Purple Haze or Purple Maze!?

It is cold out here and temperature drops by the minute in the evening and it goes as low as 4 degC. And I am all wrapped up in my favourite purple turtle neck. There’s something about this colour, I naturally lean towards this blue-lavender-purple color family. Huh! I know you will say ‘what about your pink clouds then’? Yes, pink – that particular shade of The North Face pink has become my favourite shade in addition to my ‘purples’ :-)

Well, I am stationed in Imphal in the far North Eastern terrain of Manipur this year end. Days are quite short with wintry haze and sundown by 4.30pm. We need to wind up by 4pm or so or else everyone in the room starts to shiver and look for those li’l ‘bucket’ like charcoal stoves to keep us warm.

When we talk about North East India it brings a different connotation – I wonder whether this is a good way to describe all the exotic terrains, people, and places under one umbrella? Well, I am no historian, I am no expert but my love of this place brings me over and over again, I do feel I have some psychic connection. I am happy to be here, happy to breathe mountain air,

happy to walk on those roads my dad and mom had walked, and happy to see faces I had grown familiar with. It always feels good to be here! Who knows, may be I had died here in my last birth? Huh, I am sounding like a psychic but there’s something about this place that always has drawn me – people, their smiling faces, friendship, trust, love, faith and everything…..I cant really put my finger on one thing!

I was born in the North Eastern state of Arunachal when my dad was posted for 12 long years looking after NEFA, in one of those back of beyond places with no hospital (I mean some 40 years ago). We lived in bamboo huts just like our ‘Apatani’ neighbors and I grew up like a wild child in the wild playing in those beautiful meadows and jumping on those rickety bamboo bridges over those gurgling mountain streams. The ‘tomboy’ in me still lives on and I feel blessed to have all these experiences in my life.

This time I am on a work trip to carry out some research on drug use and I am more like ‘woman with agenda’! As I go about meeting different researchers and discuss our research topics, familiar faces pop up and a part of me seeps into nostalgia. There are people in the team I had worked with before and there are people in the team I had travelled with into the far away lands of Mayanmar and beautiful locales of Manipur. There are people in the team who had seen me metamorphose into this researcher I am today. And sitting here in this nice room in my hotel, overlooking a beautiful cityscape through the morning haze this morning, I loose myself to nostalgia. I hold no judgement, I hold no comparison, yet a part of me constantly nudges me to think what if I had stayed on, what if my dad wasn’t transferred out of NEFA after those aerodromes were built and made functional. Well, life in North East cannot be imagined unless you have lived one for yourself.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I was interviewing for my research team, and here’s that dashing handsome guy I knew from 2006 before my eyes and I took time to recognise him as the ‘virus’ has made a mark on him. We both knew we were talking to the same people, as our voice are same – he recognised me, his eyes jumped as he recollected our time, our working together and there I just had to quit that interview panel. I could not continue.

It is a challenge to know the terrain so well, know the people so well. You connect as friends and then you also need to work with your friends as they are the ones who know your research subject so well. But back in my mind I was going through a different kind of battle, and I had to confess that I too have bias and in the work I do there is no room for bias. So I left the room and gave away the decision to choose the research team to others in the team.

I came back to another room and started reading so that my mind is at peace and to keep sane. So many layers of thoughts were crisscrossing and I was literally looking for a blotting paper to soak away all my overflowing thoughts! Well, I had to pour it out and here I am pouring it out this morning as I start another workday. I know this work fascinates me, I know there’s something that I want to do through my research work, and I know I have to continue. And I know this path will give me tears, joys, smiles, happiness and sadness. Yes, I know. And I will walk this walk!!

TB or not to be!!

TB or not to be: MDR TB going to be the new face of TB epidemic in India?

“You can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards”- Steve Jobs

I would sound a bit like Steve Jobs here as I recount my delving into TB research way back in 1998 for doctoral work when India was transitioning to Revised National Tuberculosis Programme with DOTS. Little did I know then how I was paving my way into public health research and one day with this research experience combined with my training in Medical Anthropology will make so much sense in the domain of TB control in India, especially when we are talking about a muti-cultural country with medical pluralism and a disease like TB which has a long treatment period which leads to patients consult multiple practitioners leading to treatment default or mixing different lines of treatment leading to delayed or poor diagnosis, and treatment failure. This is a perfect area to marry Medical Anthropology and Public Health with doctor shopping among patients, unregulated use (abuse) of antibiotics, and making a case for lack of uniform regime across medical fraternity.

Indeed, it did make sense that afternoon when I was introduced to this professor from that University all the way from the States who was visiting my institute to establish collaboration in TB research in India. I know what I said to her that afternoon and I was also quite conscious of my passionate anecdotes and I constantly balanced the researcher and the advocate in me. We discussed the issues of MDR, issues of rampant use of antibiotics and consequences of non-regularised over the counter sale of antibiotics and the whole pros and cons in India and South Africa. Later, reading her blog, which she wrote two days before our meeting in Gurgaon, I am more at ease with my passionate ramblings as she had echoed the similar concerns.

With this new demon of MDR looming large, she plans to work on datasets (large ones, of course) and I plan to look at treatment pathways (retrospective) and combine our work to throw some light on this problem and create policy recommendation for MDR-TB in Indian setting. Joining dots would help us see some pattern in this juggernaut of a problem like MDR, hopefully!

I am the "Hallucination"!

In the dim light, under the moonlight, between all those hushed voice there was some warmth spreading between the two of us as we slowly warmed up with each other in our embrace, in our naked ness. Well, we were together in friendly, yet passionate cuddle and there was some kinda natural bent to it – no, it wasn’t as if we were trying hard, it was smooth, it flowed well. It was rather uncanny. It was rather unreal. But maybe that’s how adults try to know each other. May be that’s how it get started. May be it was none of that. As he often says ‘there is no…..’ ! Well, point taken!

