Category: Stories

She felt unsure. Was she dreaming it all? She kept on looking at her hands as if expecting them to waft away in wisps of smoke.  Being deferentially seated at a table in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower was not something that happened to her regularly. No wonder then, that she felt out of place, a fraud.  She knew that she had earned her place here, but was still far from convinced. Years of leading a half-life had made her think of herself as a living ghost.

She had found herself only recently and her pen had helped her make her way back to the world of the living. As the popularity of her anonymous writing slowly grew, thanks to the new tool of social media, so did her confidence.  A helping hand in the form of her niece had materialized to aid her with the finer nuances of social media like Facebook and Instagram, hitherto closed books to a reticent person like her. And it had helped. Her pen name, derived from her late father had become one of the most searched ones across Google.

It was that time of the year when all sorts of awards are announced. Ranging from those in the world of dance, drama and entertainment to the Padma awards. But these belonged to the world of those who lived life on a “Grande” scale. For those who lived the simple life, watching all the award ceremonies provided a vicarious pleasure, a peek into a life to which they would perhaps never be privy, but could enjoy from a distance all the same.

But this year was to be different in more ways than one. A ghost would be acknowledged as the winner of the “Popular Choice” award of the Hindi Chalchitra Kavya Sanstha, a newly established association for rewarding excellence in Hindi film lyrics.  Not the sort of white clad ghostly figure seen floating ethereally, ready to disappear in a puff of smoke, but a person who had hitherto remained unseen by the world at large, known only by the pen name of Amarja. Thanks to the lyrics of a song penned by her ruling the roost of popularity charts for at least six weeks now.

Of course, Alina Chattopadhyay`s ethereal beauty and Shishir Deshmukh`s music had a lot to do with its popularity, but the song “Paani” from the movie “Adhuri”, most famed for its haunting lyrics, “Jo na sune koi teri dastan” had broken all records. This was even more of an anachronism in a world where popularity was lost in the blink of any eye, which was famed for its here today gone tomorrow life style.

When the letter announcing her nomination had arrived, she had scarcely believed it. It had lain unopened in her drawer for a full two days, before she convinced herself that it was true. She had managed to send in the RSVP by the skin of her teeth. And, now here she was, dressed in a saree, feeling utterly out of place and gauche` among the well-heeled. If she thought she had known snobbery at home, she was now witnessing it carried to new heights, with little cliques springing up everywhere. She of course, sans entourage, was not part of any circle and barely even made eye contact with anyone. She was of half a mind to get up and walk away, but when she remembered the domestic drama her departure had caused, she was determined to sit it out until the end.

Judging by the popularity of the song, she had for once felt the stirrings of hope, but she had immediately quashed it down, realizing its futility, another habit long ingrained into her by constant disappointments and the belittling of her hopes and aspirations. It was popular knowledge that many of these awards were notoriously “fixed”, with a pre decided winner but this one being a new one which involved a lot of public opinion and being touted as transparent, held a modicum of promise, since she a virtual unknown had managed to even make it to the list of nominations.

Numb was how she would have best described herself when her name was announced, beyond pain and pleasure, beyond joy and sorrow. Yes, she did feel overwhelmed, largely by the curious craning of necks to get a glimpse of her and the incessant flash of cameras and mobile phones to capture her picture.  Only after receiving the trophy from the famous poet Randeep Singh Khattar, did she realize that she was expected to make a speech and it was being beamed live, for the world to watch.

“I don’t want to run the usual gamut of thank yous”, she began “but I would like to acknowledge the Higher Power which animates all of us for guiding my pen and my thoughts in the right direction so that my song gained immense popularity.” With the audience now rapt in what she had to say, her voice grew stronger. “However, I would like to thank my family, especially my husband, for being the gale in my face, thus teaching me to push my way through storms undaunted. For making me lead a half- life, that of a ghost, seen but never heard, so that I lived a life devoid of expectations. Were it not for him, I would have never learnt the truth in Krishna`s preaching in the Bhagvad Geeta, that we have a right over our actions, but none over the consequences, that to indulge in the right action with no expectations whatsoever is the truest from of worship. And it is this worship that God in his wisdom has perhaps decided to bless in the form of this award.”

