportedly developed liver failure for which she was advised a liver transplant costing almost Rs 50 lakh.

Her father was crestfallen as this amount was far beyond his means and even what he could hope to garner from sources open to him. That was when his daughter’s college-mates decided to do their bit by collecting donations from the public to pay for Preethi’s surgery.

Since the need for surgery was very urgent, as it usually is in such cases, about 540 students of final year engineering rushed to the director of the college, V. Vijayakumar Reddy, with a request to allow them to go out and collect donations by skipping classes.

Touched by the students’ resolve, the college management, too, offered financial assistance and allowed the students to spare no efforts to save Preethi’s life.

Forming about 30 groups, the students went around Nellore town and nearby villages and started collecting donations. Since their examinations too were just round the corner the students again pleaded with their college management to speak to the Vice-Chancellor to postpone the exams on humanitarian grounds.

In perhaps an act of unprecedented magnanimity, the Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) responded to their request and postponed the first semester examinations of its final year, which had to begin on November 14, to give time to the students to help save their ailing friend.

“This could be the first time that a University has rescheduled examinations to allow students to collect funds for a noble cause,” Reddy said after SVU Vice-Chancellor W. Rajendra issued a notification acceding to the students’ request.

My joy is naturally very great because this is the true meaning and spirit of any real education. There is no point in simply quoting rules and applying them mechanically as is usually done all around us when a more humanitarian approach would do much good in a delicate situation.

When the powers vested in us permit us to be kind rather than curt, it is important to take the former approach. I salute all those who did their bit to save Preethi’s budding life and wish her a speedy recovery.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

***

Also read: From Guruswamypalyam, a lesson for all shishyas

A Hindu iftar for a good Muslim doctor at work

A hero who served the dead and living of all castes

What the lights ‘n’ sights of Mysore hide from you

“Doorada betta nunnuge” (from afar, even a distant hill looks smooth) is an old Kannada saying.

The sight of the Mysore palace with the Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar circle in the foreground, all decked up for Dasara in Mysore on Saturday, is a shining example of that. “Dasara Works” are going on feverishly even as the festival is veering to an end, but tourists and visitors are unlikely to notice.

For, the lights provide a nice veneer to mask the darkness.

***

Dr K. Javeed Nayeem writes in Star of Mysore:

“We are all in the middle of Dasara which is our most important annual event. But Mysore is still getting decked up for the occasion even after the short-lived celebrations themselves have started and are also about to end. It is a little like the bride still getting dressed even after the priest has started chanting the sacred mantras, completely unmindful of the fact that she is missing and only mindful of not allowing the designated auspicious moment to slip away!

“This is the scenario that meets our weary eyes year after year, ever since the Dasara slipped from the hands of our erstwhile royalty into the hands of our new netas. I wonder why some proper planning does not go into its preparations. At least it can then serve its intended purpose of showcasing our city at its best and making our tourists happy that the time, effort and money they spent on seeing it were worth it….

“Here I am reminded of Aesop‘s fairy tale where work on the project which started off in great haste, has fallen asleep enroute like the hare, while it is slowly but steadily being overtaken by its rival, the tortoise of escalating costs. Instead of wasting money and time on fairy tale projects and trying to achieve the impossible, it would be better if we concentrate on doing something tangible and useful.”

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: What is so world-famous about Mysore Dasara?

Should Bollywood have a place in Mysore Dasara?

Once upon a time, on this day, in another age

Mysore Mallige for the Maharani amid gold, glitz

A hero who served the living & dead of all castes

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Last week, Mysore saw the passing away of a man whom most people of any substance will perhaps never miss. But the less fortunate ones amongst us, whose number is legion and who are considered a burden on society, both while they are alive and strangely even after they are dead, will perhaps begin to notice his absence from their midst very soon.

Ghulam Hussain, the nondescript and soft spoken man whom I knew over the past 30 years, bid a silent adieu to this world and to his most humble and thankless existence without me even knowing that he was dead. I discovered that he was not only dead but buried too only when I picked up Star of Mysore on the evening of that fateful day of his departure.

He was perhaps the only person in our midst who served the living and the dead alike, unmindful of who they were or to which caste and community they belonged, as long as they just happened to be the unfortunate ones who belonged to nobody.

I first ‘discovered’ him prowling the dingy and humid wards of K. R. Hospital, way back in the year 1982 when I started my post graduation in medicine. To be very frank and honest even at the risk of inviting the wrath of those who already knew him better, I first saw him only as a pesky nuisance and interference in my work.

He used to walk about in the wards, very often during the non-visiting hours, softly conversing with patients and making enquiries about their ailments with doctors and post-graduate students.

Now, which post-graduate student, especially of a subject as lofty and as hallowed as medicine, who feels he is the absolute lord and master of the ten rickety and ramshackle beds allotted to him, will tolerate the presence, let alone the interference from a miserable looking man in faded clothes and much mended leather chappals during his work?

But very quickly and thankfully the realisation dawned on me and my colleagues too that while we considered our work very noble and noteworthy this man was only making it a little easier for us with his presence by our side.

He would be in our ward, often a little before us and enquire about the poorest of the poor patients who needed some medicines or lab tests that were not available in the hospital.

Incidentally, there was no dearth of the facilities that were then not available in the hospital and so we would sheepishly tell him what would do much good not only to our patients but to our reputations too.

He would write down the requirements on a small scrap of folded paper and walk over to the next block of the hospital only to reappear the next day with a day’s medicine for each one of his beneficiaries that would keep their hearts and hopes ticking.

How he managed to garner funds for this kind of work was beyond our understanding but he was always a beacon of hope for anyone unfortunate enough to fall sick with no one to turn to.

He would always tell me that he was only a social worker of the Jamat-e-Islami-e-Hind which had entrusted him with what he was doing under the president ship of Altaf Ahmed, another silent toiler for the cause of communal harmony and service to the downtrodden, sans communal barriers.

Ghulam Hussain would not only look after the material and medical needs of poor patients but would also visit them after their operations and console them through their periods of anxiety and apprehension if they were seriously ill.

His reputation as an honest and sincere worker had grown so much that many rich and well to do people would immediately agree to extend financial help to needy patients if it was routed through him. In the unfortunate event of the deaths of any destitute in the city he would be the first one to arrive at the scene and arrange for the last rites fully in accordance with the person’s religious affiliations.

That he never saw human life on the basis of baser considerations becomes evident from the fact that once during communal clashes that briefly tore asunder the harmony of our City, he stood between an armed group of Muslims and two young Hindu boys who had been cornered.

He told the threatening goons in no uncertain terms that they would have to first kill him before laying their hands on the two helpless boys. Knowing who he was, they quietly dispersed into the lanes and alleys without a word of argument with him.

His association with the K. R. and Cheluvamba hospitals continued till his own end.

On the sixth of this month when he perhaps for the first time realised that his own end was near, he took his assistant Faiyaz Ahmed to the RMO and introduced him as the man who would henceforth continue his work. Just four day after this, Ghulam Hussain was no more, having died as quietly as he had lived and worked.

The measure of this very poor and modest man’s greatness can be gauged from the fact that at his funeral there was no space for all the mourners to stand in the mosque. The prayer had to be conducted in a big playground alongside. All this, while he himself was perhaps standing in surprise with his head bowed before his maker to get his rightful due.

(With inputs from Prof Riaz Ahmed and Dr Irfan Ahmed Riazi)

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

The case against Aamir Khan’s view of doctors—II

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: After Aamir Khan stirred up a hornet’s nest with his show about the misdeeds of doctors, I seem to have done the same with my article, which some people have seen as a defensive act from a member of the medical fraternity.

I have received many letters from viewers of the show and my readers too who have vented out their gall at the heart-rending sorrow of the victims and my audacity in protecting the image of the doctors supposedly responsible for it.

Apart from the two cases I discussed last week, many have challenged me to disprove him on the other counts where he has revealed many more misdeeds of doctors. I certainly will do so in full measure before I pull the curtain down on this matter, which I do not intend to do in a hurry.

I stepped in just because I felt that in showing what certainly seemed to be the main issue of that episode, Aamir Khan certainly picked on two very wrong cases to prove his point about all that has gone wrong with the practice of medicine in our country.

***

Yes, medical practice is no longer as sacrosanct as it once was and there is a lot that needs to be set right if it has to serve the needs of suffering humanity.

While someone attempts this, I would like to remind society here that a lot needs to be set right if medical practice has to serve the needs of practising doctors too.

If only Aamir Khan had done a little bit of research to locate some real cases of medical malpractice or negligence and ferreted out the real incriminating evidence behind them, before presenting them before his audience, he would have done some real service to society.

Moreover, instead of just presenting one version of what happened it would have been most appropriate and fair to all concerned if he had simultaneously or immediately after, given a chance for the doctors or the hospital managements to present their defence.

This would have made it more interesting and lent the utmost credibility not only to his show but also to his image and intentions. Of what use is any re-buttal if it has to be done through some other source or on some other platform? Even now, it is not too late for him to arrange this in one of the forthcoming episodes and I hope he does it.

***

Coming to his accusation that most doctors prescribe only expensive, branded drugs even when much cheaper generic alternatives are easily available, I would like to set the facts right here. It is true that for every branded drug there are at least a hundred cheaper versions readily available in Indian market.

This is thanks to our government’s policy of allowing anyone with a little money to ‘buy’ a drug manufacturing licence and start making a killing. Beyond this shred of paper that ensures complete legal immunity no other infrastructure whatsoever is necessary to set up a drug manufacturing plant in a tin-roofed shed, located in a seedy bylane and ply this lucrative trade.

Most such drugs do not have any drug inside. So, what goes into these tablets, capsules or tonics? They contain either plain chalk powder, sawdust or sweetened and coloured water.

If this seems like an exaggeration, why do we regularly have incidents in our country of spurious and sub-standard drugs and even vaccines killing the people who happen to receive them?

Why do the drugs dispensed by our government hospitals fail to bring down the high fever that bends the bodies of the poor patients who go there, while the same drug prescribed by the very same government doctor but dispensed by the private chemist across the road quickly puts them back on their feet?

One of my former professors at the Mysore Medical College who valued his integrity and honesty more than the instant material wealth it would have brought him, refused a promotion and returned from an administrative posting when he was pestered by spurious drug manufacturers to accept huge bribes and clear their pending applications.

He chose to remain in his almost non-paying teaching job, preferring to sleep on a pillow of a clear conscience rather than on a bed of currency notes. Today, without exception whatsoever, every one in the city respects him as the best example and embodiment of the rare qualities that one seeks in a doctor.

And, for this uprightness, he also happens to be one of my guiding beacons and I turn to him for the right counsel whenever I am faced with a professional problem or a moral dilemma.

***

The companies that manufacture branded versions of drugs have a reputation and a track record to protect and they will therefore get periodic quality checks done by authorised agencies to uphold the set standards.

In this respect, many reputed Indian companies and multinational manufacturing giants who have invested much money into research and development naturally keep the prices of their products a little high. This is understandably inevitable and we have to accept the fact that quality can come only at a cost.

It has now become a fashion to simply blame multinationals for all our problems.

Yes, multinationals may be exploiting us with their expensive products and in doing so they may even qualify to be called anti-nationals but at least they give us safe and effective drugs. If your doctor insists on your buying a particular brand of medicine, it is often because he or she has established faith in it.

