Storytellers

  A friend of mine had received an award. It was a very prestigious award. On hearing the news of being conferred this award, my friend developed a sense of insecurity and started questioning their own worthiness to receive the award. They asked me, “I am feeling uncertain whether I am worthy of this award”. Without thinking too much about it, in a rather insensitive manner I replied, “you should not think about it like that. It is not that big an award anyway”. Now when I read what I have just typed, it looks very offensive. But at that time, I had a few reasons for saying what I said. Firstly, I wanted to allay the insecurities of a friend. Secondly, I knew that this award is mired in bureaucracy and politics and so had some heavy criticism on it. While the former reason is a noble one, the latter, though honest, is not exactly a good thing to say to someone who has just received the award. This friend became quiet after that and neither of us brought it up.     Recently, this friend

One of my erstwhile students and currently a good friend, taught me a wonderful lesson today. I had just wound up my routine Sunday clinic and was traveling home. “How are you Ayya?” he had texted me and we were having a text conversation. This young man has always referred to me as “Ayya” which is a beautiful word in Tamil which means many things including teacher, father, grandfather, God, Master to just name a few, basically anybody who is a respectable older male. I think he first started calling me “Ayya” implying teacher, but probably it evolved to mean father. I have a very paternal feeling to this young man, and he probably reciprocates it! Our discussion started moving towards medical practice. One of my deepest concerns has been that I am not able to practice cutting edge evidence-based medicine in my clinic as it is grossly resource deprived and the people attending the clinic are extremely poor. I was expressing this concern to him and lamenting. I was taking it to the extr