The Versatile blogger award and 7 new bloggers...

Maithili has given me the Versatile Blogger award, which is ironic since I was wondering what topic to write about next in this blog. 

Anyway, without any further adieu, I shall dive in straight to the rules of the award - 7 random points on me, 7 shares of the award. Here goes.

1. CONFESSION : I used to steal my senior's newspaper in college. Well, technically, it's not stealing since she lived in the room adjacent to me and I just used to wake up before her, remove it ( it was placed in the door handle ), read it and leave it... on the floor( it's so tough to get it back in the door handle without making noise.) Anyway, one day she kept the door half open to see who the robber was. I simply went across the other side of the door, beyond her view, took the paper, read it and gave it to a fellow doctor who happened to be passing by. She caught him. He was too stunned to understand what was happening as she fired him. He caught my neck later in the operation theatre for it. Oh well.  
2. LOVE : Of all the variations of love that we are bombarded with via Bollywood, Hollywood, Kollywood etc- my personal favourite onscreen romantic couple presently are the lead characters of the TV show Castle. The sweet gestures, the innocence behind the false bravado - you don't have to go dance in the snows of  Switzerland for that. 
3. FRIENDSHIP : My co-pg and I were famous for a very distinct reason. We were absolute opposites in every possible way - and yet we were the two closest co-pgs the college ever had. We always had a difference of opinion, yet never had a single fight in 3 years of PG life. We always shared each other's success and failures together. Even a few months back, I got a comment from a junior, telling me how remarkable our friendship was, considering the highly competitive environment we were in where everyone was looking to gain extra points by putting their co-pgs down.  
4. RELIGION : No big surprise for regular readers of this blog, but I find all Godmen to be frauds. It is partly because I can't see why over a 100 crore real Gods aren't enough for our religion that we need to bow down to a human being and partly due to personal experiences.  And before you ask, yes...ALL GODMEN.
5. GENRE : Contrary to popular belief, I hardly ever read comedy in any format. My favourite genre of books is always a good psycho-thriller where there's a murderer loose in the city who needs to be stopped. I love a good mystery any day.  
6. SAVING FOR A RAINY DAY : Since the days of PG in Pune to being an assistant professor in Mangalore, I'm famous among my colleagues, juniors and students as 'the hard drive' doc. I can't help it. I have presently got four hard drives ( three 1Tbs and one chotta 320 Gb ) filled with thousands of movies and over three dozen TV sitcoms. Many of them have yet to be seen even by me ! That's what you call storing things away for a rainy day. 
7. DOGYEARS : I can't raise my hand against a dog. I'm sorry... it's just the way I am. Even my doberman knows it and nowadays, after using my hand as a chew-toy, he just waits for me to shake a finger as a signal to release it. Give them respect and they'll respect you back.

People who I award it to :

01. Meety : Technically, I'm supposed to be knowing you since you were around twelve years old. But, I was still pleasantly surprised by some of the lovely, deep thoughts that I've read at your blog and definitely feel your best is yet to come. Keep on writing. 

02. Shalini : A more 'sugar and spice' blog, this new mom and my major opponent in the app DRAW SOMETHING is hilarious fun to read.

03. Darlings of Venus : I would have given it to Maithili directly, but she gave me this award. It would look shady if I also gave her the same award and they'd probably have a CBI investigation on us... so I'll give it to a venture, involving her and other fellow female bloggers which has some really cool thought provoking and hilarious posts.

04. Dr Danny Simon : I've known him for over a decade when he was my senior. I'm glad he took up blogging because I value his gentle, kind words of encouragement.

05. Soumya Kulshreshtha : Came across her blog recently and absolutely loved it. Am now a regular follower of her, both on blogpost and Twitter. 

06 - 07. I know they've already been given this award, but let this be a reminder to them that their words are valued : chatpata Suruchi with her no-holds barred hilarious posts and Spaceman Spiff who has such a wide range in her style of writing.