On the other hand, if you end up buying a generic drug whose manufacturer is unknown and whose quality can therefore never be ensured, with what confidence can he or she treat you?

People may accuse doctors of yielding to the enticement and pressure of pharma companies but that is not the whole truth. If only generic drugs are permitted to be sold in the country as some people wish, the profit margins to the sellers, instead of the quality of the drug, will decide what the patients get.

I would prefer to give up practising medicine altogether if I have to do so without any control over what my patients get as medicine.

That is why all my prescriptions carry a line in small print at the bottom that says: “Responsibility for this prescription ceases if drugs are substituted, redispensed or sold without a valid bill.”

***

Aamir Khan while talking on the show and also before a Parliamentary Standing Committee yesterday about the need to promote generic drugs to keep treatment costs low should have taken a little trouble to ascertain the sources of drugs dispensed at most of the government hospitals across the country today.

As far as I know, we should be surprised if any of these drugs happen to be from any of the top 20 trust-worthy drug-manufacturing companies, which are operating in India. This is thanks to corrupt officials and politicians who rule the roost.

It is an open secret that heavy bribes have to be paid at every stage, to get oneself on the list of drug suppliers to the government healthcare sector and also to get tenders passed from time to time.

Therefore, it is no surprise that as each bureaucratic milestone is painfully crossed, the quantity of the real drug in the formulation naturally keeps decreasing until only the chalk powder, the sawdust and the sugar-water that I talked about, manage to reach the final destination!

***

Common sense should tell us that good drugs that really work, can only come from good companies that can get the prices that do justice to their quality control and good manufacturing practices.

In our country, all the good intentions of a doctor who insists on any particular brand of the prescribed drug can be derailed by many agencies.

With the already prevalent suspicion in most patients’ minds, just a whisper that the doctor is on the payroll or patronage of a drug company, from one dishonest chemist who wants to sell a brand that pays him more, is enough to convert doubt into conviction.

Patients must understand the fact that the best advertisement for any doctor’s capability is the efficacy of his or her treatment and in this respect, no doctor will endanger his reputation by prescribing a drug of doubtful quality simply to get a cut from any pharma company, as alleged on Aamir Khan’s show.

The great Khan further talked of needless lab tests that doctors order just to get commissions from labs who in turn recover these expenses by issuing reports without actually doing the tests.

While I do agree that most labs these days pay cuts to beat competition and stay in business, I do not think any decent medical lab would issue reports without performing the tests. If this practice exists, it is only at the slimy bottom of medical practice where the most unethical practitioners of the art operate and it is no index of the integrity and honesty of doctors in general.

But when something as ugly as selective female foeticide does exist in our country, and since some medical doctors have been found guilty of it, we cannot completely deny the existence of these ‘unperformed tests’.

***

Since doctors too have now been brought under the purview of the consumer protection act, litigation has become easy and cost-free for any disgruntled patient. Patients can now file cases against doctors at the drop of a hat over the most frivolous issues and doctors who used to spend their leisure hours unwinding in tennis courts, are now forced to spend much time and money in standing and defending themselves in law courts.

Very often, they have to be at the receiving end of adverse and financially burdensome judgements, as they cannot prove the correctness of their actions on the strength of paper records and reports.

Because courts go only by material evidence while deciding cases, doctors now to indemnify themselves against litigation are forced to order a plethora of lab tests and also go in for higher and higher malpractice insurance. Naturally, unknown to them, it is the patients themselves who end up paying the cost of these tests and the premiums for these insurance policies.

The commissions paid by labs are just a side effect of this sad development and they are actually not the main cause for the unnecessary tests, which now have to be accepted as quite justified, considering the present scenario. The labs have to resort to this unethical practice because they have to stay in business and recover their investments after paying the steep interest on their bank loans.

Today, it is no surprise that more than 75 per cent of the wide array of lab tests that doctors order, is what the consumer protection act has forced on them. The moment this act came into the scene, the sanctity of the relationship between the patient and the doctor that existed over the years died forever.

With just one stroke of the law-making pen, the sacred Vaidya of the age-old Indian shloka: ‘Vaidyo Narayana Hari‘ was unceremoniously tossed out of the hospital window.

Now, like how it happens in a Shakespearean tragedy, the scene has changed completely and the patient is only an aggressive consumer and the doctor only a very defensive service provider.

You may argue here that not all patients are aggressive and vindictive. But how are we to decide who the good ones and bad ones are, beforehand?

***

In this cat-and-mouse game, Dr Jekyll can become Mr Hyde and vise versa, without warning.

We doctors regularly see not just really aggrieved and wronged patients turning to the courts but also those who did not like the outcome of their treatment. There are records of people having gone to court with false charges simply because hospital bills were not waived off or reduced as requested by them.

I know of many patients who attribute all that befalls them later to the ‘wrong’ treatment that they once received at some hospital.

Similarly, I routinely encounter women who blame the tubectomy operation they underwent decades ago for all the aches, pains, coughs, colds and cancers that they now suffer from.

I have once seen the inside of a consumer court as an expert witness and I did not find it a very comforting or friendly place. While watching the proceedings, I noticed charges being traded left and right by litigants, like paper missiles, without any regard to the wisdom enshrined in any textbook, either medical or legal.

Now I do not intend to revisit the place, especially as a defendant.

What I am going to say here may shock you but even I am guilty of ordering some ‘unnecessary’ lab tests sometimes in my practice. However, these lab tests are only unnecessary from the point of view that if I am fully honest, I really do not need their help to make a diagnosis, which is where all lab tests are meant to help us.

I order these often expensive tests only to keep myself and my practice safe from any medical malpractice litigation. Very often, even where I find the diagnosis staring at me in my face, I never proceed to announce it or treat the condition before I get the verdict straight from the horse’s mouth.

And, here my helpful horse is the friendly neighbourhood diagnostic lab, which is naturally a pretty expensive horse to boot because of all the expensive equipment it bears on its back.

In the event of the need to treat some poor patients, which I do quite often in my practice, I ask the patients’ relatives to simply sign an undertaking that they cannot afford the cost of the recommended tests and are therefore willing to go by my clinical diagnosis.

I then quickly keep this precious document in my bank locker, which I have hired just for this purpose!

For me these uninvestigated cases are the most comforting ones to treat, as they, while making me feel like a real doctor from the good old times, do not impose a strain on my conscience.

Coming to the really pathetic portrayal on Aamir Khan’s show of the plight of women from Andhra Pradesh who seem to have been subjected en masse to needless hysterectomies or removal of the uterus, I am almost certain that this must have been some kind of an insurance racket involving unscrupulous middlemen and it needs to be investigated fully. All those found guilty, including the doctors if any, should receive the most deterrent punishment.

These days whenever patients get themselves some kind of medical insurance, agencies which would have sold them the policy, often prevail upon them to make the best use of the cover before its term expires. They do this to make the insured persons feel that investing on the policy was a worthwhile expenditure because it helped them to get treated for some ailment, real or imaginary.

While most of us would be happy not to have needed our medical insurance cover, many people especially from the lower strata of society, feel cheated if they have to get it renewed year after year without putting its benefits to any use.

I regularly come across many patients who are desperately impatient to put their medical insurance to some use and it is often a difficult task to dissuade them from doing so.

Very recently, a lady came to my clinic with a medical insurance policy for Rs. 1,000, which she had received as a compliment for buying a crate of dish-washing soap. Under its cover, she wanted me to certify that she was under my treatment for which she was willing to share 50 per cent of the amount with me.

When I did not oblige she went away complaining that I was so unhelpful in getting her what was legitimately her due under the policy. She would perhaps have even felt that I stood my ground only because the miserable incentive was not large enough to make me abandon my principles!

***

Aamir Khan should understand and accept the fact that the medical fraternity he is lampooning on his show is guided and governed by many complex issues that deal with life’s most complex and elusive problems.

Practising medicine is more of an art than a science, where two identical problems often do not respond identically despite identical lines of treatment. When it comes to medicine, he is after all only a layman and medicine certainly is not his cup of tea like how it is mine! I wish his attention now shifts to something he understands better.

For instance, the black money that keeps the projector wheels turning or the close liaison between the film industry and the underworld. But that takes the kind of courage that this kind of Khan perhaps does not have in him.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece appeared over two weeks)

Also read: An open letter to Aamir Khan from a Kannadiga

CHURUMURI POLL: Aamir Khan vs doctors?

The half-truths of Aamir Khan, the truth fountain

What’s wrong if Aamir Khan exposes ‘butchers’?

The half-truths of Aamir Khan, the truth fountain

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Satyameva Jayate, which literally means “Truth Stands Invincible” or “Let Truth Prevail”, is a mantra from the ancient Mundaka Upanishad believed to have been written by our sages in 250 BC.

The slogan was popularised and brought into use by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in 1918 when he was serving the second of his four terms as president of the Indian National Congress, and it was later adopted as the national motto of India after Independence.

Today it is inscribed at the base of our national emblem, the Ashoka pillar, and is also found on every one of our coins and currency notes, handled by the rich and the poor alike but without anyone ever noticing either its presence or significance whatsoever.

While it was meant to keep our conscience in a state of constant wakefulness to uphold the greatness of our rediscovered nationhood, we Indians with our dishonest ways and dark deeds have sadly kept its guiding light out of our murky lives.

***

Today, ‘Satyamev Jayate’ also happens to be the title of a very popular TV show being aired on every Sunday morning to tell us Indians all the wrong that is happening in our country which we need to set right.

Very recently, in the fourth episode of this widely watched television show, its host Aamir Khan, the popular film hero, chose to speak about health-care services in India and the threat of ‘rampant’ medical negligence. He called on real life ‘victims’ to share their trauma.

One such victim of alleged medical malpractice was retired Army officer Major Pankaj Rai who lost his wife Seema to what he called a badly botched up kidney transplantation operation.

Without naming anyone or any hospital during the course of the show, he said that his wife died as a result of gross medical negligence at a very reputed hospital in the country when she was subjected to a combined kidney and pancreas transplant that was done without the consent of the patient herself or any of the family members.

What Aamir Khan perhaps did not tell his viewers was the fact that on his show he was all along showing them only half-truths about what had actually happened.

And, mind you, half the truth is very often a great lie.

***

All details of the Seema Rai case are now available on the internet at the click of the mouse button. You can easily find out that the transplant surgeon who was accused of being inadequately trained and ill qualified to carry out the operation was actually someone who was trained in the United States with good experience in multi-organ transplantation.

The physician and nephrologist who treated the patient and managed her on dialysis for more than two years before she underwent transplant surgery too had 16 years of clinical experience in the US before he chose to return to India to serve fellow Indians.

He has been practising in India since 2003 without any charge having been levelled against his competence either in the US or in India.

Now, whenever a doctor who has been able to survive and practice in the US, which is one of the most paying but also certainly one of the toughest environments to practice medicine, chooses to return to a country like India, we cannot easily garland him with the accusation of either being selfish or inefficient.

This doctor in question, therefore, does not need me to write a page of unqualified and unpaid defence for him, to uphold his reputation or image, especially when I do not even know him personally.