Life in the Sharma household followed its own pace and traditions. The time after dinner was when the privileged members of the family, (read senior Mr. and Mrs. Sharma and their sainted son, Advocate Abhay Sharma) watched TV from their earmarked nooks in the gracious lounge. Today, the scene was different because Abhay`s wife the quiet, submissive Ketaki had found the temerity to rebel and go out for the evening without informing anybody of her whereabouts, leaving the family to fend for itself.

As if this was not dramatic enough, here she was, being beamed live on ABP news no less, having won the popular choice award from the Hindi Chalchitra Kavya Santha, a newly constituted but hugely popular association, reputed for its clean, free from mutual back scratching image. The lyrics of a song he had heard as a child sprang unbidden to Abhay`s mind, “ Tan ki Daulat  dhalti Chaya, man ka dhan Anmol, Tan ke karan man ke dhan ko mat maati me raund, man ki kadar bhulanewala veeran janam gavaye, Tora Man darpan kehelaye”

Yes, the ghost of his making had finally stepped out of the shadows to haunt him AFTER finding her place in the sun and ceasing to be a ghost….

I am quite familiar with their kind. They can be lumpy, straight, crooked, aquiline or Roman. But the ones I see the most often, thanks to examining them being my bread and butter are tiny buttons which are invariably running or red adult ones, accompanied by watery eyes and a “sorry for myself” expression.  I am talking about noses, as you have probably guessed by now!

Being an ENT surgeon, I have made sticking my own nose into other people`s business a fine art. I also seem to have a nose for trouble and would rather follow my nose than take a crooked path. I run for miles when I see noses in the air and woe betide anyone who tends to look down their nose at me.  All the puns aside, I have to accept the fact that peering into the hitherto unchartered territory of the internal workings of people`s noses is what brings home the bacon.

Living in a satellite town of the megapolis of Mumbai, my own nose is no stranger to pollution and I tend to make hay (read moolah) when the weather changes. The sight of flowers in bloom makes me think of the amount of pollen in the air and the allergies it will cause rather than turning me jocund a la Wordsworth. And my heart does fill with pleasure and dances with the daffodils only after a patient of acute on chronic sinusitis brought on by said flowers reports a reduction in symptoms.

But what really sends my heart leaping into my throat is when there is a call for me to remove something from the nose, which has no business being there in the first place. Foreign bodies are only too common in this organ, because as someone rightly pointed out, “all that glitters is not gold”. I would go a step further to say that all that appears smooth on the outside is riddled with potholes from within.

Nowhere is this truer than the human nose whose internal workings are replete with small bony shards, pieces of gristle and blood vessels running every which way, allowing it to perform as a humidifier par excellence, but also making sure that a bleeding nose is not a sight for the faint-hearted. Thanks to its convoluted anatomy, it provides wonderful hidey holes for foreign bodies to lodge, thus ensuring that ENT surgeons are masters at hide-n-seek.

With my now middle aged and rather jaded bespectacled eyes, I have seen a whole gamut of foreign bodies ranging from rice grains and peas to ear studs and maggots residing or should I say illegally occupying premises from where they are rather unwillingly evicted thanks to my skills with a Vectis. This little hook shaped instrument has come has proved to be a life saver making many a parent and me heave a sigh of relief at the sight of the offending foreign body nestling safely in my palm rather than in the secure depths where an intrepid toddler had placed it for safekeeping.

A couple of incidents stand out in my memory when it comes to extraction of foreign bodies from the nose. After my tryst with Pathology in V.N.Desai hospital, I was safely ensconced as ENT resident in a large municipal hospital in Thane, with the aim of emerging  a full- fledged otolaryngologist bent on bringing succor to the needy. With my usual luck, I was again the sole ENT resident in said hospital with the onus of a daily night duty in addition to all my nefarious activities during the day.