Movies so bad you'll love watching them

(Author's warning : Lots of videos ahead. Give adequate time for downloading for maximum enjoyment. )


Every year, hundreds of new movies are released world wide, encompassing a wide range of genres, ranging from mythology to science fiction. And the results can be occasionally magnificent, be it in cinematography ( 300, Avatar ), storyline ( Inception, Shawshank Redemption ) or just pure unadulterated emotions ( Sophie's Choice, Seven. )

Of course, the higher percentage of movies fall flat at the box office. The storylines are filled with holes, the acting is mediocre and melodramatic and, well... the movie plain sucks. You get bored, your mind wanders away and your hand reaches for the remote. 

But sometimes, out of these same ingredients, a rare gem does arise. Only these aren't classics along the lines of Titanic or Mughal-e-Azam. 


These are movies that are so bad, they're actually brilliant. You can't stop yourself. You just keep on watching, not believing the absurdity you're seeing and yet wanting to know 'what next'. You find yourself laughing out loud, ashamed that you're actually watching something so silly, but enjoying every minute of it.

Have you ever been in that situation ? Well, I have ( what a surprise, eh ? ) and I wanted to share with you my Top 5 list of "MOVIES SO BAD YOU'LL LOVE WATCHING THEM."

Special Mention : MegaShark vs Giant Octopus

The channel, SyFy, releases quite a few of these every year. It makes it very hard to choose. Other worthy contenders include Mansquito ( half man, half mosquito ), DinoCroc vs SuperGator, MegaPython vs Gatoroid etc. But I still found this to be amongst the more absurdly hilarious of their creations. You doubt me ? Check out the video below and try to guess what happens to the passengers of the plane ?

Did you see that coming ? Hehe... 

5. Big Trouble in Little China. ( 1986 )
This movie was a perfect example of being intentionally bad. 
A loud-mouthed truck driver helps his Chinese friend try to rescue his kidnapped fiancee, get stuck between two rival Chinese groups called Chang Sing and Wing Kong and finally fight an ancient sorcerer who's living below Chinatown. You think that storyline sounds weird ? It's nothing compared to what's in store for you. There's bad acting, kung fu, gun-slinging, magic, bad special effects... all the classics.

This movie by John Carpenter had a pretty decent cast with Kurt Russell ( Tango & Cash ) and Kim Cattrall ( Sex & the City ) but was a failure when it released in theatres two decades ago. Today, it is considered a cult classic. Why ? Check out the video.

4. Killer Klowns from Outer Space ( 1988 )
You know how everyone is talking about 2012 being the 'End of the world' and all that ? Well, if it's going to happen, I'm pretty sure, it's going to be due to an alien invasion. From Klowns ( with a K ). Killer Klowns. Killer Klowns that shoot killer kotton kandy ( Just writing that last sentence makes me feel like a poet. ) 
And you think that's the end of it ? Check out the video below to see how kreative our komical buddies kan be while killing people. ( Seriously. Can nobody else see my poetic wizardry at play here ? ) 

3. Sharktopus ( 2010 )

Another classic from the Syfy stable. Remember the mythical creature, the mermaid, where you had the top half of a woman and the bottom half of a fish ? The legendary minotaur that was half man-half bull ? Or the Egyptian sphinx where you had a half man-half lion ? 
Well, somewhere in that Syfy studio, is a genius writer who decided it would be fun to see what happens when you give a shark an octopus' ass. The result ? check out the video yourself.

2. Troll 2 ( 1990 )

A family is under attack by lots of small goblins who are actually vegetarians but want to transform the family into plants so that they can eat them. 
Yes, you are allowed to read that line again. That's the plot of Troll 2. There is an actual documentary called 'Best Worst Movie', released in 2010, dedicated solely to this film. People with no acting experience who answered the newspaper ad became the main characters, the director and crew couldn't speak proper English yet demanded their script be unmodified by the cast and the graphics and acting were amazingly bad. The scene below is also often referred to as 'the worst piece of cinematic acting ever.' Ouch.
A funny trivia : there are actually no trolls in the movie, only goblins called Nilbog. ( read it backwards please to see the director's creativity. )

Now, this movie has been voted the 'Best worst movie' and even had a screening 2 decades later in 2007, just so that people from all over the world could come and enjoy how bad a movie this was. 
And yet, it's only number two in my list. So who gets the Oscar, you ask ?