***

Major Rai alleged on the show that the doctors who did not even have a licence to do the job, whisked his wife off to surgery in the middle of the night without his or her consent and transplanted the kidney of a cadaver donor, along with a pancreas, that was not only an unnecessary medical procedure but also one that risked his wife’s life as well.

What our famous host or his aggrieved guest did not tell us during the show—where they were applauded and cheered by their captive audience—was the fact that this case of alleged medical negligence has been heard by more discerning experts.

The State medical council in its ruling has clearly said there was absolutely no medical negligence involved and there was no motive of personal monetary gain on the part of the doctors. The incident has also been debated over by many professional bodies both in India, and abroad too, including a law University and all of them have ruled that there was no element of medical negligence involved in it whatsoever.

Despite these rulings, the family has chosen to pursue the matter with a claim for a steep monetary compensation and the matter is sub-judice still.

No monetary compensation can do any, let alone full justice, for a human life lost and for the ensuing pain but while the matter is still undecided they should not have aired their angst with misrepresented facts on a TV show meant for the masses hungry for sensational scoops.

It appears the patient who was on dialysis had registered for cadaver kidney transplantation with a government body called the zonal coordination committee for transplantation (ZCCT). Now, cadaver transplantation means the transplantation of organs harvested from brain-dead persons, which is resorted to when living relatives with matching tissues are not available to donate their organs.

In such a situation whenever a suitable organ becomes available, as it usually happens after a fatal road accident, the patients on the waiting list are informed and asked to report immediately if they are interested in getting the transplant done. There is very little time for this procedure to be undertaken as the organs from a brain-dead donor have a very limited lifespan before they are transplanted.

In the case of a kidney, it is best transplanted within six hours after death and usually not more than twenty-four hours to ensure best function after transplantation.

Moreover, the decision-making has to be fast here as other waiting prospective recipients have to be informed if the first one refuses. And, even after a prospective recipient is identified some more hours are needed to establish tissue compatibility.

Therefore, the summons from the hospital for a cadaver transplant patient to quickly get admitted sometimes comes only as an urgent midnight call and there is nothing surprising about it.

***

On May 1, 2010, when the ZCCT, the agency that allocates cadaver kidney organs, informed that a potential cadaver had been identified and Seema Rai was one of the potential recipients, she voluntarily got admitted to the hospital for the procedure.

The patient was evaluated by the nephrologist and the transplant surgeon who discussed the cadaver transplantation procedure with her family after which she, who was a teacher at an international school, along with her husband, gave the informed consent for surgery.

They did this after discussing the relative risks and benefits of surgery with the transplant team and also, over the telephone, with one of their relatives who was perhaps a doctor in the United States.

According to their nephrologist, the transplanted kidney was functioning very well but three days after the operation the patient developed a severe bleeding disorder called disseminated intravascular coagulation or DIC. This rare complication, which is known to occur after any major surgery or even the delivery of a baby, causes massive bleeding which is difficult to control even after transfusing many units of blood as well as blood products like plasma and platelets.

It can happen in the best of hospitals and a very famous film actress, Smita Patil who could have sought and afforded the best treatment anywhere in the world, helplessly succumbed to it after childbirth. Despite the best efforts, this patient too failed to respond and expired and her death cannot be said to bet a consequence of any act of negligence of either the transplant team or the hospital.

***

In another case, a patient was shown who claimed that a surgeon had amputated one of his toes needlessly. The ‘needlessness’ of this operation was revealed by another doctor only after it had already been performed. I fail to understand how the second doctor could give such an opinion when he or she had never seen what the problem was like before surgery.

In a situation like diabetic gangrene of one of the toes, a difference of opinion can be expressed only before the surgical procedure and not afterwards. No expert, however efficient and experienced can comment on the need for surgery or the lack of it after the condition has been treated.

No mention was made in the show of whether the patient was a diabetic and how well controlled his blood sugar was before the procedure.

From what I could see on the show, the foot looked like a classical case of diabetic gangrene that had been treated with the perfectly approved and appropriate treatment of surgical amputation. In fact, because healing can often be very slow here, it looked like the perfect answer to any diabetologist’s prayer about what the outcome of correct and prompt treatment should be!

***

Whenever truth is told, it should include the whole truth including the inconvenient bits. This show is not just unabashed ‘truth-telling’ but it aims to hammer the truth in after breaking it into convenient bits.

The whole exercise seems structured to appropriate for its lead star the role of being the truth-fountain. My worry is that he presents both a populist and ‘one-sided truth’ on an enormously complex social issue with a dangerous authority that only his kind of stardom can muster.

In his show, Aamir Khan has certainly taken a huge leap from simply raising the awareness of his audience to being a medical expert, interlocutor and activist all rolled into one.

Here he is not just making a fictitious film where he can manipulate facts to create a sensational effect on his viewers. Here he is sensationalising a real life situation in a reality show watched by very well-educated and even a technically qualified audience too in addition to the lay public that laps up as truth all that comes from the lips of their hero.

The show goes beyond a lay talk show, which at least pretends to allow different shades of opinion to argue, debate, agree or disagree with a situation. It only shows a blind judge without any qualification, showing his audience the subtle shades of differ-ence that lend charm to the sunset that his stardom dreads.

Await more comforting truths next week!

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Also read: An open letter to Aamir Khan from a Kannadiga

CHURUMURI POLL: Aamir Khan vs doctors?

CHURUMURI POLL: Medical insurance: a big ripoff?

Once upon a time, when my doctor was an angel

Do Mysore’s doctors, hospitals have any ethics?

Do we really need these super-slick bus stops?

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: As all of us have noticed, the humble bus stops that we had all over the City have started undergoing some drastic cosmetic changes. This is due to the new policy of the City Corporation in allowing them to become sources of good revenue through paid advertisements.

Until very recent times bus stops were just staid, charmless places, announcing meaning-less bus timings where seemingly bored people stood under a concrete shelter cursing their seemingly endless wait. But now they have become very bright and colourful with translit plastic boards all around, announcing the virtues of the new products or services of the advertising sponsors.

It is a different matter though that I have still not noticed any marked change in the dull expressions on the faces of all those who stand and wait there!

Nevertheless, from the increasing difficulty that I face every passing day in avoiding angry buses while driving around the city, I have naturally surmised that the number of city buses has certainly increased, making waiting for them a little less painful. However, the priorities behind this ‘plastic surgery’ of our bus shelters seem rather lopsided.

Last Tuesday night I happened to see one bus stop in the process of such a make-over (in picture, above).

It was getting a set of exactly thirty-three fluorescent tube lights of 40 watts each.

Now, this translates into 1,280 watts of electricity consumption per hour, which to me seems rather wasteful considering the fact that each bus stop is illuminated for almost five hours every day. Although our government can easily say that the sponsors pay for it very willingly, can we as an energy-strapped nation afford it?

In an environmental sense, electricity does not come cheap to us considering the strain its generation imposes on our already scarce natural resources like coal and oil. Is this kind of progress not totally unmindful of the future?

Year after year, for almost half the year, we regularly go through an energy crisis that cripples our industrial production and puts every housewife and student to much inconvenience with untimely power cuts, especially during exam time. We curse our fate and the summer heat alike, both at home and the office and yet we never learn the simple lessons that life tries to teach us.

I think our government should look a little beyond just its ledger books while giving permission to business enterprises, shops and especially malls, our new found pride, to indulge in the wasteful use of electricity. We can certainly cut our energy use in half if we do this and this can be the best that we can do for our planet and our progeny.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where a longer version of this piece appeared)

The doctor who dissected the body of Haldane

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Last Sunday I was at Salem in Tamil Nadu with my family. We were there just for a day and it was a journey of only about 270 kilometers each way. But for me it was actually a long voyage back in time, spanning over more than 35 years.

It was a journey back to the era of my days as a young medical student in distant Gulbarga, then and sometimes even now, considered by all those in government service as the most befitting punishment posting.

The year was 1975 and it was Monday the 18th of August, perhaps the best time of the year, after the soothing rains had cooled and greened the place a little, to introduce the unwary and the uninitiated to the vagaries of a land that is famous for having only two seasons: summer and very hot summer.

We were a batch of 67 students who were all seated well in time for our first class of the MBBS course.

It was a bright sunny morning and all of us were at the peak of our happiness and eagerness, as only those who become medical students will perhaps know.

At the stroke of eight, a dark, bespectacled man in a long white coat, looking every inch a professor, entered the hall, automatically muting every one of us and sending the hall into pin drop silence.

He introduced himself as Dr Vissa Ramachandra Rao (VRR), the professor and head of the Department of Anatomy and from his language and bearing it was not difficult for me to quickly surmise that he had acquired much of both in Britain. He had served in many medical colleges in Andhra Pradesh and had joined our college after retirement from government service.

He was so impressive that what he said in one hour on that day is still so deeply etched in my mind that I can reproduce it verbatim even today although many things which I learnt much later have faded from my memory.

Fortunately for us, we had many very great teachers almost in all subjects who were all able stalwarts in their fields to whom we owe all our learning and professional abilities. But Dr VRR, as we all affectionately called him, perhaps by being the first one of them to teach us a difficult subject like Anatomy for a full eighteen months, soon became our favourite.

Beneath his stern exterior he was a very warm and understanding person who was always very sensitive to our problems which he tried to set right with great concern.

***

Once, while on a college trip to Ajanta and Ellora we happened to reach Aurangabad early in the morning after an overnight journey.

We stopped for breakfast at a hotel where the prowess of the cooks somehow could not match the appetite of a busload of hungry youngsters. I decided to do my bit to ease developing tensions by becoming the self-appointed coordinator between the two groups.

Unnoticed by me, Dr VRR, who had been accompanied by his wife Lalitha and his daughter Usha, was watching me closely and after all the students had had their fill he asked me to join them at their table for breakfast. He then asked me where I was from and appreciated my patience and helpful nature.

After our return to Gulbarga he recommended my name for nomination to the students’ council as the representative of the pre-clinical batch. With this beginning, my relationship with him became very close and he would always turn to me whenever some responsibility had to be entrusted to someone.

***

With my interest in writing and photography he used to be very happy to ask for my help in preparing scientific presentations for seminars and conferences.

In those days our college could get this done only by approaching M/s Vaman & Dastur, a firm of photographers on Mouledina Road in Pune which was a rather long and cumbersome process. I used to then process Ekta-chrome slide film along with black and white film in my bathroom which on weekends would do double duty as my darkroom!

With the strong and lingering odours of Metol, Hydroquinone and Sodium Thiosulphate overpowering those of my soap and shampoo, all my friends used to say that on Mondays I would always smell very strange!

Dr VRR although quite friendly with me was always a very unforgiving taskmaster whenever it came to academics and would always keep himself and my parents too updated about my progress as a student. His classes used to be both sessions for the learning of anatomy and also for the inculcation of the essential values required for leading a good life.

During my frequent periods of personal interaction with him he used to tell me all about his life including the time he spent in England in the company of some of the most well- known stalwarts of medical science, especially the trio of embryology: Hamilton, Boyd and Mossman.

I still have a picture of him standing with them which he gave me.

He was invited by the Royal College when he, along with his assistant at the Guntur medical college, Dr G. R. K. Hari Rao, discovered a new blood vessel in the heart which was later named the Rao & Rao Artery.

While working at Kakinada he was the man who dissected and preserved the body of the noted British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane who donated his body for the advancement of science when he died in the year 1964. He was instrumental in creating and developing anatomy museums in most of the medical colleges where he worked.

