A Delhi Homecoming: Arthroplasty, Avian Surprises, Chilly Dips, and a Play That Broke Me

What was supposed to be a quick in-and-out orthopaedic conference turned into one of the most unexpectedly wholesome Delhi trips in years.

I’m used to the cosy, predictable Arthroscopy Association meetings, but this one—held in the heart of south Delhi—was different. Private, packed, and studded with every arthroplasty stalwart you can name. I somehow found myself presenting a live robotic total knee replacement surgery, speaking on kinematic alignment in unicondylar knees, and then sitting on a panel discussing robotics in TKR moderated by the legendary Dr N Vaidya. The appreciation from the audience and seniors left me buzzing. Reconnecting with my old AIIMS gang, Prof Malhotra, Dr Vijay Kumar, Dr Rajagopal, Tamil Nadu friends, and making a bunch of new ones felt like the real jackpot.

Base camp: Hotel Eros, Nehru Place. Comfy rooms, trains rumbling past every couple of hours, but location = gold. Right opposite lies the 141-acre Astha Kunj Park—an absolute green lung smack in the middle of the city. Early morning walks became my therapy: grey hornbills perched on trees, coppersmith barbets calling, common tailorbirds flitting about, pied wagtails, rose-ringed parakeets screaming overhead, red-vented bulbuls, mynas, and black kites circling everywhere. Even heard water birds from the nearby Lotus Temple pond. Throw in glimpses of the 500-year-old Kalkaji Mandir, the gleaming Bahá’í Lotus Temple, and ISKCON, and suddenly Nehru Place felt like a spiritual-birding bubble.

Evenings were for Delhi things I’d almost forgotten I missed. Checked the weather—24 °C—and thought “pool time!” Got to the pool and the water was a brutal 19 °C. Jumped in anyway. Ten seconds of shock, then pure bliss.

And then the highlight I didn’t even plan: a solo dash to India Habitat Centre’s Stein Auditorium for The F Word by AK Various Productions. Violet Line metro to JLN Stadium, a brisk one-kilometre walk in the winter dark (grateful for the jacket), ticket collected, and into that beautiful packed hall.

Seventy-five minutes, four actors, one lunch table. A retired father verbally abusing his bedridden wife; their adult children fly in from abroad to confront him. What follows is uncomfortable, hilarious in the blackest way, heartbreaking, and so painfully real that half the audience (me included) was wiping tears by the end. The actor playing the father deserves every award in existence. Live theatre does something no screen ever can—you watch humans vanish into other humans right in front of you. Stayed back, chatted with the cast—warm, humble, lovely people. Coimbatore, please invite these guys soon!

Walked back to the metro under a crisp Delhi winter sky, rejoined my Coimbatore friends, and we wrapped the night with old-school Punjabi comfort food at Pind Baluchi (still as reliable as ever).

One final sunrise lap of Astha Kunj this morning, chasing hornbills and tailorbirds before the flight home at 11:30.

Delhi, you chaotic, green, cultural, emotional beast—you still own a massive chunk of my heart. From robotic knees to grey hornbills to a play that punched me in the soul, this wasn’t just a conference trip. It was a proper homecoming.

Until next time. 🐦🎭❤️

Awareness on Golf injuries around the shoulder

Holiday in France

Holidays are great. You take time off your routine wake up- work –work out- sleep routine and you get time for yourself. At least holidays have to be like that. They should not be filled with itineraries jam packed with things to do and sights to see but they should be occasions to spend time alone and with your spouse and introspect and assimilate. Assimilation and introspection can give you some great ideas about life as a whole and the next step ahead in particular. Holidays should provide the time to contemplate sbout at what stage in life we have arrived, where exactly are we heading, what our goals are and how to get there.  Just collecting memories of sights, places and perfect photographs alone cant make a holiday great, I think.

I have at this point reached a stage where I work as a consultant orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports surgery and shoulder. I love my job. I love the place I work. I am married and have a sweet wife who is good to me most of the times.  That’s the best she could do I suppose.

I am passing through great French countryside with canals, lush green forests and pasture. It is beautiful. I am sitting on TGV, the high speed train of France and Europe.

The plan next is to expand my practice. Obviously every surgeon likes to operate more.  To get the right patients and to convince them for surgery has been a challenge for shoulder surgery.

The way to do it, I am not yet sure about how to go about it. But what I can tell is I am not going to die for it. I would like to “make” great surgeries yes, for sure. But the whining will not be there. On the long run, all that matters is contentment in life.  I can make millions and still not be happy with it. I will take life easy. I am not going to make it big like Sachin Tendulkar or Amitabh bachan in this life. Because the profession I have chosen is such. Also, the pressure of fame is not a good thing. I pity famous people. Well, fame and money is all that the world is after.  But one should know where and when to stop the search as the search is endless. The purpose becomes lost when the search gets into you and starts ruling you. I guess narrow mindedness has no place in the pursuit of happiness and fame and money. Selfishness cant give you long term happiness. Protecting your interests – how important is it?

Well, I don’t know. I will know in ten years. Life teaches you lessons with time. You can’t learn them all in one day.  Learning and aging gracefully is the goal.

Train journeys have been good for me. This in fact is the one I am taking after a  long time. The y give you time to sit back, while enjoying the country, you can think.

Toulouse has been great in some respects – like learning shoulder work. Dr Kany is a guy like Thin, only much more agile and active, and jovial at the same time. Toulouse is sort of a place I would like to visit, not too big, not too small, not much to see, so lots of time with yourself. Bernard and Christian have been good hosts, they arranged a wonderful dinner yesterday night with Ratatouille and Apple pie and lots of wine and whiskey. I loved it. We had discussions ranging from Robert Kennedy to EU elections to French history to history of the Church of England. We also had a couple from Switzerland joining us, which was good. They say Paris would be great but I doubt it.