1. Jaani Dushman - Ek Anokhi Kahani ( 2002 )

I will never stop laughing at the unbelievable madness that is Jaani Dushman. Mind you, we have always had a few funny Ramsay horror films and 'Rajnikanth-action' movies, but let's dissect this movie down, shall we ?

• Cast : Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Sunny Deol, Manisha Koirala, Rambha, Sonu Nigam, Arshad Warsi, Aftab Shivdasani, Amrish Puri, Aditya Pancholi, Sharad Kapoor, Raj Babbar and finally Armaan Kohli, who has the main role ! 
• Plot : Following a curse by a rishi for disturbing his prayers while they were dancing, two snakes ( yes, snakes ) get separated across lives and the female snake becomes a college student who gets raped and killed by someone, but wrongly blames her fellow college friends for her death. It's now time for her snake boyfriend to avenge her death by killing basically all the youngsters in that cast I just mentioned.
• Graphics : I don't know why you all make such a big fuss over Bollywood graphics. We have such brilliant Special effects in this movie that it's hard to describe. Terminator 2, The Matrix, Mission Impossible 2 - these are just some of the movies that stole from this awesome one. ( or maybe vice-versa. I forget. )

Remember the part in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 chases Arnold and the kid who are driving away in a car. Well, at 3:16 of the video, you can see why our desi Terminator is smarter than that machine !! I especially love how he 'grows' sunglasses to avoid the shade while chasing his victim. At the end of the video, you will also get to see a fun place to well, store your bike, in case of parking problems.


Mind you, this is just one classic moment of the film. Here's another.




Don't ask me how Akshay escapes stabbing and drowning ? Just appreciate the brilliant acting.

Don't get me wrong. It is not an insult. I would watch this movie if it came on TV anyday. You can show me 'My Name is Khan' and I will yawn halfway through. You can show me 'Ready' and 'Tere Naam' and I wouldn't last half an hour. I would get bored by the melodrama of Devdas and the action of Don 2. But this movie ? No way am I changing channels !

Now, remember the funny movie poster at the start of this post ? Do you think people would actually make a movie about killer tomatoes ? Seriously ?

Well, I hope you said yes, because Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was such a big classic about the US army fighting large tomatoes, that it even had sequels - Return of the Killer Tomatoes, The Killer Tomatoes strike back and The Killer Tomatoes Eat France.



Think about that the next time you have a salad !

So, what about you ? Have you ever seen a movie that was so silly, you actually ended up enjoying it ? Do tell.

   

Doctors, defend thyself.

This post is probably gonna polarize the readers here, but then again, it's time someone stood up for us doctors as well.

Every month, I come across an article of doctors being manhandled or persecuted by the Indian public ; sometimes its for our apathy, sometimes for taking patients hostages by going on strikes, sometimes for our 'lust' towards dying patients in emergency rooms, the most obvious one being our thirst for gold, of course.  On Aamir Khan's Satyameva Jayate, the first episode dealt with one of 'Father' India's many unforgivable sins, female infanticide. Almost immediately, my Twitter timeline was flooded with statements on how doctors would do anything for money and how we were demons. I'm pretty tired of this crap, frankly. If the mob mentality has settled down, could we talk for a minute, please ?

• Ministers mock us saying no doctor is ready to work in rural areas because 'we have forgotten our Hippocratic oaths'.  

Let's set the record straight. Every doctor you have ever seen in your life has worked a minimum of one year in a rural village somewhere in India, with no facilities for his own basic needs, be it clean water or electricity or a place to crap. All of them have stayed in remote villages in India, going door to door, identifying diseases and giving health talks to large gatherings of villagers. I'll repeat the key point there just in case you missed it. Every doctor. EACH. AND. EVERY. DOCTOR. 