When I completed my MBBS and it was time for me to leave Gulbarga, Dr VRR invited me home for lunch which his wife and daughter had very painstakingly prepared taking into consideration my favourite dishes. He then gave me a bundle of manuscripts which were his most important notes and his trusted German camera saying, “I think I have no use for them now but I know you will value these.” He could not have been more right.

I have preserved them among my most treasured things even to this day.

***

We were always in touch over the years after that and I would never fail to send him a birthday card every year on the 21st of March. After he lost his wife he settled down at Salem with his daughter Dr Usha Sri who has done a commendable job of looking after him through the ups and downs of old age.

About five years ago when I had to attend a seminar at Yercaud, the hill station near Salem, I called her up and informed her that I would visit them in a couple of days. It appears he was so eager to meet me that he was constantly asking her exactly when I was expected and had insisted that she should prepare my favourite custard which her mother used to prepare and which I used to relish as an young boy.

I visited him with my family and for both of us it was a very emotional reunion.

When we were about to part he smiled and said, “I have taught thousands of students over the years but I cannot expect every one of them to remember me or be in touch with me. But now that one Javeed has come and spoken to me so many years after my retirement, this Ramachandra Rao can die in peace and happiness.”

We visited him a second time a couple of years later with my brother’s family and my mother accompanying us and this time too he was overjoyed. At both these meetings I discovered how much joy a teacher gets when he meets his old students and I think this holds true for every teacher on this earth.

As usual, this year too I called him up on the 21st of March to wish him on his 95th birthday.

He felt very happy talking to me but this time it was a one sided conversation because his already bad hearing had deteriorated so much that he could not understand what I was saying. His daughter Usha said she would convey my good wishes to him and said that the Tirupati Temple authorities in recognition of the contribution of his father Vissa Appa Rao and his father-in-law Veturi Prabhakara Shastri to the field of classical music and Telugu literature would be honouring Dr VRR on the 1st of April at a function in Salem. She said it was his desire that I should be there on that occasion.

***

Three days later there was another phone call and this time the grand old man himself was on the line.

He said, “Javeed, I am already 95. I do not know if I will live long enough to see you again. So I want you to be here for this function with your family. It will make me very happy. I cannot hear what you are going to say but I am sure you have heard what I had to say. Thank you.”

I had heard him right but I had nothing to say. He was my guru and I was his sishya and this is how the relationship had to be between us.

His wish was my command and so I went. It was a very touching occasion. A few other old students who had come there like me narrated their experiences of his generosity and greatness. A few friends had sent me messages on my cell phone which I read out.

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) board had sent two representatives with a citation and a shawl to honour him and much to our surprise he rose to the occasion by making a brief but most impressive speech in reply.

Then turning to me, he clasped both my hands in his and said, “Ah, my favourite student from Gulbarga is here. I feel so proud and happy.”

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician, who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Photograph: courtesy Star of Mysore

Also read: From Guruswamapalyam, a lesson for all shishyas

FREE: 5 easy ways to a happy, stress-free life

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: By qualification I am not an expert in stress management. But as a physician I think I see stress and its results on people more often than what most people think. Day in and day out I encounter patients who come to me and complain straight away that they are too stressed up and need some prescription for it.

But for every such patient who knows what his or her problem is, I meet at least ten more who simply do not know that every one of their physical complaints are related to the abnormally high levels of stress they build up as they go about their daily lives.

This stress in disguise can be very detrimental to a healthy and comfortable life and is the cause of many psycho-somatic problems where an over-burdened mind begins to induce disorders like insomnia, hyperacidity, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes in an otherwise healthy body.

***

From the days when I started practice soon after post-graduation, just about 25 years ago to the present day, I have been seeing and treating these stress related problems and I have found that their incidence is increasing by leaps and bounds every passing day.

That is because, from the days when we were cavemen and just hunters and gatherers to the present day where we have become hunters, gatherers, usurpers and accumulators, our life style has gone through a full circle of change.

Now even the most independent and affluent amongst us have just become bonded labourers who work ten times harder than necessary for a nonexistent boss to live just one life. Most of us till we reach the time to retire still continue to slog, trying to create more and more wealth which we will eventually be unable to use to make ourselves happy.

By the time you discover that you have made enough money to start spending it for your pleasure you discover that there is simply no time for you to do it in good health. So in the end you only end up making some doctor or hospital wealthier by it.

When you really come to think of it, we need not really work so hard and burn ourselves up in the process because what we really need to go through this life comfortably does not require so much effort.

I have seen hundreds of people around me who have made millions but who have ended up exiting this world as miserable paupers with their wealth intact and unused. If only they had worked a little less and had taken time off their slogging for a little leisure or to see the world around them they would have been happier and in better health although with a little lesser wealth.

Our obsession with building a cyber world of instant connectivity and communication too, without which we seem to be ill-equipped to survive, has certainly added much to our misery.

I know of many software professionals in metropolitan cities who after a hard day at the office come home tired and weary with a much harder time in the peak hour traffic. They come home not to put their feet up and relax with their loved ones but only to perforce open their laptops to be available online when their counterparts on the other side of the world wake up to interact with them professionally.

When the much-awaited weekend comes they find that they are either too tired to stir out of their homes or too deterred by the weekend rush at every tiny source of recreation.

Many cyber-professionals, as if in response to a conditioned reflex, simply rush to resorts with their families during holidays only to communicate with them in monosyllables without looking up from their laptops while they try to catch up with their work.

However much a person gets paid to work like this, it is all a very brief and pointless game.

It is no different from burning a candle at both ends to get more light but this way we only end up getting darkness twice as fast. Therefore, this game is certainly not worth the candle.

Very recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article on the net where a nurse who was in charge of looking after terminally ill patients had revealed what most of them expressed as to what they would have liked to do instead of what they did during their lifetimes.

What she says makes very revealing reading.

She says: “For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who were destined to die as they were suffering from incurable problems. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow up a lot when they are faced with the prospects of their own death. Each experienced a variety of emotions like denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient when questioned about any regrets he or she had or anything he or she would do differently, invariably came up with these five answers again and again.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not fulfilled even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. But the moment you lose your health, it is too late to do this. Health brings a freedom and opportunity very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. This came from every male patient. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had then not been bread-winners. All of the men deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a me-diocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react sharply when you speak out your mind honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases you from this unhealthy relationship. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Often people would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved.

It is common for anyone in a busy life-style to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. It all co-mes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions as well as their physical lives.

Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their own selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful it is to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.”

But although very revealing, these last wishes and much belated flashes of wisdom usually do not make sense to most of us until we realise that it is almost time for us to go.

If only we remind ourselves that the whole purpose and happiness of this life lies not at the end of the journey but all along the road, we will all find a completely new meaning and purpose in living. This calls for a new and completely different way of looking at life from an altogether new perspective, perhaps with our feet up and our heads down !

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician, who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Also read: Khushwant Singh‘s 11 secrets of a long, happy life

Rushdie: Listen to what the good doctor says

Looking at all the shrieking and shouting on television (and reading the newspapers), it would seem as if the only people who have a view on the major debates of the day are: a) party spokesman with an agenda, b) fundamentalists with an agenda, c) party spokesmen and fundamentalists with an agenda masquerading as journalists and intellectuals without an agenda, and d) some extras who parrot out the most expected lines.

Communally sensitive issues like the Salman Rushdie episode, the A.K. Ramanujan essay ban, and the flight of M.F. Husain from the land of his birth, show how the nation’s discourse has been hijacked if not usurped by these “usual suspects”. It is as if the common men and women of India—Hindus, Dalits, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs et al—do not matter if they do not have a microphone attached to their lapel pins.

Here, a smalltown doctor pens his thoughts on l’affaire Rushdie.

***

By K. JAVEED NAYEEM

It is sad that, thanks to pure vote bank politics, the controversial writer Salman Rushdie, without being allowed to visit India, was still allowed to stir the already impure and extremely murky waters of Indian politics.

Rushdie’s physical and even virtual participation at the Jaipur literary festival was reportedly cancelled at the last minute after Muslim groups reportedly threatened violence even if his image was shown in a video-conference.

But except for the stray pictures of slogan-shouting Muslims, very appropriately attired for the occasion in skull caps and jubbas, just like film extras, I did not even sense any tremor of opposition from any right thinking Muslims worth their name or salt against his participation at the litfest.

It was only the media which went overboard to give more coverage to Rushdie’s aborted visit to Jaipur, than what it would have perhaps given him if he had actually visited the place and the event.

For a five full days, more Rushdie and less literature was discussed at the litfest, which is indeed a shame.

It is now an established fact that the threat to Rushdie’s life was much magnified, if not fully concocted, by our intelligence agencies and vote-hungry politicians, especially at the Congress-centric government at the Centre and the governments of the two Congress-ruled States of Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

Although he has been allowed to visit the country in the past without any problems, this time these three agencies decided to ban Rushdie’s visit clearly to appease the Muslim voters and impact the outcome of the forthcoming elections in the northern States.

That is why the threats to his life were ‘perceived’ in Bombay, the hub of all our terror threats, by intelligence agencies and conveyed to their counterparts in Rajasthan. Although the former deny their role, the latter reiterate that they have concrete evidence of the same.

The DGP of Maharashtra has said that they had not provided any input to Rajasthan in this regard while the Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has insisted that his government had received six messages from them about the threat.

Rushdie has no doubt faced death threats from fundamentalists ever since he wrote the controversial book but to give importance to the largely imaginary story that hired assassins were going to kill him in Jaipur this time shows how low even governments can stoop for imaginary vote banks.

It actually portrays our security preparedness in rather poor and unflattering light.

The man has actually derived much mileage from being controversial and our government does not realise that it has just augmented it.

The organisers of the Jaipur literary festival would certainly have known that his visit could spark protests and should have acted with a little more common sense and foresight before inviting him. The government too should have conveyed this possibility to the organisers since the visit was not at all a closely guarded secret.

Inviting Rushdie to the festival was clearly a very reckless and irresponsible act as it would have painted the whole of India in very bad light if something untoward had happened.

That there is much vote-bank politics behind this whole issue is eminently clear from the utterances of Sheila Dixit, the chief minister of New Delhi two days ago. Earlier in the day, she had told reporters that “one may have differences with what Rushdie writes, but he’s a very eminent writer and a Booker Prize winner who was welcome to visit Delhi.”

Barely hours after she praised him as a gifted writer she changed her mind. Her office issued a retraction stating that there is no question of welcoming the author of the banned “Satanic Verses.”

This sudden turn-around could only have been the result of a sharp rap on the elderly lady’s knuckles by her much younger lady mentor who undoubtedly wields the baton and the sceptre too.

In reality, banning his book has not prevented any determined readers from reading it. It has been always available to all and sundry except to our government from the black market. In five minutes it can be downloaded from the net and this can never be prevented by any kind of ban.

I certainly was very eager to find out what was bad in it and I found out very quickly too when I could borrow a copy from one of my teachers just a few days after it was proscribed. Since I have read everything that Rushdie has written, I feel it is not the ability to write well but his tendency to stamp on others’ toes deliberately which has made him famous.