While I know that modern day children think of Wee Willie Winkie as a wimp because no child worth his salt will be found in bed at eight `o`clock, I have always believed that fatigue makes parents, who are only human, slightly lax and inattentive at the end of the day thus making sure that most nasal foreign bodies present in the dead of the night, with me setting to work in the struggling moonbeam`s misty light and the lantern dimly burning. With the day`s fatigue setting in, I had quite a few sharp words to say to the more careless of them, especially people who had let the foreign body either stew in its own juice for a couple of hours or had made foolhardy attempts to extract it themselves, ensuring that a simple case turned complicated.

Extracting a foreign body from the nose can be tricky at the best of times. Thanks to the mucus produced in the nose in copious amounts, a foreign body can become slippery and can slip either forward or backwards. If it slips forward, God is in His heaven and all is right with the world. If however, it chooses to slip backward, it can slide into the throat from where it can lodge either in the airway (an unmitigated disaster) or in the food passage (an unnecessary complication). Hence it is important to make sure that the patient is in an upright position and sits still while the extraction is carried out.

Now, children are slippery little eels at the best of times. Trying to approach one with a small steel hook in one`s hand and not expecting the child to make a dash for freedom is like expecting the red carpet laid out for one when one travels in the Churchgate Virar fast at 6pm! That is to say, nearly impossible. And hence the cajoling and sedating which one invariably finds in such situations. It is no wonder that most ENT residents wander around with small toffees in their pockets, all the better to restrain patients with my dear!

One night I happened to encounter just such a situation, but the child in question was slightly older, probably around seven to eight years old. A cursory examination showed a round metallic object in the right nostril lodged between the septum and the inferior turbinate, the pink mass of flesh you see on the wall of the nose when you lift the tip of your nose and peer at it in the mirror. Since this child could be reasoned with, I managed to get him to sit still by dint of cajoling and with good old- fashioned threatening on his father`s part when the battle seemed to be a losing one.

I inserted my trusty Vectis and slowly pulled. The object seemed rather large. Maneuvering gradually around it was difficult and my palms were sweaty with the thought of it slipping backwards out of my grasp. Just when I was losing hope, it moved forward slowly at first, but then popped out suddenly. It was a large button, made of copper, the kind that is seen on jeans.

I was triumphant, the child`s father ecstatic, the child howling loudly and the casualty staff relieved. I was planning to pop back to my room for a well- deserved break and put the button down on the table while writing out my notes and explaining the procedure of instilling nasal drops to the father. He seemed well satisfied, all toothy grins as he was about to depart. The child had stopped howling and was quietly engrossed in something.

They reached the door of the casualty ward without much incident, when there was a fracas and the father was back with the child held by the scruff of the neck. He pointed ominously at the child before uttering a single word “Button!”. “Who…where…what?” I was flabbergasted. As I leant forward to re examine the boy, there was the button, glinting prettily, this time from its place of pride in the left nostril!

That`s when I learnt the real meaning of something happening right under my nose!

Luckily I managed to extract the button without incident a second time round and I hope the talking to that I gave the father-son duo helped them keep their noses clean for the rest of their lives!!!!

Ah Bombay! Or what we now call Mumbai. Home to myriad dreams, indomitable spirit, tall buildings, small shanties, more people than you thought possible and a very rare blood group called….what else? The Bombay Blood group.

Just like this megapolis, its public health system too has its own quirks. Run mainly by the MCGM, The Muncipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, it reminds me of a giant anthill with a queen and numerous minions. The three queens of course are the three teaching hospitals, KEM, BYL Nair and LTMGH Sion, with Cooper hospital a recent (and hopefully  welcome) addition, the minions being the smaller peripheral hospitals located in distant suburbs lending succour to the local populace with quick reference facilities to `Big Momma` should the need be felt by the denizens of the staff. The JJ group of hospitals are of a world of their own and do not fall under the ambit of the MCGM.

