Belief in the basic tenet of "Work is Worship".

I have often heard many people say this, and to my mind, at least, it makes sense in an odd sort of way. How often have people missed their visit to a temple/mosque/dargah/church because they were busy at work? I think that while some people have unshakable faith in God/Allah/Ishwar, and will stop their work and first go and pray, the vast majority will willy-nilly skip the prayer, and either perform it later, or simply send up a prayer to be forgiven.

In Islam, prayer in the form of Salaat or Namaaz is mandatory, and as a Bohra, I am expected to pray three times a day. The timings of namaaz are strict, and follow the motions of the heavenly bodies, viz. the sun and the moon. During the afternoon prayers, and in the summer, during the evening prayers too, I am at my clinic and seeing patients. Even if I am not seeing patients, I find it very inconvenient to go for ablution and then the namaaz, as the clinic premises are too small for all this. Hence, most of the days, I skip the prayers.

Now, the crux is this: if I believe in the captioned tenet, then I am not doing anything wrong if I am busy @ work. Because, work is worship, right? And yet, unforgiving Islam will not accept this excuse and urge me to pray - either at the right time, or at least later on, when I am back home.

I am in a quandary. Should I accept the tenet, or embrace Islam unequivocally?

Overcoming fear of failing as a doctor

I have been practising as a pediatrician for over 22 years now, but whenever I come across a very sick child with complications and so on, I am afraid that I am going to go wrong somewhere and miss either the diagnosis or the management and lose the child for ever. I know that my fear is not irrational because every doctor, during his/her professional life, makes some errors of judgment, not all of which are going to kill his/her patient(s). This is because medicine is a very complicated science, and in some respects, it is not even a science, but an art that one learns throughout life. It is not even just an art, but also an act of faith: faith in one's own self as a doctor, faith in the abiding sea of knowledge that a doctor draws upon, faith in experience being a bigger teacher than books, and ultimately, faith in the Almighty: the most agnostic doctor will look to the skies for divine help when his patient fails to improve under his treatment.

I thought about all this for the last six days as I struggled (and am still struggling) to save the life of a newborn who is under my care. While there is a secular trend towards improvement, the child keeps having episodes of worsening which leads me to believe that, through her, the Almighty is testing my faith. I am happy to report that the baby is now showing improvement.

Such is life, and such is the tension in the mind of a clinician.

Just over a month since he died

Kindly read this blog entry before reading further: Click here

Okay, so it is over a month since he died. I had gone to their place today, to pay my respects to his family (not his wife, though, since she is in "iddat", during which time only her close blood relations only may see her - a period that is about 4 1/2 months long). There was also a meal in the honour of the departed. 

What I missed today, within just 30-35 days of his passing, was the intense gloom that prevailed over the entire household a few days after he had passed away. Today, I could actually see his daughters smiling bravely and trying hard to carry on with their lives without him. His elder daughter, who had her first child, a daughter again, just 7 days before the doctor passed away, moved energetically around the house, looking after the needs of the guests, not for a moment giving away the intense heart-ache and sense of loss she must be experiencing even today.

The same was the case with the deceased's younger daughter, who, too, smiled at me and spoke to me without any external give-away of the intense sadness that she had to be feeling inside her own mind.

There were other cousins too, and the deceased's aunties, uncles, and so on. For most of us, you could say that life has returned to normal, and Dr. Altaf now continues to live benignly inside our minds and hearts. The pain and gloom have gone away, and left behind only symbols of a human's passing from the planet.

This post was created by me only to record the above events and emotions without sounding judgmental about any of the people mentioned in the post. I just thought how fickle and self-centered our minds are. We put unsavoury events of our life quickly behind closed doors, and so quickly too! Just so that we can put unpleasanr memories aside and get back to our normal lives.

Awaiting comments. The wheel of life keeps turning. People die, others are born, and I observe what is happening around me.

Dealing with sub-standard employees

This may seem like something rude to say about people who work for you, but at times, one is faced with the bitter fact that the person who is working for you and with you is not altogether competent/energetic/honest/hard-working/diligent or whatever. Now, I run a consulting practice and I have just one employee who sits outside my cabin and - takes calls, gives appointments, takes out print-outs of my prescriptions, coordinates the incoming/outgoing patients, collects my fees and so on. He/she is, effectively, more than one person rolled into one: receptionist, telephone operator, water server, etc. etc. etc.

I should be more accomodating since I am taking the work of four or five people from one person. Right? So why is it that I am saying so many negative things about this soul? Mind you, this is a general rant, and does not refer to any specific person or persons who have, at any time, worked with me or under me.

Well, the sorry fact is that some of the people who have worked with me have really, really been horrid. Either they are plain stupid (in which case, I should be called the bigger fool for having employed them!), but some of the others are wily, lazy, pre-occupied with their own things or simply, so truant that I am paralysed without their presence. On the other hand, even when they are around, they are so incompetent or adverse to improving that they end up giving me grief and stress.

How does one deal with this kind of mess? I cannot well throw them out for I need them too, to carry on with the mechanical work that forms a lot of the work that they do. I also consider the fact that I am not paying them top rupee, since most of them are students who come to work for me in their spare time, and a few are really needy people with families who it would be heartless to throw out of job. Thus, I continue to tolerate them till I can, or till they themselves realise their fault and ask to be released from the job.

