Culture of Medicine

Last night I went to my GP with a terrible sore throat.

looked at me scrutinizing and he said Hmmm.

Well I have heard that sound so many times , on so many occasions with so many emotions and feelings and wisdom

implied into that sound that I refused to be terrified by that

noise. He pulled up his writing pad and with random emphatic scratches wrote down five medicines ! Five medicines with some valuable adv. at the end "X ray, Blood test ,uric cid test, and blood sugar test.

So for A simple sore throat a hassle of spending nearly 1000 rs.

Of course the doctor needed the fees from me and the commission from the chemists and pathologist. That's how it goes.

This is what the culture of medical ethics and the profession in our city. \

Now if I suffered from this same symptom, Sore throat, would a doctor in uganda, or lima , or a an isolated village in Cambodia suggest the same remedy , curative or therapeutic ?Would the villagers firstly bother to visit a doctor for a sore throat ? Would the medicine that works for a Delhi boy ,work for a Tasmania village boy? The answer to al the above questions are an Emphatic NO.

We all have different cultures ,our faith , our values, our sense of valid knowledge , our logic and reasoning are our culture based.

We grow up with our culture and what we believe will be good for us changes according to our cultural context. In a village

of Mongolia a simple shaman , or village medicine man takes care of all the illnesses of the community. It is believed in most part of the agrarian culture tha Dis-ease is a community illness

( surprisingly, Medical science of most advanced countries now have started to subscribe to this view )

Many stress related illness, madness,heart diseases , etc originate from the dysfunction of the society at large.An ancient Shaman used to believe that cure of an illness of an individual depends squarely on the cure of the society at large.

So in order to cure the patient questions must be asked why does one suffer from a particular illness . Who or what is to be blamed and what can we do about it.

Shall we require our doctors to prescribe toxic cughsyrup to our children or shall we see that the air my child breathes is pure which obviously needs attention of our culture. Medicine is linked to our anthropology.

Banalata Sen

For a thousand years have I paced to and fro

over the earth,

from the seas of sri lanka

to the dark night of Malay seas,

Long have I wandered

in the twilight world of Bimbisa king *

Have I been ,in a land of more distant darkness;

I am a tired soul alone

while around me foams and froths

the ocean of life,

Didn't then Banalata Sen of Natore *

offered me two drops of serenity ?

Her hair the slumberous night in the

ancient darkness of Bidsha *

Her face the carving sculpture of Sravasti *

beyond the endless sea,

The captain of the wrecked and battered ship who

before he loses all,

sees the emerald grass blowing on the far

distant sanctuary

sees with the same vision that I saw

when I beheld her in darkness.

And she said,

Where have you been so long ?

Confession

In our lives we tend to hurt others .

We hurt knowingly or unknowingly.

Some of us go to the extent of taking other's lives.

This may happen for self preservation, or to justify our ideals

or some times we kill just to protect our face in our society.

We sometimes hurt the ones we love most,and in most of those cases

we hurt ourselves more than we hurt others.

We hurt more mentally than physically.

As our society is getting more and more complicated

pressures of our society over our personal lives increase.

sometimes we do things in the spur of the moment, being overemotional,

or we do such things just to satisfy our physical needs the consequence of which

go against our whole existence.

In all these cases we are consciously or unconsciously guilty to our own psyche.

We suffer. We suffer for our deeds.

And I believe this is where we need to confess. We need to confess to ourselves.

In silence we always can pray to our inner self .

That I am sure shall wash away our sense of guilt .

In every culture throughout the world the system of confession is recommended

for psycho therapeutic needs.

Madness

I often think I am probably MAD ! EM ......A.....D

I am mad because i don't behave the other people behave.

I am not normal. I do things which at my age people don't do.

The other day a young lady put it very bluntly : at your age you should read newspaper, watch the news and serials, you should wear Lungi at home and out side a pyjama and half kurta, you should trot not gallop,

You should eat easily digestible green banana and soft small fish, go to bed early and in the morning wait for your cuppa, and devote your time mostly reading religious books and chant " Harinam"!

UNFORTUNATELY none of those appeal to me , so I am mad.

Surprisingly our society gives a kind of definition of normalcy. Certain behaviours are considered to be normal others are not. You push your conception about FREEDOM too far , and you end up being labelled as abnormal or mad. Once the label is given to you it goes on working indefinitely.

You can restrain yourself with your idea of freedom.Or you can push your sense of freedom with restrain. You are truly free when you respect another individuals freedom.

If I fall in love with someone and it is reciprocated it is an expression of freedom and howsoever abnormal it looks ( ??? ) to some individual in our society I think it is a kind of behaviour which must not be derogated.

In the field of creativity extreme passions are a prerequisite and this extreme passions among the poets, artists,singers , composers and so on bring excellence in their respective fields. Extreme passion brings altered consciousness which is considered to be sometimes a form of Lunacy.In normal day to day life they are misfits and cannot be accepted . So ultimately these great lunatics get so disillusioned with

many relationships they have that they either end their lives tragically or end up in the asylum.