This habit is the forte of all those without real talent. I do not endorse anyone making fun of Gods and Goddesses or revered personalities or the sacred texts of any religion. I have therefore also been very critical of M. F. Husain’s portrayal of Hindu deities in poor taste.

As a Muslim I would like to reiterate that The Satanic Verses, a work of fiction penned by Rushdie, certainly cannot shake our faith.

The history of Islam is full of instances where the prophet was subjected to much harsher criticism, including being dubbed an imposter for many years. But at no point of time was he ruffled one bit by such opposition or condemnation. He calmly went about his work with full conviction that what he was doing was in accordance with what Allah had ordained for him.

Let me reassure all Indians and all those anywhere in the world, who think that Indian Muslims are even slightly preoccupied with this Jaipur event, that I do not see it as anything more than a ripple on the surface of Indian politics.

It will certainly not shake our composure or patriotism.

It is actually time now for both Muslims and Hindus alike to rise much higher than being perturbed by what the Rushdies and Husains do in their free time.

This time a tottering Rushdie whose ink has dried up, has only used a lame excuse very conveniently to avoid attending an event which he was just frightened of attending like a timid boy. Let us not offer him a Jaipur foot to enter our minds and disturb our mindset.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Photograph: Sir Salman Rushdie with television anchor Barkha Dutt at the Jaipur literary festival in 2007 (courtesy Shelly Jain)

Also read: A Hindu iftar for a good Muslim doctor at work

All terror can be traced to injustice, inequality

The most difficult to cross is in your mind

Doctor’s prescription for a Happy New Year: Free

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: A brand new year is standing at our threshold, all set to enter our lives. Or, maybe I should say that we are standing at its threshold, a little eagerly if not impatiently to see what it holds for us.

Although a year seems like a very long time, the years nevertheless march quietly but quite fast and before we realise it, a full year is gone in what seems like no time at all. Suddenly, we find that we have all grown a year older.

It is rightly said that ‘Time, like a fistful of sand, slips through our fingers while we stand and wonder what to do with it.’

Tomorrow evening or the evening the day after, depending on which side of the globe they live in, most people will be spending much time and money and sacrificing much sleep too, in the process of welcoming the new year.

This tradition of ushering in a new calendar year is often just an excuse to indulge in a little late-night partying which actually needs no excuse at all if we have the time and money for it along with a handful of willing friends.

To tell you the truth, I have never ever celebrated the arrival of any New Year in my life although I have seen a good many new years now. I don’t think any of my friends, either tipsy or sober, can recall seeing me at any New Year celebration simply because I refuse to be drawn into the celebration of an event which I do not consider eventful.

To me, a New Year is simply the time when I have to be a little extra careful in making sure that I write the correct year while writing the date after every prescription which fetches my bread and butter!

***

New Year is the time when most of us make new resolutions about how we should put our lives in order and live in a more organised manner.

Again, living in a very organised manner is something I can never do. This is a resolution I make every day and break it the very next, simply because I see so much convenience in the chaos that others see around me either in my work place or in what I call my study at home.

This love for having everything that I may need or not need around me at an arm’s length, at all times would have left my home a complete shambles were it not for the constant efforts of my wife who has stood all these years like a steadfast dike between the surging sea of my disorderliness and her unyielding intolerance for it.

Now, coming back to the topic of ushering in the New Year, although we all know that we invariably end up breaking them much sooner than later we nevertheless continue to make New Year resolutions year after year.

Thankfully, I am proud and happy to say that I have never ever broken a single New Year resolution in all my life. This is not because I happen to have an unusually resolute will power but simply because I have never ever made any New Year resolutions in my life!

But since I know that most people would be making their New Year resolutions I would like to tell them that they would do well to do it a little differently this year.

***

Since I happen to be a practicing doctor you may even consider this advice as a prescription of sorts that comes free as a New Year gift. And, I would like you all to try very hard and see that you do not break this one resolution even if you end up breaking many others.

These days I find that most people are earning more than what many of us used to earn in the past. Although most people somehow invariably imagine the possession of ‘easy money’ to be the good fortune only of software engineers, I would like to point out that people of many other professions too are earning very well these days.

And surprisingly, quite a few of them happen to be devoid of any formal education let alone the professional qualifications that we think are most essential for a good income.

For all those for whom the going is good, money is aplenty today. Thanks to good incomes and easy availability of bank loans most people who could in the past never even dream of owning them have now started acquiring all the luxuries of life like well-equipped homes and slick cars quite early in life.

But I find that while most people manage to have everything that should make life easy and convenient they somehow never have the inclination or time to enjoy life in a way that makes their families happy.

These days, as a doctor, I find so many affluent people coming to me with symptoms that are just signs of stress arising out of a lack of time to be happy and relaxed.

They have the money and even eagerness to get the most expensive tests done that invariably turn out negative results for all the ailments they imagine, thanks to the generous, albeit often incorrect advice from the internet but they fail to understand what their bodies and minds are trying to tell them in words loud and clear.

I find much marital discord among very young couples who tend to flare up at the slightest provocation.

While lack of sleep and sexual disorders are what most young males complain of, intractable chest pain, giddiness and unexplained weakness is what bothers their spouses. Hyperacidity, which is a completely preventable problem, stalks both.

These days, like my other professional colleagues I have been seeing a sharp upsurge in the number of young diabetics and hyper-tensives among urban patients.

I find unusually bright and otherwise cheerful children presenting with symptoms like recurring abdominal pain, headache, lack of concentration and increased frequency of urination which are symptoms that simply do not belong to their ages.

With joint families fast becoming extinct and both parents often tied up in demanding jobs most children these days find no one to turn to for their emotional needs. The result is that stress invariably steps in unnoticed, leading to behavioural problems that need prolonged counselling.

Children are no longer able to return from school and hop into the laps of indulgent grandparents to listen to their favourite stories. The television and the computer have now become grandpa and grandma for our children, making dazed zombies out of even the liveliest kids.

If we can all resolve this New Year, to take time off from our busy lives and change this rather sad picture for good, I think we would have made the best New Year resolution for all time to come.

Have a great New Year.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Illustration: courtesy Nasir Khan

In the jungle of Indian roads, “L” board is king

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: I have never driven a car with an ‘L’ board at any time in the past, including the almost forgotten time when I was learning to drive, nearly forty years ago.

This is for the simple reason that by the time I was old enough to apply for a driving licence I was already driving pretty well, having learnt the art in a WW II vintage Jeep on the slushy private roads of our coffee estate much before it was legal for me to drive on public roads.

This perhaps explains the fact that even now I drive better on bad roads rather than on good ones!

So, after I took my learner’s licence I was quickly allowed to take my permanent licence in just a week’s time as there was no rule then that it could be issued only afer a period of one full month as it is now. But nearly 40 years after I got my driving licence I now find myself driving a small car with large ‘L’ boards prominently displayed both on the wind-screen and the rear glass.

The reason for this is not because I am re-learning the art of driving, although, with the rapidly changing traffic scenario, most of us perhaps need a refresher course in driving but because my daughter Sarah is now in the process of acquiring one. But since we have just one small car that is most ideally suited for city use I am forced to share it with my children for my needs too.

My son, Adnan, who has just finished getting his permanent licence and who loves driving and devouring tandoori chicken more than doing anything else, simply considers it infra-dig to be seen driving a car with an ‘L’ board. For his commuting needs he now finds some excuse or the other to commandeer and use one of our larger cars which do not sport the despicable board he detests.

But I have discovered rather quickly that while driving a car with an ‘L’ board at this age certainly raises some eyebrows, it also has its own advantages. The most important one is that even in heavy traffic, other road users including even the most valiant daredevils, now take care to stay clear of my car which gives me the right of way at every intersection and traffic signal.

Even City bus drivers who usually rule our roads by laying down their own rules and breaking all others, have now stopped honking from behind me as they normally do even before the lights turn green. In case an occasional one still honks, ignoring my ‘L’ board, I have now perfected the art of getting my car stalled helplessly after a couple of brisk jerks, like a perfect greenhorn to buy time till the light changes colour.

The second and perhaps more pleasant outcome of sporting an ‘L’ board is that most other learners when they pass by my car now nod and smile at me in a spirit of camaradiere and brotherhood and also perhaps with the pleasure of seeing a person much older than them being in their league.

I have my share of pleasure too from this courtesy because, for some inexplicable reason, most learners happen to be pretty girls who would otherwise never even turn and look at a much older man, let alone flash a smile at him. I therefore feel like continuing to drive a car with an ‘L’ board till I retire from driving, which I do not intend to do in a hurry despite the rather daunting present day traffic conditions.

In fact I am now seriously considering putting up larger than required ‘L’ boards on all the cars that I happen to drive. This will also dissuade my ‘driveoholic’ son from quickly occupying the driving seat whenever we venture out, as he does now, despite my best efforts to beat him to it.

I no longer tell people that it is not me who is the learner but my daughter for whose sake I have put up the ‘L’ board. It is pointless as they all invariably think that I am just saving my face, unable to face the embarrassment of being such a late learner.

Once as I was carefully manoevouring my car out of a slightly tight parking slot at a shopping mall, two autorickshaw drivers who were sipping their cuppa at the nearby tea stall quickly came over and stood on either side of my reversing car to guide me out of what they thought was a predicament.

While one was telling me to first turn the steering wheel to the right a wee bit and then turn it sharply to the left, his friend was saying just the opposite. Naturally this disagreement over how I should be guided out of a situation that was actually not one bit difficult for me, led them into a debate, with both of them accusing one another of being stupid and foolish.

I do not know how long the verbal duel lasted or how it ended as I drove out of the place without bothering to wait for a third person to butt in and pass judgement.

But when I visited the same place in a different and a much bigger car a few days later, one of the two debators who happened to be there, walked up to me with a smile and said “Saar, manmanne taane driving kaltideeree, isht bega isht dodda car yak sir thokondri? Inswalpa dina aa haley car ye ittakondidre channagirthittu nimage.” (Sir, till a few days ago you were still learning to drive. Why did you buy such a big car so soon? You would have been better off using your old car for a few more days).

Last week, after finishing my rounds at one of the hospitals I visit, as I was walking up to my car, I noticed an autorickshaw taking a fast U-turn and brushing the rear bumper of my car. I stopped it and asked the driver whether it was necessary for him to be so fast and careless.

With a rare smile that he had perhaps saved for an occasion just like this, he said that it was inevitable as I had parked my car at a wrong angle. He hastened to add that it was an excusable mistake as I was still a learner!

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Also read: Once upon a time, when Ideal Jawa was Roadking

A Hindu Iftar for a good Muslim doctor at work

A 2008 image of Mysore deputy commissioner P. Manivannan at an Iftar at the Muslim girls’ orphanage

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: The holy month of Ramzan, which is the harbinger of much happiness and good cheer to Muslims the world over, has come. This month marks a period of fasting, alms-giving and special prayers which Muslims all over the world undertake as ordained by Allah in a bid to cleanse and rejuvenate their souls.

All Muslims believe that it is a very pious and spiritually rewarding act to provide food for anyone at Iftar, the time when people break their fasts immediately after sunset.

So it is a common tradition among Muslims to arrange Iftar parties for their friends and relatives by turns which become occasions not only to enrich their souls but for happy socialising too. Many well-to-do Muslims with noble intentions arrange such parties to feed the poor too.

