Behind The Festivities

Happy Navrathri to all! 

Sorry I do not have any pompous picture of  the festivities of today. I have a better celebration to show. A celebration of art. While on my way to work everyday I see these guys in a makeshift settlement near a traffic signal. The love with which they make these stuff will make us forget DaVinci, Picasso or Michelangalo. Look at the guy holding a bucket of paint and helping his brother,such an infectious smile! Although they seem content in their own world, there is a lot more we can do as fellow citizens.I see people bargain when they buy things from them, these are the same men and women who do not mind paying in hundreds for parking in a shopping mall. I will not say more. Our artists deserve a better platform, and a much better life!

-R.

Peace & Pieces

All this uproar of peace in our heart

Has no greater purpose in this world

For we enjoy this weird drama of life

Paying for tickets at this foolish cost

Without knowing that we play a part

In pieces we are swiveled and swirled

Here and there to script our own strife 

With prayers forgotten and roads lost

-R-

Cellfie !

 

"Can you tell me what is that you find in this picture?"

I asked a dear friend of mine today who unfortunately but willingly did not get into medicine years ago.

"At two places there are smaller particles than the rest, little above the centre..." he replied.

"Not bad! Gonococcus inside pus cells, that's from urethral discharge" I said in excitement.

"Ugh! Careful!" he said.

"They are heat fixed and dead!Don't worry" I said and reassured him.

"See I would have made a good doctor" he opined with pride.

Of course he would have, life is all about the choices we make isn't it. There are moments when I screen these slides for minutes together and miss some fields which would have led me to some important diagnosis. And then there are moments such as this when I know what I find under the microscope is going to change someone's life. There is no satisfaction greater than that, therefore I go from one field to the other, to another and finally end up with a stiff neck! 

It is an interesting world out there, in and around the cells.How our body interacts with the pathogens is a beautiful science. What you see in the picture are intracellular organisms, imagine our body mounting an immune response and trying to engulf these little bugs, things inside are more dynamic than we know.

-R.