I am mad, I am lunatic, I am abnormal but I love this universe madly

and you are in the centre of this universe.

Memory

Buried under the chasm of your mind

all those regrettable !

where would you run

from the memory of

sunset dusk ?

And some vermilion sunrise

your animal closeups,

or that reflection

of your surprising agony

of nearness,face to face ?

where do you think

you would hide your tears !

We all shall return with the procession

of crpse and their memories

their groans and their grunts

to the disfigured graves,

wouldn't we?

Magic

In my childhood I loved to watch the magician's tricks.

You know, you sit there and the magician cuts a young lady

right in front of your eyes and then after a while the lady reappears

from the back of the auditorium. He takes someones watch and

with a hammer break the watch into pieces much to the owners

distress. The watch reappears from someplace else. Or right in front of our eyes he burns a bank note and amazingly that reappears from some ones inside pocket. We used to sit there and found great pleasure and excitement being constantly " Fooled".Yes Fooled!!! I think we like to be fooled, proved to be stupid or dumbo.

As we grew up we gradually understood the tricks of those magicians but newer Magics started to bewilder us. Like in child hood , when we asked ourselves " How did he do it"? we see newer magics in our life we keep wondering, How does he do it? In our college days when one chemical converted another ingredient white or blue we were amazed. When the pickpocket gave us a feather touch of our moneybag we were amazed and felt so stupid. When my girl friend promised to love me throughout her life and then hopped on to some one's bed next night we were amazed and stupefied.

But there is another form of magic which is being performed everywhere

in the earth and the universe. We witness this performance every minute , every day.Some great invisible magician is performing his act through the nature , the weather, the sunrise the colour of the sunset, the rain the magnificent, the dangerous, the devastating , the breathtaking beauty in the animal and plant world by some magical spell. Can one explain the events in the phenomenal and noumenal world and predict the relationship between the cause and effect. Al the branches of knowledge , all the shastras, all spiritualist tried to find the how and why s. But still the uncertainty remains just like the magic show of the magician of my childhood.

The greatest magic show of this magician is " Your ignorance about yourself" and " He loves us to keep wondering . WHAT A SHOW !!!!

You Burn

The ancient incense burns
The fragrance lost navigation,
My beloved moves away
in helpless rage,like thee Beas *
Her heart in Ouroborous *

Applauding rain hammers
on the window pane.
I am buried in my writing desk
while the night lamp whimpers !
The world sleeps while
she on the insomniac bed
clutches her restless thighs and wait for her destiny.

Malhar* brings tears
we both are washed away.
Citizens wake up
and sit down to scribble
the inconsequential song
while the nocturnal owls hoot
declaring a war ! * Beas..Bipasha , a river in punjab and himachal
ouroborous ...the meeting of end with the beginning
Malhar ... aclassical raga

Fear

People often ask me why do I write poems of Death!

They assume I must have a deep rooted fear inside my psyche.

I cannot say I am not afraid of Death. I think every one is .

I a mature individual there is always an element of that inevitability. But there are so many things in life which are inevitable . Are we afraid of them as much as we are afraid of death ? no , I suppose not. Here comes the question of Predictability. Death is predictable. Its only a matter of time. You fall in Love. Your beloved says " shall never leave you,never never" And you believe the permanence of your love. And then one fine morning ..You see love is gone. Was it predictable ? Apparently no , but that happens. and then next time You have Fear. You take your important exam . You have a Fear. Fear of failing or not doing as well as you expected, A child fears missing her mother.Worker fears losing jobs, wife fears losing her husband. Fear is every where. wherever there is expectation there is fear.

I expected and I had a fear

Its an old age SERMON : Do not expect. But all sermons are remotely related to reality.

I believe Death is predetermined. Death is predictable, Death is irreversible and irreducible.

Death has no alternative. The medicine men play some beautiful expensive game with life. Life is impermanent.

So I write poems with this in my mind .

Right at this moment I am alive. My beloved in the past extended my will to live. That surprisingly was my FREE WILL a predetermined free will. This inspires me to write poems on

impermanence of life. Simple is int it ?

Iraboti

The day I called you "Iraboti"

You whispered

Iraboti...Iraboti..Ira....Boti.

I could hear

dewdrops in your voice,

almost inaudible.

And that was the day

when you moved away.

You had an ocean to go to.

That was the day

I was crucified

like christ on the cross.

Nails of rejection

were both polite and impolite

Jet black sigh,

The fragrance of the ocean

The burnt umber blood stream

all wait

for an infinite darkness

For the resurrection.

The magic and me

Umar ki rah badal jatey hai,

wakt ke andhere mein insaaan badal jatei hain

Sochtey hai aapko itna iyad karey ,lekin

aankh band karte hi irade badal jatey hai.

courttsey : Roughsoul

flamboyantbeggar

Dard keya hota hai,bataienge kisi roz

Kalam ki ek ghazal sunayege kisi roz,

udne doin porindo ko azad fizaon mein

hamare huyen to laut ayenge kisi roz.