He or she has watched patients survive inspite of no proper equipments, purely by his own skills and knowledge. He has also watched small children and women die, because the village did not have the most basic medicines that you and I could buy for the price of a pack of chewing gum. These doctors have to deal with vomit, feces, blood, bones, brain matter, malnourished children and prejudiced beliefs every day while you were wondering whether BookMyshow has tickets for the new Katrina starrer. 

When disasters and epidemics strike, you get to run the other direction and save your lives. We have to head back into the disaster-struck area.  We have to stand in the middle, risking our lives while saving yours. It's not because He-Man or Hippocrates said so. It's not because we can't walk away. We can just as easily say "Screw this. I want to be with my wife and kids and make sure they are safe." But we give up that right because there are strangers whose lives depend on us and we can make a difference between life and death. 
So don't remind us of our Hippocratic Oath whenever you find it convenient - we are still doing more selfless work than any other profession in the country. 

• You question our integrity when we want to work in a place which has medicines which will allow us to do our job ? Is that a crime ? We are doctors. We need medicines to heal people. It's alright for ministers and Godmen to sprout bank balances of 100 crores without doing any 'real' salaried job and you still go vote for/pray to them, instead of catching them by the collar and asking the obvious question ? Noone questions them, but when we ask for better facilities in a village so that we can just deliver a baby in a clean environment, you call us spoilt and greedy ? 
• You talk of infanticide borne of the evils of ignorance of religions and caste, yet conveniently ignore the infanticide that occurs every day in these rural health centers because the money you paid in taxes reached a minister's pocket, instead of a pharmacy where it could have saved a life ?

• You call us impersonal. I could write articles on that one sentence alone. Instead, I'll just redirect you here for that. Every doctor carries with him the images of patients he's saved, patients he's lost and the patients he is treating presently. We carry these memories everywhere we go. But we can't mourn your loss, even if we want to, because there are hundreds of wounded patients still waiting, who depend on us to shut out the pain and treat them with a clear mind. We have to blink back our frustration and turn to the next bed and carry on saving lives. There are no ad breaks or strategic time-outs for us.

• If you still call us impersonal, surely the same cannot be said of nurses, can it ? And yet, you treat them as your private servants, answering to your every beck and call : be it fluffing your pillows, getting chairs for your relatives or giving you sponge baths. None of you seemed to think that these brothers and sisters deserved more than 6000 rupees as a salary when they went on strike earlier this year. They study more than you, are grossly understaffed and work thanklessly - but that's their job, right ? Rs 6000 is all they deserve for it, isn't it ? 

Or lest I forget, Rs 4,000 from the premier Godman institute in Kerala of which Rs 2,000 went for hostel and mess fees. And when they complained about how servants in the household earn more, they were beaten up by hired goons sent by the hospital itself. 
Instead of paying a third of your savings to Godmen like these, couldn't you have supported these nurses who actually do God's work and tend to your broken spirit and body, caring for you 24/7 till you get back on your feet ? 

Don't they deserve a salary at par with the hard work they've put in ? If no, why not ? Now do you see why they go abroad ? It's not because of an apathy on their part towards you... it's because of an apathy on your part to listen to their cries. 
My advice to every nurse who plans to go abroad - please do so. We, as doctors, salute your efforts, but sadly this is not a country which respects or even deserves you.   

• In the meantime, what would happen if I turned the mirror on you... How many of you would be willing to forego your campus interviews and cushy job placements and come work in the villages for a decade voluntarily ? How many of you know anyone who said no to a company placement so that he could do a Shah Rukh Khan a la Swades ? Not later on in life, after earning millions, but right at the beginning of your career - as you demand of us. 
• You say it's rural because the place lacks amenities - well, isn't that what you all are supposed to be doing : building a modern India ? Or is infrastructure, schools and IT development in these regions also our job ? Is your India just limited to Brigade road, Gurgaon, Bandra and Techno Parks ? How many of you would turn down your opportunity to go abroad on assignments by your companies and come work in the villages 16 hours a day, knowing the pay is below Rs 15,000 a month and you will have to deal not just with the lack of water, food, equipment or shelter, but also often, diseases and superstitions ? How would you feel working like that, knowing fully well you would never be able to provide for your children's future with that salary ? 