But we have been discovering of late that a new breed of politically motivated Iftar parties are becoming commonplace not with the object of winning any spiritual rewards but with the motive of winning the hearts of Muslim vote-banks.

While the head of a Muslim seminary has recently issued a fatwa or religious edict that Muslims should not attend such politically motivated Iftars he has been reminded almost immediately by many Muslim organisations through a fusillade of repartees that he has no locus standi to issue it.

Since everything is fair in love, war and politics there is nothing anyone can do about this unholy trend and I am sure it is here to stay and reap its earthly rewards.

But I would like to highlight here a different kind of Iftar party of which I have been a beneficiary for the past so many years and the kind of which we need to encourage to foster brotherliness and inter-religious harmony at a time when these qualities seem very elusive and intangible.

Every Tuesday I have my weekly outdoor clinic at the town of Kollegal which is a rather long drawn affair that goes on till late in the night. This has been a tradition that I have chosen not to abandon after I had to wind up my regular practice there nearly nine years ago when I had to move over to Mysore in search of higher education for my children.

Every Tuesday, unfailingly, during every Ramzan, O.P. Mahesh Kumar and Jagadish, my two Hindu friends there have insisted and ensured that I along with my clinic staff break our fasts with the freshly cooked, piping hot food they bring from their homes just before sunset.

They are ordinary souls of modest means with neither motive nor ambition but they do so with simple love and affection. Now, how is that for a really pious and holy act?

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician, who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where a longer version of this piece originally appeared)

Representative photograph: Mysore deputy commissioner P. Manivannan at an iftar at the Muslim girls’ orphanage in 2008 (courtesy The Hindu)

Quick! What do you think is wrong with this pic?

The tenth edition of the cricket World Cup opened ten days ago in Dhaka, with the usual glitzy song-dance-laser junk that passes of as “local culture”. Captain after captain of the competing teams arrived in cycle-rickshaws for the benefit of the cameras, taking the “spectacle” around the world.

The logic of the hosts and the organisers of the tournament, the International Cricket Council (ICC),  obviously was to showcase a slice of Bangladesh that is a familiar cliche around the world. And doubtless millions of viewers made some “connect” with the sight on their TV screens and in their newspapers.

All except, it seems, K. Javeed Nayeem.

The Mysore-based physician, who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, wrote on February 18:

“When I saw a picture of Mahendra Singh Dhoni sitting with a young usher and riding a ‘man-powered’ rickshaw at the inaugural ceremony, I wondered what response it would draw from the world community that has been pressing over the years for the abolition of this form of demeaning transport, which is almost the trademark of life in Bangladesh and which still persists in many parts of our country too.”

World Community? Response?

Well, do a search on a search engine of your choice and you will notice, ten days later, that there has been little or no outcry over the cycle-rickshaws as a prop. Proof that the world has better things to do than worry about some poor cycle-rickshaw wallah earning a few bucks? Proof that cycle-rickshaws are, maybe, OK?

Or proof that there is a limit to such a thing as political correctness in the supposedly wired, connected, globalised world?

Also read: CHURUMURI POLL: Does the World Cup excite you?

Water melons, threshers and the World Cup

Dancing tips for the Nawab of Najafgarh

A cradle of civilisation, at its peak or its nadir?

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Our 62nd Republic Day dawned with the morning newspaper announcing—or more appropriately, screaming out—the news of the brutal lynching just a day before, of a sincere and committed public servant holding the high office of additional district collector in the not-so-distant Maharashtra.

As I picked up the paper which was lying on my porch, itself doubled up like a limp and lifeless corpse, and glanced at the headlines, the stark reality of what our country had come to hit me like a sledge hammer and a wave of disgust and outrage swept over me.

Our Republic Day, which shares its importance in equal measure with our Independence Day and which in fact surpasses it on a few counts, should have served as a proud annual reminder of how to govern ourselves better. We gave ourselves a Constitution that would uphold the rule of the law and dispense fair justice for every Indian.

Every Indian young or old, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, irrespective of his or her caste, creed, colour and social status, stands covered under its protection. It is a Constitution which has few equals today even among the most advanced countries many of which cannot even talk, let alone boast of a written Constitution.

Despite holding this sacrosanct commandment aloft to remind the world of our greatness, what are we reminded of, day in and day out, as we go about our daily lives?

Are we able to say proudly that we have all been abiding by all the provisions enshrined in it?

I am afraid not.

Yes, we have some of the best written laws that should do justice to our claim to being a great nation but are we doing justice to our Constitution by following it in letter and spirit?

I am afraid not.

The high and mighty amongst us have no accountability whatsoever and have nothing to fear. The law is a deterrent only to the handful of those who fear it while all the ones who thumb their noses at it can go about their evil deeds, undeterred.

It is a deterrent to the lowly office clerk or village accountant who surreptitiously holds his hand under the table for transferring a title deed from a dead farmer to his son but it does not deter the neta who collects suitcases full of money to transfer thousands of acres of land illegally to land sharks.

Today, by our own willingness to be sucked into it, we are helplessly trapped in a whirlpool of mafias. There is a land mafia, a loan mafia, a coal mafia, an oil mafia and a job mafia to name just a few of the scores of organised murky activities that thrive unhindered, eating away at the innards of our prosperity and respectability.

Our leaders who are suppo-sed to set an example of honesty are the best examples of the highest kind of dishonesty.

They live perpetually on the payroll of the kings of crime and depend so heavily on the huge sums of money doled out by them to win elections on false promises. In turn they promise to twist the neck of our legal system to make it look the other way while their mentors rule the roost.

We, the educated citizens who consider ourselves enlightened enough to know what is good and what is bad, cast our votes blindfolded in favour of candidates guided not by a sense of fairness but only by considerations of caste and community. And, when the election results come we hold newspapers in our hands and bemoan what our country is coming to because of how the poor, illiterate masses vote under the influence of money and cheap liquor.

Have we stopped to ponder what is happening to the social fabric of our country by our abject disregard for our Constitution? This only garment of respectability which we have been wearing is now virtually ripped to shreds, almost laying bare in its entirety our savage nakedness to the eyes of the entire world.

The ease with which the officer in Maharashtra was doused with petrol and set aflame on the roadside in broad daylight with dozens of onlookers simply watching the macabre act helplessly, speaks of two chilling things.

# One, it screams out aloud that our complex administrative machinery has buckled under the brute force of the Frankenstein that we have ourselves created by our ever increasing tolerance and acceptance of corruption as a necessary and convenient evil.

# Second, when you consider the inaction with which the mute bystanders chose to just stand and watch, it tells us in hushed whispers that with the law crippled by a total lack of honesty and commitment, the safest thing to do in any dangerous situation, if it does not concern you directly, is to mind your own business.

I wonder why the helpless man, who certainly must have been familiar with the ways of the underworld, did not think of first summoning the help of the forces at his command before venturing to question what some of its kingpins were doing.

We call ourselves civilised and announce to the rest of the world that we were the ones who first rocked the cradle of civilisation. We also claim to be riding on the wave of a cultural and economic revolution right now. But it is significant to note here that every wave has a nadir and a peak.

I am tempted to ask at which one of these two points on this wave do we Indians stand today?

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Who are the Suresh Kalmadis at work in Mysore?

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Our Dasara which is an annual event, unlike the Commonwealth Games, has already started. But like the Commonwealth Games, at least in the Indian version of it, where work never seemed to stop even after the event itself started, all the works which have to be undertaken just to conduct the Dasara seem destined to go on for a long time even after the festival itself concludes.

Another similarity that our Dasara shares with the “common wealth” games is that since they are being done in a tearing hurry without proper supervision and accountability, much of these jobs are naturally of a very shoddy quality although contracts for them are invariably awarded at an astronomically escalated cost.

Though it is a well-known and sadly well-accepted fact that our Dasara is a money-spinner for its many automatic shareholders, I wonder why some proper planning does not go into its preparations.

At least it can then serve its intended purpose of showcasing our City at its best and making our tourists happy that the time, effort and money they spent on seeing it were worth it.

Everywhere all over the city I see work going on at a hectic pace in a vain bid to beat the deadline.

My observation is that whenever this happens and it has been happening with unfailing regularity over the past few years, all the half-done jobs are simply abandoned midway until the next year so much so that our Dasara preparations are best described by the idiom: “Well begun is half done.”

Even as late as this morning I found that the storm-water drain work which has been taken up bang opposite the main gate of Bannimantap grounds, the main venue of our Dasara, is still miles behind completion.

Although Dasara has already started, the whole place still resembles the construction site of some dam or factory. The concrete covering slabs that you see in the foreground of the picture have been cast just last evening and since concrete takes at least three weeks of proper curing to attain its correct strength, I wonder how they can be expected to do their job adequately.

Nevertheless, as we will all soon see, half-baked as they are, they will be used to cover the drain that has been dug on either side of the road and since they will be trampled upon by the jostling crowds on Vijayadashami Day in just a week’s time, they are likely to crack or crumble and go waste.

With the rainy season almost gone and with Dasara so near I wonder why this job had to be undertaken at the last moment this year. It could have been taken up next year along with the mother of all money-spinners that we are all going to see when work on the ‘Raj Path’ commences.

While even an unqualified mason could have given some valuable practical advice on this issue, I wonder how the whole army of our Corporation engineers could have planned this job so improperly.

Is it just to ensure that the huge amount of money that this project fetches is not held up for another full year?

This year’s Dasara seems to take the cake for some of the most important cosmetic jobs being completely ignored and left out of the menu altogether.

The main arch that welcomes our Dasara procession into the Bannimantap grounds, although adorned with its share of decorative light bulbs, still stands with its old maroon paint peeling off in layers. The inordinately ornamental compound wall, which I have criticised in the past for its inappropriate design, stands with its tiles all cracked and dislodged in many places due to acts of vandalism.

Many of the parks and circles where flowering shrubs used to be planted in time for them to bloom during the Dasara and which have been earning our city the sobriquet of the ‘Garden City’ have been left untended. In the days of the Maharajas this lapse would have been considered an unpardonable sacrilege.

A glaring example is the Milleneum Circle which actually is the first landmark that greets all tourists who head for our city from the State capital. Today it stands forlorn with only weeds and uncut grass under the glare of decorative lighting that only helps to show how shabby the place is. This is a spot where some carefully manicured shrubbery which does not obstruct the vision of road-users would have looked decent and appropriate.

The tragedy today is that none among all those who are busy working upon our Dasara seem to have any idea of how it was conducted in the past. It is a well-known fact that Mysore has some very capable and talented brains among its former planners and officers who were at the helm of conducting our Dasara during the sixties and seventies and who now lead retired lives in obscurity.

I think it would not be a bad idea to invite them to offer their experience and expertise which made our Dasaras of the past world famous and which I am sure they would be most willing to share to make our present day Dasaras more beautiful and meaningful.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician, who writes a weekly column in the Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Photograph: A file photo of the illuminated Amba Vilas palace, the centre of attraction during the Dasara festivities in Mysore, that will be inaugurated on Friday. The palace will be illuminated with more than 97,000 light bulbs. (Karnataka Photo News)

Have you—yes, you—called your parents today?-II

The plight of the old, euphemestically called “senior citizens” in our jargon-filled world, is something that we do not speak much about. Alone, abandoned and abused, they suffer the absence of their children and the apathy of a society that views them as a burden, silently.