Twenty years ago, young, foolish and newly married, I arrived at V N Desai hospital in Santacruz, which is one of the peripheral hospitals of the hallowed KEM, armed with an appointment letter (my first job! Yay!), a fancy title (Resident Pathologist), lots of enthusiasm and of course, zilch experience. Looking back, I now see the slight hint of desperation which resulted in my appointment, for the powers that were in the MCGM had been apparently unsuccessful in pinning down a pathologist to work in the derelict lab and had to settle for a green behind the ears rookie MBBS instead.

Enter ME! Brimming with the confidence of being able to group blood ( we had been doing it since pathology lab in phase two) and the ability to draw blood from human veins albeit with a bit of poking and prodding. The honorary pathologist in charge, the roly-poly jolly Dr. Kohli (I have still not been able to ascertain whether he is related to Virat) greeted me with an enthusiastic “ Aap jald se jald cross matching seekh lo, phir night duty kar lena”.`Night Duty`, these two loaded words were the first damper on my ebullient self(because as a newly- wed, the only night duty which sprang to mind…ahem..ahem), anyway, moving on, I had to face the rather onerous task of breaking this news to my then newly minted better half (he has gone a bit mouldy now), which further darkened his already dark brow.

After a few days of begging and pleading with the permanent lab staff (read rather snooty lab techs), I was gradually trained in the intricacies of cross matching blood by the motherly Mrs. Sukkawala, the Junior Scientific Officer. This was the only task worth any salt for a self- proclaimed pathologist as the lab had no histopathology section and the rest of the routine work like blood counts and sugar levels were automated. Now, before blood can be transfused, it must be cross matched and if you have any Amar Akbar Anthonyesque pictures in your head, get rid of them now or the said blood bank will lose its license before you can say `Robert`. The principle behind this is very simple. The surface of the RBCS carry an antigen depending on the blood group and these react with any antibodies present in the serum. This reaction if severe enough can cause blood to clump in the blood vessels leading to a potentially fatal condition.

Landsteiner, widely considered the father of blood grouping came up with the concept of four groups-A, B, AB and O depending upon the presence or absence of antigens on the surface of the RBCs. What is little known however is that the And B antigens have a common precursor called the H antigen. This is sometimes absent in certain individuals and though they present as O group clinically, they form a special category and must be transfused with blood from a similarly deficient individual otherwise resulting in a severe reaction. This special condition was discovered in 1952 in Bombay and named after the place of its discovery-`The Bombay Blood Group`. It is extremely rare and occurs in about 1 in 10000 individuals in the Indian subcontinent.

After about two weeks, Dr. Kohli had had enough and deciding that I had been sufficiently trained was ready to be unleashed on the unsuspecting population as the in charge of the blood bank. I had of course been brimming with the misplaced confidence of the ignorant since day one and was now fairly sure of the intricacies of cross matching and dispatching blood for transfusion should the need arise. In fact, I had carried out several dry runs during the day and had passed with flying colours. Heaving a sigh of relief, Dr Kohli was glad to make himself scarce and not go bump in the night anymore. Night duty thrice a week quickly became a way of life. If you saw the better half moping in the KEM corridors, you could be sure it was either a Monday, Wednesday or Friday.

The initial nervousness gradually gave way to genuine confidence and the nightly call of the attendants `RP Madam, cross match ` no longer sent a shiver but a pleasant thrill of anticipation down my spine. I no longer went bump in the lab but rather gained confidence that I could pick my way there blindfolded. Peering through the microscope looking keenly for freely floating or clumped RBCs lent a strange sense of fulfilment to the dark hours of the night. I felt as if I was making a small but real difference, a small cog in the giant wheel of health care.