• If there are doctors who work for money, there are doctors who work for the love of medicine too. There are doctors who go to bed at 2 am and are back in the hospital by 5 am for patients ranging from 24 hours to a 100 years old. Even at the age of 60, they sit and study the latest journals for new tidbits on how to save you. I know. I've been taught by them. I have worked beside so many of them. I am one of them. And do you know how much we charge for waking up at 4.30 am and starting a case at 5am ? Rs zero in any medical college in India. Even in private hospitals all across India, we cut our fees if the patient is too poor to afford higher charges. 
• And yet you mock our sincerity. We should be at your beck and call, changing our schedules to meet your convenience. There have been patients who have woken us up at 3am in the morning because his taxi was passing by the hospital and he thought he'd drop in to have his sugar checked, in spite of having no prior history. There have been patients who have demanded we cut our fees down to 10% for a case we did at midnight as an emergency, yet the very next day after discharging him from the hospital, we see him disregarding all our orders for rest and celebrating at Kentucky Fried Chicken with a posse of relatives, shedding thousands. Is that all our dedication was worth to you - to make us leave our families at midnight to serve you for a pittance so that you could disobey our medical orders ? Would the same KFC have cut their rates to 10% for you, had you said you were from a poor family ?

• You associate the word 'doctor' with your posh speciality hospitals and assume we all work there ? Well then, what about all the other hospitals around which form 90% of health care in any state ? Who works there... trained chimpanzees ? And do they charge in gold bananas too ? Of course not. Government college doctors have it hardest and yet, they work from twilight to dawn, doing the best with what little materials is provided to them to keep people alive. And when they decide to leave the service and go to a private practise to earn something for their families, you call them corrupted souls ? You say they've sold their souls to the devil ?

• How dare you ? How. Dare. You ? Are you really so ignorant so as to believe that just by wearing a stethoscope and scribbling paracetamol prescriptions with our patent illegible handwriting, we become instant millionaires ? These doctors want the same lives for their children that you want for yours. They want their kids to go to the same schools as yours, have the same movie experience your kids do. They give up a family life and realise their kids will never get to see them as they grow up and so try to at least earn an decent salary so that their kid has all that he wants. 

These doctors are not asking for your kidneys or your souls. They are asking for what they deserve for their work. While you were busy partying away your 20s and getting married and settling down, they were busy buried under, literally, hundreds of books. They.. nay, we were busy getting emergency calls at all hours of the day from people who came to us only when they were in tears. We were busy giving up on a settled life and working our butts off. While you were into your 8th year of a salaried life, we were paid Rs 100 a day for 36 hour shifts, with 8 hours of rest before the next 36 hours started. After a decade of studies, as a post graduate, would you care to venture what our starting salary was ? Less than what a call-centre worker or wedding planner in India makes, for twice the hours. 

• Yet, when we treat a hundred patients and bring them back from the jaws of death, do you read about it in a newspaper ? No. But a single person dies and irrespective of the cause, you point fingers and blame us for the death. In that one way, yes, you treat us the way you treat God.  

• You say doctors earn your respect. Really ? When was the last time you saw a doctor being congratulated on the news for a surgery well done ? Everyday, in every city, village, nook and corner of India, there is a doctor doing an exceptional case, be it a complicated neurosurgery or bringing back vision to the eyes of a blind man... when was the last time you saw him being applauded on television ? 

Respect. As a wise doctor once told me... "Our kids can't eat a plate of respect. And they don't accept respect too while paying school fees, unfortunately." 

