My review of Bombay Rains Bombay Girls

Anirban Bose, a doctor by profession has broken no records, nor traversed uncharted territories with his debut novel, Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls. But perhaps he is part of a very important phenomenon in this country. The rise of new generation Indian writers. No longer bound by the whims and fancies of publishers, no longer bound by the fear of poor sales and no longer bound by the need to script a pathbreaking work of literature, these new writers are proof of the fact that when it comes to writing, what matters is the thought, the ability to touch people's hearts and the ability to stand out as a bold and unhindered.

Describing the life of a med student from a small town (Ranchi), the book follows the travails of Adi, a student of Grant Medical College. The plot wavers and deviates from its roots making it distracting at times, but never boring. The incredible humour element simply adds a strange charm to the book and an accurate depiction of the lives of med students makes it a must read. i wont discuss the novel any further because I dont want to give the plot away and spoil the surprise element.

Its a perfect little novel to have with you when you're lonely or feeling bored. Recommended.

End of a decade

This indeed is the last day of a decade! Wow! And what a decade it has been, well I'm talking about myself here. I guess this probably was the most important decade of my life. I gave two of the most important exams of my life Class X and XII, got a sense of what fun in school is like when I got admitted in Kendriya Vidyalaya, and of course then came the entrance exams. I had always wanted to be an engineer. I had even enrolled for a preparatory course for IIT JEE. But things changed after I passed the Class X ICSE exams. My interest in Biology (which I had always considered to be a mindless-mugging-up subject) sky-rocketed and one fine day I figured out maybe medicine was my true calling. Add to that an awesome Biology teacher in school, Mr. Saha and the great 'Biology Sir' (whose name I absolutely cant remember as he was immensely popular by that name), and what I had was a paradigm change in my outlook towards the subject. Within a year I had come to the conclusion that medicine indeed was my true calling. What followed that realisation was hard work, burning the midnight oil and stuff, and by the time everything ended, I was really really really lucky enough to have gotten accepted in med school (or else let me put it this way, I bagged a seat in med school). I was finally gonna become a doctor! Tell you what, thats a crazy crazy feeling!

Well I guess life changed after that. Dunno why, but once you're a med student there's obviously loads of people who sort of want to become potential 'contributors', if you know what I mean. As Mr. Saha once most eloquently put it 'Success has many fathers, failures have none'. How very true it was!

Anyway, the years that followed were some of the most enjoyable days of my life. Med school is truly truly an awesome place no matter where you might be studying. The dissections, the 'trips' to the wards etc etc. Okay there are drab lectures, books which can only be used for weight-lifting and nothing else and screwy professors. But overall its in all senses of the word an 'experience' (Do check out my other blog post about those days here). And the fact that some day I will indeed get that hallowed 'Dr.' before my name is lets say, satisfying to say the least.

I guess I'm leaving behind an eventful decade. A decade which truly changed my life...forever.

My Debut At The Wards

Today was my first day at "the office", I mean at the hospital. Have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive about my debut duty at the Medicine ward. I had really king-sized doubts about my abilities as a budding doctor in the wards. And that still hasn't evaporated completely, I have to admit.

I was asked to arrive at the ward at 8am. Having been a med student for the past one year had taught me enough about the sense of timing or rather the absence of it in a government medical college. However, that stupid curious mind of mine coaxed me into arriving at 8am sharp. As expected I found that I was the only one from 3rd semester to have been foolish enough to have ruined a good night's sleep.

Fortunately though, the department had been kind enough to have already divided our batch under specific units, or mini-departments. It took me almost another hour (a very frustrating and tiresome one, though) to figure out which senior was to be my guru for the next three weeks, which I have to say I hope would turn out to be the most productive days of my student life.

The senior, who happened to be a house staff was almost a look alike of one of my classmates! Fortunately he turned out to be an awesome guy, always ready to help us, and always engaging us in ward duties most of which was really cool (although filling up forms and tags turned out to be really boring)!

Half an hour into my ward duties, a realisation struck me. I was dealing with "real" patients now, and I couldn't afford to mess anything up! That was a scary feeling, have to say. Hopefully, the seniors would be there to save our asses when we screwed it up, that is what I kept telling myself. In almost no time, I found myself holding a syringe in front of a patient, ready to fill the entire vacuum of it with her blood! (Oh, even the syringe and the needle was bought by the patient party, so me messing up meant wasting the already depleting financial resources of the patient, for most people who come to the hospital aren't exactly the relatives of Bill Gates.) I felt like the gladiators, baying for the enemy's blood!

It'll be quite difficult for me to say who looked more nervous, the patient or me! Both of us were sweating, and I knew almost for sure, that the patient had realised that her life was in the hands of an amateur, which hardly helped ease her anxiety! The needle pierced her skin, and apart from a slightly artificial and well-rehearsed cry of anguish, no bloody incident occurred. When I had finally collected the blood, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, gave a reassuring look to her (something which I had rehearsed, by watching some really classy doc movies!) and fled!

The rest of the day turned out to be quite uneventful, and I followed the doctors who were doing their daily rounds.

It might seem to be a small step to others, but my first day at the wards surely turned out to be a titanic leap for me, both as a medical student and as a budding doctor.