For her it’s like a dream. It’s truly a dream and she kept pinching and pinched hard. For her it was real and she is quite stirred by the incident, something like a whirlwind. Indeed, he is like a whirlwind - he is real, he is big and he is there in front of you and he is all yours in kisses and tears, in sweet murmurs and then the next moment, he is that icon people look up to, he is in public domain and he is gone away from you! And you stay surprised by that whirlwind of a person who is a master in taming whirlwind in real life!

“he will be tall, very tall, well-built and he won’t be from your profession. And when you meet him, you will know for yourself”

Ah! as if I am recounting à la "Ketut" that Balinese medicine man in ‘Eat-Pray-Love’. It’s lovely to think that way, if pretty woman like Julia Roberts had to go through it, I am quite a game! Well, life isn’t a movie….but, wait, isn’t that life actually inspire those movies? Hmmm…..

But as humans, we all live in our own world of make-believe. I am one dreamer and I like to dream and I believe dreams do come true. Well, that’s about how I am….

He is one nice, down to earth person which is incredible despite all the adulation he is showered every day. He is indeed an epitome of success – if at all he approves that word. He is an achiever we would like to read about and listen to and narrate to our grandchildren. He is full of grey matter and quite charming at that – and these qualities he is very aware about himself.

She indeed was surprised and could not believe her eyes/ears when she met him. She is one hell of an independent woman, living by herself, setting her own standard in work and life, in her own little way. She is happy to see what life has brought to her, she is surprised to see how difficult it is to be a woman in this man’s world, when her chips are down and things are downhill she likes to think all this liberal ideas and feminism are bullshit and lucky are those women who stay at home and remain under their men’s shadow, she quarrels about hypocritical ways of society with her parents who encouraged her to be what she is today – an alpha fe-male! (of sorts)

He is honest and admits he is rude and arrogant when you stop by to tell him that. He walks like the boy next door in your neighborhood and doesn’t throw any tantrum when you don’t usher him in. He doesn’t have the need to bask in glory all the time, she thinks. He is prolly bored of all the awards and all the pep-talk he does far and wide – she conjures. He does not show any displeasure when she panics and she watches him walk into the twilight - she is lovelorn, but he is miffed and she is heartbroken.

She has a tiny little woman in her, and she realizes her womanly desires, her womanly charm and that façade of hers which she often hides. Though she enjoys that side of her and she knows how vulnerable she feels when that façade tries to peep out, as if she loses control. She did lose control and panicked. Hmm….

Well, we all are many layers deep and despite our layers and colors there is a basic tint that you portray and that’s what impacts the other. She likes simple things in life as it is easy to sustain, easy to hold on to. She loves little tears of joy and those weak vulnerable moments even though her mind must be racing to argue that colleague who questioned her research methodology. She wears a strong façade and underneath there is a soft innocent core to be loved, cuddled and fondled.

In their many layers, they will know each other and there will be a world of their own ‘make-believe’ which they will create. A world complex yet simple, rosy yet dark, hard yet soft and in the game of long and short they will find joy and laughter.

Yes, dreams they are and dreams do come true!! And you will know when you see it! And it is real and ‘there is no’ Hallucination! And there was moonlight and it was a full moon that night!

all-WRITE!

Hello there! I kept my promise to write again, to start writing again and writing more regularly and I am back with a bang. Now I have this new Evernote on my comp and I am using it to the hilt.


I plan to draft my thoughts everyday here. Earlier, I used to use a blog, and I was quite regular with it. It was between 2007-11 and slowly I dont see me doing it regularly despite giving much thought about it. I started discussing my old blogposts on FaceBook - thinking it will create interest among my friends and in turn would inspire to write again. Well, that was just some kind of thinking.


But I guess, the fact I write well is quite well known to me and that I want to write big is quite tempting to ignore this writing streak totally. So, another time, I started to write - pen on paper, not in regular intervals but in bouts, to pour my thoughts more like some inspirational notes to me. And I have some well scribbled notes to read on dated between 2012-13.


Now the plan is, I will write here. I will put these up on blog sometimes, depending on the content - if too personal then it stays here just to me on my comp as posts to re-read at another time to reminisce how I thought through or how I coped through the time etc.


And the plan is to write at least full 2-3 pages everyday - to start with just some mundane stuff, to unpack all those tangled wires in my brain, to be able to think clear, to feel creative, to unleash creativity. Does it happen to you - that once you start writing and start to pour out your initial thoughts, there comes that huge bout of creative energy from nowhere and you just keep tapping on the keyboard endlessly resulting free flowing write up? It happens to me, I have seen this in me that most of my writing - I mean writing on 'blog' (and not technical/scientific writing I do professionally) is quite driven by that uncertain something, that unplanned something that I have any control on. I quite like that kinda thing in me, that spontaneity, that creativity and that mood especially - as if I am possessed and there is a certain high! Do you relate to this?


You know, somewhere I am unabashedly aware about me, my tendencies and I quite see the way I think, why I think, my pluses and my minuses, and those shallowness I portray in my writings or those deep thoughts. So, I write not to please anyone, or to impress any soul but to unleash this soulful creativity I possess, which I feel I must nurture. I also see this pouring out as a therapeutic pursuit, a way to grow, mature and to reflect. Its very important for me to point fingers at me more often I can, to be aware and to improve and be enlightened.


So, making a new start, a humble beginning all over again. I sincerely hope this will be continued in regular fervor, rigor and and and......well, I will be back soon!