Ecstasy

It makes me wonder why in almost all religious practices ecstasy or ecstatic awareness gets so much priorities.

I think man cannot live without ecstasy.In the matters of love to a beloved or to God or the natural phenomena or any matters of passion the final stage is ecstasy. In the matters of sexual union ecstasy comes naturally and one tends to live in a kind of temporary alteration of mental state. One it seems is in a kind of meditation where one forgets of his physical existence. He it seems is in a trance or ecstasy.

In religious practices this sort of ecstasy is so very common throughout the world in almost all religious groups . By religious groups I mean a kind of lifestyle a group of people believe to be worthwhile for whichever ends they consider important in life.

For Hindus ( Vaishnav shakto, vedantic etc ) For Buddhists ,for christians specially catholics,the sufis , the Shamans ,the moslem etc union with the God finally is a matter of goal to all. This union with the god occurs only when one discards the rationality taught by cognitive science. To achieve the union with God one has to be ecstatic about the intense desire to be one with the Lover ( God) This state of mind is sometimes in a trance. Sometimes hallucinogenic drugs are used to get the ecstatic feelings but that is looked down upon by the purists. Its the pure unification of two mind and soul as in the lover's case where no external agencies are required.

Sufi saints and shamans sometimes are considered Lunatic as the sayings go: All saints are lunatic and all lunatics are saints. perpetual ecstasy converts them to be lunatic in the rational world.

Negentropy

So far I have been talking to myself about Entropy and order/disorder..

Now it has been disheartening to assume that in creation throughout the nature disorder or chaos is part of the game. But scholars of all branches of knowledge discovered that the story of negentropy Or NEGETIVE ENTROPY is equally valid. Negentropy simply means the tendency of chaos is always to become ordered. Very simplistically imagine you throw a stone in a clear calm pond . There will be a chaos . Spiralling waves getting bigger and bigger and spread towards the shore. Imagine there is no shore for the water rings to hit. The spirals shall go on and on until a time will come when there will be the calm back again on the pond. This is a very simple example of negentropy. In the whole universe every where this tendency to return to the NORMAL state is as much necessary as the necessity of entropy for the creation.

Shiva in the beginning was calm. Then she danced .It is called Pralay. Then time comes Shiva calms down like the pond water like my beloved's mind. She calls me back. But that for me was too late because I started to dance a different Entropic/negentropic dance.

In the information science there is a futile attempt to mitigate chaos in the society by more information to the consumer which creates more indecisive ness , more perplexities, mor confusion in the society the out come of which leads to anomic condition. But that is another story.

To continue with the concept of order and chaos it may be assumed that chaos is inherent in nature

whether in our very intimate personal life, in the affairs of heart or in the universe in all phenomena. There is a tendency to order into disorder, system into unsystematic, the coherence into incoherence and so on. In the nature outside and inside our physical system do we live with this chaos? The origin of all creation : did it begin from calm , order , peace to disorder , chaos .? Does life begin because there is this tendency of disorder, or imbalance, disharmony. Possibly so.In the beginning there was calm, there was darkness.Everything was solemn. There was silence.We

assume of SHIVA : The majestic nothingness. The INVISIBILITY. The silence. Then ...... possibly a faint trace of something out of this nothingness. That probably was the first sign of disorder.It was still in the noumenic stage but albeit the first creation. Then came one after the other symbols of existence, disorder etc Disorder not in the sense of mathematical disorder but existential. That can be the perception in my view of Entropy. So my beloved who ,one fine morning dumped me or abandoned me after having so much peaceful association with me for a considerable time has just repeated what there was inherent in nature and done time after time all over the nature. I am thankful to her indeed.

Entropy and negentropy

One interesting word often used by almost all branches of knowledge ,is Entropy.This word is used by physicists , Biologists, anthropologists,physiologists psychologists and so on and so on.
It simply means nature tends to put ordered things into chaos. Order is not desirable by the nature and so a disorder is created in all spheres of life .
In human nature entropy is so common that people give it no importance.They just take it for granted. Some one loves me. All day all night i hear " I love you, I cannot live without you,You are mine and mine only" You are overwhelmed by such statements everyday. Your life goes so peacefully .
One fine morning some day you discover that every thing you believed so far were wrong. She doesn't call you, shedoesnt respond to your sms, she dumps you. People call this betrayal, breakup and etc etc. But this is the typical example of Entropy i.e from order to chaos.
This happens every where in nature .
to continue.....

The way

By deceiving yourself
over and over again,
You left our bye lanes
tired and torn to pieces.
You left so much darkness in me....
and with all these
I am writing my letter to you :
My darling,
I am looking for that last lane
beside which
thousands of maples grow.
We play hide and seek there
for self destruction.
I found you behind a tree naked,
In your body there were
some unknown curves
that you even didn't know.
I walked there in the submerged dusk
and loved only then
my solitude glowing.