And then there came a fateful night which stands out in my memory for furthering my education in a way no library ever had. The usual call of `RP Madam` had come and gone. A cross match was required for a patient who was to have a planned surgery ( though I never did fathom why a planned surgery needed to be carried out, in the struggling moonbeams misty light in the dead of night). The surgeons were keen to hone their skills, but could not proceed without said blood being available should the need arise, this much being spelt out for them. It was an O group sample and this meant a lot of hard work since O is the commonest of all the blood groups. A quick peek into the storage facility showed no less than twelve bags of O group blood. It could be a long night. I had my own rule of thumb when it came to centrifuging the samples from the stored blood. `Sign of Four` I called it. It was necessary because true to municipal equipment, the centrifuge machine had only four intact slots to put the samples into. Picking the first four samples, I set to work, sending a quick prayer heaven wards that one of these should prove to be a match and I could return to bed. Centrifugation normally took around half an hour or more and I was leaning back in the hopes of a nap when the phone shrilled in my ear, shattering the stillness of the night.

It was the surgery registrar, a little irascible, asking whether the cross match was done. `Not for another 40 minutes`, I matched his testy tone because I rather fancied myself  the local expert on dealing with testy surgeons (the husband being one). The first batch did not have a single match. I fetched a sigh from the soles of my shoes. No quick return to bed for me. I had just started work on the next lot when the big black phone gave tongue again. In sepulchral tones I conveyed the news of the failed cross match, only to be treated to rather ripe surgical language. The hour being too late and my energy levels too low, I decided that ignoring was the better part of valour and did not retaliate in my usual peppery fashion.

Forty desultory minutes later, the result was the same, the sample still remained single in unmatched glory. A bleak grey dawn peeping through the windows matched my mood. Another hour of this, and I would be hard pressed to brush my teeth, bed now a distant dream. Putting in the last four samples with flagging spirits, I was interrupted by a loud banging on the door of the lab. Opening the door at the crack of dawn in a deserted lab is not a good idea, but fatigue had brought with it a strange recklessness. I marched up to the door and opened it only to see the flushed face of the surgery houseman in what he believed was a righteous rage at being pulled from his `cutting` and packed off to the godforsaken lab to deal with an uppity pathologist who for reasons best known to her seemed hell bent on thwarting the wishes of the surgeons. I realised the futility of trying to reason with the unreasonable and let him in. With the patience of a kindergarten teacher trying to explain that two plus two equals four to a rather dull and disinterested five- year old, I showed him the slides with the clumped RBCs. He departed slightly less belligerent, muttering under his breath.

The sample I had seemed strangely reluctant to be matched and seemed to take pleasure in its single glory as was revealed by the last cross matches. Blood, blood and more blood but not a drop to spare! I thought I was onto something inexplicable and decided to take the matter to Dr. Kohli for clarification when I was interrupted again, this time by no less a person than the surgery registrar himself who had decided to climb off his high horse to give me a piece of his mind. I tried explaining the situation the best I could and showed him all my slides. But when he had the gall to suggest that one of the slides appeared normal with fewer clumps and that I should release the bag, my nerves already frayed at the edges gave way. I do not want to repeat the words that I used in that little altercation in polite company, suffice to say that he departed rather shell shocked with the single ominous word `complaint` on his lips.

Wearily, I sat down to write my report. I knew that it would have to be a detailed one as I would soon be summoned to explain my nightly doings.  Sure enough, by mid- morning I had to report to the superintendent`s office with Drs. Kohli and Moorjani peering at me beadily. Luckily my slides saved the day and they could do no more than peer even more beadily through the microscope before deciding that I had done well. Dr. Kohli thought that the sample merited a more thorough study than was possible at the hospital and it was summarily dispatched to KEM .

A little while later, I was vindicated when the report from the KEM lab revealed that the patient had the Bombay blood group and required transfusion under specialist supervision and the saga came to a close.

That night taught me much beyond arcane academia. It taught me the importance of being meticulous no matter what the job for in our profession, a life did literally depend on it. It taught me the importance of standing up for what I thought was right in spite of receiving flak. But, most importantly it taught me respect for the people who worked behind closed doors, away from the spotlights of glamour and accolades making magic in their own quiet ways.