My body and their mind

I am not well. In fact fact I haven't been well for a pretty long time. 4 years actually. I was diagnosed with aplastic anaemia in September 2008. I am a doctor. I have specialised in clinical Microbiology and I seem to terrorise the other specialists and staff. Probably due to my obsession with infection control practices in the hospital set up. I have attended several Microbiology conferences and met many eminent names in this field who say they have the same effect on clinicians and staff of their hospitals. Any way, more of this some other time.

Now I am in Mumbai awaiting a Bone Marrow Transplant. My own state, Assam, does not have these facilities. It seems that a large business house with a lot of philanthropical contributions wanted to start a sophisticated centre with all these facilities in my home state, but the then Chief Minister wanted a large bribe and the business house known for its clean business ethics backed out. I don't know this for sure, but it is quite believable.  I have all the time in the world till I get hospitalised and that brought me to put another entry in my blog. I have to spend my time and I have to pen my thoughts. For myself. I like reading my own thoughts later.

Its surprising how much one abuses ones own body and realises it only when something serious and difficult happens to the body. The body is the soul's clothing. You have to take care of it. It is not yours to abuse. Sadly most of us do not know this. I used to exercise (good) and diet (bad). I also used to meditate (good). and take painkillers mindlessly to relieve pain (bad). It was when I was taking one such painkiller (aceclofenac) over a prolonged period of time, that my bone marrow decided to slow down its production. And the sequence of events after that has led me to this point today. The requirement of a Bone Marrow Transplant.

This is the sad scenario in our country today. Powerful politicians have all the power and so much money that they have to put them in foreign banks, but if a proposal comes in for providing facilities for the poor, they want to make even more money out of it. This psychology puzzles and amazes me. Is it lack of compassion or something else?

Similarly, the psychology of a clerk in the office where pensioners need to go to get their money. They feel nothing of sending the old wheezing pensioner coming from far off villages in dusty public buses on a wild goose chase until they are adequately bribed.

Also the mentality of the clerk in the death registration office who will not deliver the death certificate of a dead child to the parent unless he gets his dubious share of money.

Also the psychology of the people- politicians, media, others who criticise Arvind Kejriwal for trying to cleanse the amazingly polluted Indian system. Here is one man, a brilliant ex civil servant who could have lived and retired comfortably and respectably but chose to cleanse a seemingly impossible to cleanse mentality. It makes me wonder why anyone wouldn't want to be the citizen of a country where everyone does his job. Which is what Arvind Kejriwal is trying to get us Indians to do.

And the rapists, the molesters, the gropers and the eve teasers. Why, o, why do they do it? We the great Indian country of high moral values, have the highest number of molesters. Next birth I do not want to be Indian. I am not proud to be an Indian.