Feelings of Anger at one's "impotence"

Lest you think I have problems with "that" kind of impotence, well ... no. I was referring to the feeling of anger that one gets when one feels unable to do anything for people or for one's own self after incidents like huge natural catastrophes, grave personal disasters or dangerous confrontations, after a lost argument when one knows one was right but just ... less powerful, after attacks of terror in one's city or after attacks on one's personal liberties by the insensitive acts of governments or police.

Have you also felt such impotent rage? Do share your experience(s) with me on the comment form. I have felt this recently, after the attacks by terrorists in the city of my birth and stay - viz. Mumbai. It wasn't just me ...but the vast majority of Mumbai's citizens have gone through/are still going through the same rage at the inability to do anything more than wear black bands, write angry letters to newspapers, mouth off obscenities to the nameless perpetrators, and light thousands of candles. Can all these things bring back the things Mumbai lost in the 11/26 attacks at various locations across south Mumbai? I don't think so.

I think what is needed is concerted action by the government, not just resignations by ministers of the cabinet at the centre or the state; joining hands for rehabilitation, not just to sing songs or light candles. Those things are not totally useless, and I am not saying that. However, they have token value. Imagine the difference between - saying "I will pray that your fracture heals" and - actually taking the poor fracture victim to the hospital and paying for his complete treatment. That is the difference I am talking about.

The Face of Terror

Starting on the eve of the 26th of November 2008, Mumbai city came face-to-face with stark terror: a group of well-organised terrorists landed at Sassoon Docks and proceeded to different places from where they masterminded attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured; what I want to say about the actual attacks is already on my other blog in the form of three entries that are here, here and here.

In this entry, I am about to share with you the metaphysical dimension of the attacks: we all saw, over the days that the attacks continued, the aggressive attitude of the terrorists and in contrast, the fear and panic on the faces of the citizens of Mumbai, many of them dying unnecessarily in the random shooting of the terrorists. At the C.S.T. railway station, Ajmal Amir Kasab and his accomplice shot people waiting for their trains so cruelly and randomly that the victims never saw it coming. Here is a photo of the surviving terrorist Kasab. As you can see, he is a fairly handsome young man of about 22-23 years' age. Hailing from Faridkot district of Pakistan, he was one of the ten young men who devastated some of the most cherished buildings of south Mumbai. They - i.e. the terrorists - were clinical and brutal in their demeanour and in their action. Gone was even a shred of conscience as they set about killing people mercilessly - unaware that by killing even one person, they were changing or, dare I say, killing humanity as we understand it. Equipped with AK-47 machine guns, grenades, grenade and bomb launchers, satellite phones, and what not, these ten killers descended upon unsuspecting travellers on the railway station, watchmen, patients and doctors at a nearby public hospital (the Cama and Albless Hospitals), pedestrians, adults, men, women and children on the roads near Cafe Leopold and the Metro Adlabs cinema, guests, staff and security men at the Taj Mahal Palce and Tower Hotel, the Trident Hotel and the Oberoi Hotel, and finally, the residents and others at Nariman House where 6 innocent Jews were killed in cold blood.

In addition to the hundreds of Indians who died, some while eating, others while just going about their way towards home, several tourists from many different countries of the world also died within the hotels that they were staying at or visiting.

Staff of all the hotels died, some entire families, such as that of the General Manager at the Taj Palace - except that the father survived. At the C.S.T. railway station, entire families were killed in the gunfire, which, although it seemed random, was actually precise and targeted to cause the maximum amount of panic and psychological damage.

Through it all, most Mumbaikars stayed away from the roads, for over 2-3 days, watching the "drama" unfold over television, as the armed forces and the NSG began their rescue operations. They would finally emerge victorious after nearly 2 1/2 days, but during those 60 hours, ordinary Mumbaikars lived and died a thousand times: stories of carnage intermingled with tales of heroism and supreme sacrifice as several distinguished city policemen and some NSG guards fell to the bullets of the terrorists. In addition, several less well-known policemen also died. And we, the ordinary citizens, watched wide-eyed, our hearts in our throats, tears in our eyes, and an anger that gradually welled up inside us as we prayed that the aggressors got their comeuppance and were killed.

A terrifying week indeed. Heads rolled in the government - both at the state level and at the center, as chief ministers, home ministers and bureaucrats resigned. Homage was paid to the heroes of the nation and they all received state burials. And we, the common citizens, watched it all from home on the various news channels.

After three to four days, people gradually started going back to work, still depressed, dizzy, worried for their safety, panicking at the slightest rumour, and above all, angry at the inefficiency of the government, the intelligence department, the bureaucracy, the politicians and the armed constabulary.

But that is another story, for some other day.

Something nice about me: a poem by me

BETTER OR WORSE, THIS IS ME ALL RIGHT!

One fine day I sat down to think -
And a hard day of thought that was;
I went back to my past, and reflected,
Of the time gone by, I suppose.

I grew up restless and eager
To do things never done before,
As time went by, however,
I grew contented to the core.

I read, wrote and studied,
Telling few lies and seldom swearing,
Learning by rote, teaching only some,
Hardly did anything daring.

I tried to emulate heroes,
And jived, danced, sang and ran,
Walked, talked, did things crazy -
As with dad, spoke man to man.

Now, I am older and perhaps wiser,
Living on my own terms, happy but sere,
I hug all my enemies,
And shun all I held dear.

It is as if the wheel of my life,
Has turned a circle tight,
For better or for worse,
This is me, all right .