Sometimes, they are even forced stage a play on the streets to raise our consciousness, as these did to mark World Elder Abuse Prevention Day at Lalbagh in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Have you—yes, you—called your parents today?

Once upon a time, when my doctor was an angel

No profession in India—not even journalism, perhaps—has plunged into the abyss of disrepute with the speed and determination of medicine. Across the country, doctors, once seen as saviours next only to God, have attained the notoriety reserved for crooks and charlatans.

Hospitals and nursing homes have become big businesses, slot machines in the constantly whirring healthcare “industry”, brazenly throwing every norm to the winds with scarcely any accountability, and rare is an Indian today who hasn’t had a first-hand experience of being ripped off.

The former president of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has  said doctors must possess six virtues—Generosity, Ethics, Tolerance, Perseverance, Concentration and Intelligence. How many virtues does your doctor possess? There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between.

And they are mostly in the past tense.

***

By K. JAVEED NAYEEM

Two weeks ago, while on a holiday at a rather remote place, I happened to meet a person who, on discovering that I was a doctor, said that he had been referred by his doctor after a battery of tests to a higher medical centre for establishing a diagnosis.

After listening to the account of his symptoms, I felt that the diagnosis of the problem was very evident and straight forward. Even a para-medical worker who happened to be there with us immediately came to the correct conclusion of what the problem might be.

But since I did not want to interfere with a case that was being treated by another doctor, I asked the patient to go ahead and get himself investigated fully.

While pondering over this matter later, I could not help wondering how much family medicine has changed over the brief span of time between my childhood and adulthood. I also could not help remembering our own family medicine-man who saw us all through our not so infrequent health problems.

He was Mysore Venkatsubbaiah Subba Rao whose name was conveniently abridged to ‘Subrao Dakatru‘ by almost all his patients. He actually came to me as a family legacy from our remote village of Aldur perched rather precariously on one of the crests of the many hills of Western Ghats in Chikmagalur.

It may seem like a rather improbable coincidence that a doctor who started his medical career and looked after my grandmother there, long before I was born, should end it with retirement here in Mysore, looking after me and my siblings till I myself became a doctor.

My grandmother, who admired him as a personification of selfless service, used to tell us how he used to walk barefoot for miles together in the leech-infested slush of the Malnad rainy season with his leather chappals in one hand and an umbrella in the other, closely and faithfully followed by his equally dedicated compounder Rama who used to lug a heavy medical kit and a light tiffen-carrier that used to meet the frugal needs of both servant and master.

It seems the duo used to subsist on a working diet of chappatis and pickle or dry avalakki, the steamed and beaten rice which they used to soften by soaking in water for a few minutes before consumption. The late evenings meant for a little rest before the next day’s grind began would be spent in painstakingly picking away the leeches from their legs and feet and then applying ash and alum to stop the bleeding.

It appears, Dr Subba Rao used to cycle the full 20 kilometres from Aldur, his place of posting, to Chikmagalur, the district headquarters for the weekly malaria review meeting with his boss, the district surgeon.

Although there was a bus facility between the two places, he would not avail it as the infrequent buses then would not permit him to return in time for the evening out-patient session at which his patients would be waiting.

To catch errant field workers, it seems he would tell them that he had a meeting to attend at Chikmagalur and then quietly arrive at their designated places of work to check if they were present there!

After completing nearly half his service in the nooks and crannies of Ghats, he was transferred from Agumbe, the place with the highest rainfall to Chitradurga, the place with the least rain in the then Mysore State. He continued to work there till he was transferred as medical officer to the Mysore Jail from where he retired. That was the time when my father set up a house in Mysore for our education.

As soon as we moved into it, he went looking for his good old family doctor to entrust our health into his safe hands as he would himself be away at the estate in Aldur most of the time.

The frail and elderly Dr.Subba Rao was such a sincere friend to my father that he would never fail to visit our home on his equally elderly Raleigh bicycle at least once a week to enquire about our health and well-being. He never charged us a rupee at any time for his services and would dispel our slight sense of discomfort by telling us that our grandmother had already paid for his services to us in advance with her hospitality in Aldur!

His visits were something we all used to look forward to as he used to tell us fascinating accounts of how life was during the “good old days” of his youth. After I became a medical student, he would love to exchange notes with me about what was being taught in medical colleges now vis-a-vis what had been taught in his time as a medical student and he would surprise me with the amount of clinical knowledge he possessed despite being only an LMP or Licenciate Practitioner.

His medicines were only a few but his practical knowledge was immense and that was his strongest weapon. He was so meticulous that even in the tiny private clinic that he had set up in his house at Saraswathipuram after retirement he would maintain detailed notes about the symptoms of all his patients and the medicines he had prescribed at their last visit.

Investigations were never the forte of medical practice then and all his patients used to seek his services in good faith and absolute trust and would accept his judgment with its limitations.

With old age taking its toll, he faded away from the scene quietly unsung but not without goodwill and gratitude. I still miss him.

Now a doctor is not only likely to be considered outdated if he does not show his knowledge of the latest diagnostic tests available but he will also be hauled up before a consumer court for not using them.

Establishing a precise diagnosis instead of giving immediate relief from pain with common sense has become the need of the hour. This has ushered in the era of “referral medical practice” by virtue of which a patient is shunted from one specialist to another till they all collectively decide that there is nothing seriously wrong!

Doctors have indeed become helpless and so I can only say “God help the poor patient.”

K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared.

Also read: If a doctor can be called a glorified drug-dealer…

Once upon a time, when doctors were like angels

In today’s hospitals, the patient does the rounds

Do Mysore’s doctors have any ethics left?

A wise man sees not the same tree a fool sees

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: At the top of the supplement meant for little children in this morning’s paper, I saw a quote by the poet William Blake that says, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

I could not help feeling how intensely true it is.

We see nature all around us and yet it is only a microscopic few of us who ponder over and try to understand what we see. There are dozens of trees, birds, animals, spiders and bees all around us but we hardly wonder over what roles they play in our lives.

It may seem like an overstatement but it is indeed true that there may not be more than a dozen school children in our city—or any City—who can correctly identify and tell us something about a dozen of our commonest butterflies that frequent our gardens and parks.

While most of the voluminous and often very drab textbooks that our youngsters lug around and study rather painfully, contain much pure science, it is sad that they have very little content that helps them to connect it to their daily lives meaningfully. The subject of studying our natural environment that surrounds us throughout our lives has been largely ignored in our school curriculum.

Right from their most formative years in school till they become fully integrated with and absorbed into the daily grind of their professional lives, most of our children never get a chance to develop an interest, let alone an insight, into nature.

It is a sad state of affairs today that many of our “toppers” who make our school and college managements and their parents proud do not have the slightest bit of essential general knowledge that many of their ‘not so bright’ class mates may have.

Another painful discovery that I have made is that in their enforced race to stay ahead of others, most of our brightest youngsters end up looking so dull and worn out, having missed out on all the extracurricular and leisure activities that they should have enjoyed to ensure overall development of their personalities.

Most of our schools, even the ones which call themselves elite and charge hefty fees, never have any provision to encourage activities like bird-watching, amateur astronomy, trekking and camping which are the ones that stimulate a sense of wonder and awareness in our youngsters.

It is perhaps an unusual coincidence that I have been spending the last two weekends in the lap of nature at two of the wildlife sanctuaries near our City as I often do and have been during the weekdays reading two very interesting books that deal a lot with nature.

The first book which I am actually re-reading as it is immensely readable is Down Memory Lane, the autobiography of our former minister and parliamentarian M.Y. Ghorpade whom most people with any interest in nature know better as an accomplished wildlife photographer and naturalist than as a capable politician.

The book describes the natural richness of Sandur, his home town in present day Bellary district and how it was by itself a pristine micro-ecosystem that is now being ravaged by our senseless exploitation of its mineral wealth. The book also throws much light on the rich wildlife in the area and the sense of values and virtues that prevailed in our society even in the not very distant past.

The second is a recently published book called The sprint of the Blackbuck by S. Theodore Baskaran which is actually a collection of the most readable essays picked up from Blackbuck, the official journal of the Madras Naturalists’ Society which has been published to mark the completion of 25 years of its existence.

It is a beautiful account of our varied fauna and flora with particular reference to South India with many anecdotes included which make it interesting even to youngsters.

The book effectively destroys many firmly ingrained myths about our “most dangerous” animals and throws much light on their role in maintaining the delicate ecological balance in our immediate environment. It begins with an introduction which recounts how the MNS with its 180 permanent members was able to help establish nature clubs in about 300 schools in Madras.

I feel that clubs like these must be made a mandatory requirement in all our schools to get children interested in ecology and natural history which will eventually make them better citizens with a heightened interest in conservation issues.

It will cost us next to nothing beyond a few teachers with the right kind of motivation and commitment. But the dividends are bound to be very rich as we would be awakening the sense of awe in our children when it is most likely to latch on and stay for the rest of their lives.

The move would be so welcome that I am sure sponsorship will flow generously if schools approach business houses and philanthropists with their proposals.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

‘Simplicity and grace born out of real greatness’

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: On the morning of the first of July, which happens to be Doctors’ Day, I received a telephone call from our famed photojournalist T. S. Satyan, who after having done us all proud, now lives in retirement here in Mysore.

After wishing me, he said he wanted to send me a book as a Doctors’ Day gift and, therefore, asked for my address.

Quickly surmising that I would lose an opportunity to spend a few moments with him if I allowed him to send it to me by post or courier, I offered to go over to his house and collect it personally.

He seemed satisfied with the arrangement I had suggested and hung up saying that he would look forward to my visit.

Although I do not need any coaxing to accept a book as a gift or even as a loan, I was too preoccupied with my routine work for the whole of the next week, I somehow never got down to collecting it until I received a second call from him which made me feel very guilty that my humility did not match his.

I quickly apologised for the delay in picking it up and offered to do it immediately. In less than thirty minutes I was at his place when his wife opened the door and let me into their drawing room. This was my second visit to their Saraswathipuram house and she seemed a little disappointed that I had not brought my wife along.

I explained that I had just made a small detour to their house while shuttling between rounds at two hospitals. The two ladies certainly had hit it off very well the last time they had met when I had paid Satyan a visit before writing my first article about him in connection with his birthday.

Although I had spent considerable time with him then and it had seemed as if I was imposing a strain on him, I had returned with a feeling that I had not had a sufficiently long chat. This is how it always is whenever I have a tete-a-tete with someone who is so full of information and experience and shares them through many interesting anecdotes. This time too he was no different.

A very composed and calm man with no airs of any kind, telling me about his life and the times he had seen while I was slowly sipping the coffee served by his wife.

Seeing a framed copy on the wall across where I was seated, our conversation turned to his very famous shot of Jawaharlal Nehru entering the Parliament house in 1963 to present the white paper on the Chinese aggression that had spurned and trampled the Panchasheel Agreement.

The picture shows a deeply contemplative and almost sad looking Prime Minister with the document clutched in his right hand walking against a dark and foreboding looking backdrop with daylight streaming in through five windows that ironically symbolise the five elements of the now broken agreement with China.

He explained to me that he had accompanied Nehru to the Parliament house in his car after a photo session at his house to capture him against this symbolically significant background for this shot which he had visualised in his mind and planned well in advance.