• We don't wake up and come to the hospital everyday to kill people. We are doing the best we can, but people die. That's the basic fact of life. Irrespective of how many talismans you wear, how many Ganesha homams you do at home or how many coconuts you break... people still die. We do our best, but we cannot perform miracles. So don't lay a finger on us if reality bites. 
• If your fingers are itching so badly, go slap the pujari who convinced you that making your geriatric father roll across the perimeter of a temple would cure his lung cancer. 
• If you are so convinced that your Wikipedia-inspired medication cocktails are superior to our years of experience with real live patients, be our guests.  
• What horrifies me is when your relative is dying and we are trying to perform CPR on him/her, you actually accuse us of rape and trash us. You actually believe that we ( even the women doctors ) get our rocks off by sexually assaulting dying people ? How low an image of us do you have ? More frankly, how low an IQ do you have ? If your excuse is that it's a matter of perception, are we permitted the same freedom - when your child complains of a mild tummy ache and you ignore it and it turns out to be a ruptured appendix, are we allowed to beat the snot out of you for unintentionally putting your child's life in danger ? If not, then don't hit us for deaths we are trying to prevent. 

• No circumstance gives a doctor the right to turn towards unscrupulous means to earn a quick buck. There is no doubt about that. Yes, there are demons in our midst who take part in heinous crimes like infanticide and many others, I agree. But that doesn't give you the right to insult all of us for their crimes. Punish the guilty, but don't cluster-bomb the rest of us. 

• And change your own misconceptions of us before you point a finger at us.
1. You want us to work in rural corners of the nation - give us the facilities to save lives, don't just send us there empty handed to watch deaths we could have otherwise prevented if we had the basic necessities. 
2. You want us to charge less - you are the one who decides which hospital you go to. From medical colleges to specialty hospitals, the range extends from Rs 0 to Rs 25,000/- for the same operation. With insurance now a valid option across India, even that is hardly a problem.  
3. You want us to stay in India and not run abroad - treat us like doctors and give us our due rather than searching for flimsy reasons to file malpractice suits.

• I don't judge the amount of anaesthesia I have to give you based on your caste, your political party, your religion or your profession. All I'm asking for, on behalf of my fellow brothers and sisters in the professions, is the same courtesy be given back to us. Don't judge us by the deeds of individuals. We are doing the best we can with what we have. 

For every demon amongst us, there are hundreds of doctors working throughout the night without an hour's sleep, just because they care for their patient's well being. 

These doctors still exist. They are still the majority. I don't just believe it... I know it. 

But they will not remain that way, if you treat them as your own personal punching bags. 




P.S. In the time that it took you to read this, more than a hundred lives have been resuscitated successfully in casualties and emergency rooms. More than a thousand infants were delivered uneventfully. A thousand more surgeries have begun in operation theaters spanning the nation. And tens of thousands of prescriptions have been filled which will begin the healing process for suffering patients all across India.    


Just another routine 10 minutes in the life of a doctor.

So you think you know your art ?

I'll be honest. I never got the politics of art. If I had to judge a work of art, I would have given points for creativity, colour schemes and final beauty. I find many forms of modern art annoying and frankly, idiotic, while some brilliant works are just passed off as the works of amateurs.

But perhaps the more question that comes to mind is, how much weightage do we ever give for art in our lives ? In school, it was only a secondary subject for me - 45 minutes in a week where we all would relax and have fun. I used to love drawing, painting, adding deft touches which I was sure converted my creations  into real masterpieces. Well, it's close to 6 years since I've held a brush or painted anything, but a recent article has indeed stoked my interest again.

Ever wonder how good you are at appreciating the true value of art ? Well, here's your chance.

Below, you will find 6 paintings. I want you all to type in ( in the comments section ) how much you would pay for each one of these paintings/sculptures if your loved one demanded you buy it for him/her. Don't be embarrassed to put in as small or as large an amount as you wish. It's your personal decision. You may click each picture to see a larger version of it which may aid you in seeing the quality of the work. Also, please don't go searching online or looking up it's real values. I've provided them in the link at the end of this post, which you're free to check out AFTER putting in your estimates.. 

1. A nice painting of a calm pond.

2. A very bright and spritely picture of a young boy surrounded by flowers.

3. A very serene picture of Jesus Christ carrying a sheep.

 4. A house by a forest.

 5. An abstract of a lone tree.

 6. A sculpture of an eerie looking thin man.

Have you put down your opinion of what each of them are worth ? Well, now that you're done, click this link and find out how close you were to guessing the true worth of these works of art.