The book he gave me is very aptly titled Complications. Authored by Atul Gawande, it is a gripping account of a young surgeon’s experiences with the practice of medicine. In it are very moving accounts of the eternal struggle of the men and women who try to do some good as doctors against steep and unpredictable odds often to be met with disappointment, failure and sometimes even with unfair criticism and castigation.

The book makes riveting reading and I feel every doctor and patient should read it and Satyan could not have chosen a better gift for me or for that matter even a better recipient for it this time!

When it was time for me to say goodbye to this great man, I was deeply emotional about his affection and love for me. As we stood for a brief while at the door, I was clutching the book with both hands and he was clutching the mug of coffee from which I had just drunk.

Again, with both hands and, of course, with all the simplicity and grace that is born only out of real greatness.

K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared

This article was originally published on July 17, 2009

Star of Mysore facsimile: courtesy Tasveer

Also read: T.S. Satyan on the elements of photography

The accidental artist

From Guruswamypalayam, a lesson for all shishyas

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: September 5 happens to be the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, one of India’s most learned former Presidents. Since he was a very great and able teacher too in addition to being a very learned statesman, we observe the day as Teachers’ Day.

It is the sad truth in our lives that while acknowledging the role of persons who help us in our race to reach the top, we seldom realise that our teachers, who are the persons who deserve our gratitude the most, are the ones who seldom get it in right measure.

Our parents who nurture us, the firm that gives the first job that becomes the stepping stone, the boss who ensures that we get our promotions and positions in time and the colleagues who help us achieve our targets and goals and almost every other agency responsible for our success gets thanked at the end of the race.

But very sadly, most often our teachers never get the share of our tributes that is their rightful due.

However, it is good that one day in our calendar is marked as Teachers’ Day as it helps us all to remember from time to time that we should recall the role of our teachers in moulding and shaping our personalities, our careers and our lives. But as we all prepare to pay our debt of well earned and well deserved gratitude to all the members of the teaching fraternity tomorrow by observing Teachers’ day, somewhere in the heart of rural Tamil Nadu a group of students is all set to say ‘thank you, sir’ to one of their school teachers in a very unique way.

Last fortnight, my attention was drawn by my friend Lt. Col. Dr. Y.N.I. Anand to a report in one of the newspapers which said that in Guruswamypalayam in Tamil Nadu, a group of 500 students had got together to pool their money, purchase a site, build a two- storey house worth Rs 10 lakh and gift it as a token of their gratitude on the occasion of Teachers’ Day tomorrow to S. V. Venkataraman, their former Tamil pundit who retired nearly 25 years ago in 1985.

It appears the effort was led by M. A. Arthanari, a retired municipal commissioner and an old student. Realising that their teacher had no savings left to have his own house after spending on the marriages of his two daughters, the group of students decided that this was the best way of paying their ‘Guru Dakshina.’

After reading the report I felt that to deserve this magnanimous gift of gratitude from so many of his past students well after his retirement, he must have been a really great teacher. And, to remember their debt of gratitude to their humble school teacher so long after their own lives had been made and after many of them had themselves retired from their own jobs, they must have been a really great bunch of students.

Ekalavya by giving away his thumb to his unseen and distant Guru Dronacharya, may have set the best example of gratitude to a teacher in distant mythology but by their unique act in a present day world, this group of students have not done anything less.

People say a doctor’s profession is the noblest one but as a doctor I have always felt the most sacred profession in this world is that of a teacher. Wisdom is undoubtedly the most essential and important asset human beings need to lead a fruitful and civilised life on this earth and to be in the position of a teacher who imparts this to us generation after generation, certainly makes it the noblest profession.

As we go through the process of acquiring our education we come across many very good and efficient teachers. But not all good and efficient teachers become great in the eyes of their pupils. Only a few extraordinary ones leave a lasting impact or even an imprint of their own personalities on our minds as S. V. Venkataraman, the school teacher of Tamil Nadu perhaps did.

The quality that makes them stand apart is their ability to go beyond just teaching into the more difficult realm of being able to mould the character of their students by propagating values essential to a good life.

They are very rare gems indeed and thus very hard to find but I have had the good fortune of having many glittering brightly among the many fond memories of my student days.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore where this piece originally appeared.)

When the past catches up, yes, for doing good

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: The brutal murder of one of the most familiar former police officers of our City, K. S. Thammaiah, is most shocking. Although he had served in various places other than Mysore, I think he had his longest innings here and, therefore, he was most easily identified as Mysore’s special cop.

He was known to almost all Mysoreans and although I knew him personally over the past 25 years, there is almost nothing more I can say about him which all of us do not already know.

There are some rare people in all walks of life and in all professions who believe in doing their duty and a little more. He was one such man. Apart from being a very honest and upright police officer, he was one committed man who believed in ensuring that as long as he was around, ordinary peace-loving citizens like you and me should safely go about doing our daily jobs by day and sleep peacefully at night.

He was no philosopher but he had put all his faith in the simple belief that in a civilised society all citizens should respect the law and anyone who refused to believe in this truth should be brought to book.

His role along with that of his two colleagues, Dharmesh and Puttaswamy Gowda while they served on the anti- rowdy squad in putting an end to the then prevailing “Rowdy Raj” was most note-worthy. One hallmark about him was that he was most approachable by anyone in trouble and he would promptly look into the merits of every complaint, big or small, brought before him, following it up with prompt action.

While it is said that the past catches up with wrong-doers sooner or later, this man’s past seems to have caught up with him for doing good.

While the circumstances and the reasons that led to his tragic and certainly very untimely death are best left to be looked into by the investigating officers, what pains and even frustrates me is that such an able man who had once faced and handled furious mobs did not have the means to protect himself when he was attacked by just a handful of goons.

Why did he not have a personal weapon to defend himself? Since he was serving on the vigilance commission of the KPTCL, was he not eligible for a service revolver or an armed bodyguard?

Or, was he too, like most of us law-abiding citizens “disarmed” by the misplaced dikat of the present-day Election Commission and thus prevented from carrying a weapon?

Whatever the reason and although this too seems like one of the many cases of crying over spilt milk, I think our governments should have a correct perception of the potential risk that some high-profile police officers may face even after their retirement and provide them with some means of self protection.

There should be some provision in their service rules to ensure their safety lifelong. We cannot simply forget a middle-order policeman once he hangs up his uniform after retirement, especially when he has spent his best years protecting us.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where a longer version of this piece originally appeared.)

The most difficult bridge to cross is in your mind

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Three weeks have gone by since attacks on churches first took place in the State with all people of all communities with any goodwill keeping their fingers crossed.

Thankfully last Sunday went by in much greater peace and sanity than the two previous ones without any untoward incidents in the State even as reports of sporadic violence trickled in from other States.

Since I too was a little concerned and anxious that this kind of communal tension should quickly be defused, I was carefully scanning all reports that were appearing in the media about the problem.

While there were many views expressed by many intellectuals, thankfully one thing that stood out was the sentiment that the attacks on churches were unwarranted and unbecoming of a civilised society.

Thankfully, this was the view that was expressed even by all those who felt that conversions were the cause and conversions were very wrong.

Most people who wrote in favour of adopting strong deterrent action against violence also wrote in favour of acknowledging all the good that had been done to our society by Christians.

What surprised me was the fact that articles expressing these sentiments that appeared on the net far outnumbered the ones that appeared in print.

Gladdened by what I read therein, I felt that if only these could be read by more people it would have been good.

Sadly, despite the phenomenal growth of the cyber media even in our country, the net is still accessible only to a relative small minority of serious intellectuals while the newspaper and the local televi-sion channels still remain the main source of information to the common man.

It is noteworthy that Christians, who have been under suspicion of harbouring a sinister agenda in the present series of attacks, have by and large been a very peaceful community. Also, they have been the ones who have most comfortably adapted to a harmonious existence with all other communities with their hallmark being an immense re sistance to any provocation.

If excessive evangelisation and conversions had been the real provoking cause for the violence we all saw recently, I am sure the organisations responsible for it would certainly have heeded any advice against it without warranting or necessitating any violent resistance.

Personally I do not think that religious conversions, the causes of which have been analysed and discussed by many learned thinkers, are going to make any significant difference, let alone any dent on the demographic profile of our vast country.

It is important for every non-Christian Indian to remember the pioneering contribution of the Christian community in general and the Christian nuns and priests in particular who actually came to our shores as evange-lising missionaries, for all the good that they have done. Especially, their contribution to the establishment of good education and health care traditions and facilities in our country when almost none existed should never be overlooked.

Our present generations which have the best of both these facilities if they happen to dwell either in or around our cities, may not be aware of this contribution of the Christians but they need to be told about it.

Although we can now boast of almost world-class facilities in these two vital sectors it is no secret that we have still not fully succeeded in touching the lives of those fellow countrymen who still dwell in the deepest reaches of our remote villages and tribal areas far beyond the reach of all progress and development.

They have no other source of light except the feeble and flickering glow of the Christian candle.

Our great country has always been a crucible of amalgamation which has allowed the simultaneous flourishing of many religions, philosophies and cultures without any sense of threat to each other.

Conversions have been a part of every religion without any exception.

Our world famous Hoysaleshwara temple at Halebid which we all proudly present as one of the best examples of our rich culture was in fact built to commemorate king Vishnuvardhana‘s conversion from Jainism to Hinduism in the 12th century. But it does not provoke any resentment in our hearts whatsoever.

Today any effort, however small or big, which is aimed at increasing communal harmony and soothing bruised hearts, is what our nationhood needs to become strong and prosperous.

I shall give a very small but significant example to illustrate this point.

In response to an article about the spirit of Ramzan I had written four weeks ago, I received much feedback and many responses from readers. Many non-Muslims particularly were very appreciative that I had brought out many positive aspects about Islamic social justice which were hitherto unknown to them. While most people told me that what I had written was a good effort at creating better understanding between different faiths, one e-mail stood out apart from the rest.

It was from Nanjaraja Jois, a former professor of physics. He had written to say that he was deeply touched by the importance given in Islam to charity and alms giving and particularly to Zakath, the mandatory charity. In his letter, Prof Jois expressed his desire to personally get involved in this aspect of the Islamic spirit in his own way by visiting a Muslim orphanage and making a small donation to help the inmates there.

Overwhelmed by his sense of empathy and brotherhood I spoke to Abdul Azeez Chand, the secretary of the local Muslim girls orphanage who immediately asked me to inform Prof Jois that he was welcome to visit the place with his family even without prior notice.

On a prearranged date we met at the orphanage and in addition to his wife Leela and son Anoop, a full-time pranic healer, Prof. Jois was accompanied by Seethalakshmi and P. S. Balakrishnan who were closely involved with him in social work.

Impressed by what they saw there, the good Samaritans agreed in unison that this orphanage was the best maintained of the eight orphanages they had visited in the City. They announced the assistance that they had so kindly wanted to make, touching the inmates with their love and concern.

Uninvited they had come, crossing the great divide that we have ourselves created, thanks to the difference in our faiths and reached out to those in need of help.

After they left I felt that this is what humanity is all about and this is what all of us as human beings should learn—rising above our petty differences of race, religion and caste and responding to the needs of fellow human beings as children of one God.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician, who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece first appeared)