What did we do in Toulouse? We walked on the endless cobbled streets and alleys in the centre ville. Lots of huge brick buildings. Had lunch at a vegetarian buffet place, which I liked, and Siva didn’t. Went for a swim at Leo Lagrange, a local swimming pool, olimpique size, which I liked. Sat on the banks of Garonne braving short spells of warmth and cold and rain. Went around the centre ville on the free shuttle bus. Visited a few museums – the hall of fame in the place du capitol, the Musee de Augustins showcasing Roman sculpture and art and religious art from medieval times. I hired a cycle from the excellent public cycle hire system in Toulouse called Velo Toulouse and went around the city by cycle. Visited the Les Abattoires – museum of modern art where humungous sized paintings were on display. It might surely take tremendous time and effort to complete such paintings to perfection.

The churches – cathedrals we visited were huge brick buildings built 500 – 600 years ago, some as early as 12^th or 13^th century.  France seems to be a religious nation to me, the cathedrals are divine, the silence and the pipe music both pulling you inwards. I see a lot of families with young men and children attending mass. JK is good, but I disagree with his idea that any religion is madness. To me, faith is a wonderful thing; religious places are like oasis in this desert of selfishness, lust and ambition. They help you reflect and meditate.  Something melts inside me when I see an individual convicted in his faith, praying in front of the deity. Tears some times swell up my eyes and an emotion close to empathy prevails in me for the moment. That’s the best I could describe it. The individual can be anybody – an old man praying at a temple, a woman at the church or a small boy with all his innocence prostrating in front of the sanctum. I had a similar feeling when I saw people sitting in the mass in these Catholic churches. France is a strong catholic nation and people take religion seriously here. Religious relics are the most important monuments in Toulouse. 

People in Toulouse are quite warm. They are polite and ready to help with whatever English they can manage. Bernie was a good host, the room or rooms he offered were small yet cozy, the bathroom was congested and a little more space would have been lovely. He was ready to help anytime with any thing, which was great. He spoke the best English in Toulouse, which was a consolation.

On our way here, we stopped at Frankfurt and visited the city a good few hours.  We walked through the streets which were not crowded, reached the center place, went to a church, sat on the banks of river Maine, had a beer in the restaurant there and headed back to the airport.

One ubiquitous thing present everywhere in the air in Europe is cigarette smoke. There is no gender or age difference to smoking here. People smoke like chimneys here, polluting the whole atmosphere around them.

Sitting in the return flight to Madras, as the rest of world still knows her, I think that the days of European sunshine, bright and warm enough but not scorching like back home are over. Over are the days in cities with old giant cathedrals, rivers with medieval bridges, baguettes with cheese and spinach and tomato,  lots of street side eateries and great beer and wine.  What strikes my mind when I think about this trip is the Eiffel – an amazing masterpiece of art of the modern era. If Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, it is not without reason. The French have been connoisseurs of art like any other people who have a reasonably long period of stable governance. Back home, the 9^th through the 17^th centuries saw great monuments built with such artistic mastery and all that was possible because there were not many wars and people had stable governments. Similarly, all over Europe we can find monuments built through the ages starting from the pre Christian era to the medieval ages to the modern times. But huge monuments in the form of cathedrals of the middle ages predominate the old cities in Europe. The architecture is of a different sort, unlike the stone temples of South India; these cathedrals are magnificent brick buildings with gothic arches, domes and stained glasses. Most of them are dedicated to the Mother Mary and are under the Vatican.

People on France have generally been warm to us. Right from our stay in Toulouse, it has been smooth going for us. Talking about Eiffel, this tower redefines beauty. The perception of beauty also is some sort of conditioning. You get told about beautiful things and you start believing that they are beautiful, just like the fad for fair skin in the sub continent. With buildings like the Notre Dame and Sacer Coer and Louvre defining beauty, the Eiffel is perhaps the only non religious monument with a revolutionary style giving a new definition to artistic beauty all together. Unlike other buildings that cover the skeleton with layers of plaster and facades and cloth and paintings, in Eiffel, the steel skeleton stands proud, as if it has got nothing to hide from the world, with the might of a warrior who looks at the world he had just conquered.

The great Adi Shankara (first Shankaracharya) of the eighth century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas. When a young boy of eight, while wandering in the Himalayas, seeking to find his guru, he encountered a sage who asked him, "Who are you?" The boy answered with these stanzas, which are known as "Nirvana Shatakam" or "Atma Shatakam." "Nirvana" is complete equanimity, peace, tranquility, freedom and joy. "Atma" is the True Self. The sage the boy was talking to was Swami Govindapada Acharya, who was, indeed, the teacher he was looking for.

These few verses can be of tremendous value to progress in contemplation practices that lead to Self-Realization.
 

1)	I am not mind, nor intellect, nor ego,     nor the reflections of inner self (chitta). [more] I am not the five senses. [more] I am beyond that. I am not the ether, nor the earth,     nor the fire, nor the wind (the five elements). I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
2)	Neither can I be termed as energy (prana),     nor five types of breath (vayus), [more]     nor the seven material essences, [more]     nor the five coverings (pancha-kosha). [more] Neither am I the five instruments of elimination,     procreation, motion, grasping, or speaking. [more] I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
3)	I have no hatred or dislike,     nor affiliation or liking,     nor greed,     nor delusion,     nor pride or haughtiness,     nor feelings of envy or jealousy. I have no duty (dharma),     nor any money,     nor any desire (kama),     nor even liberation (moksha). I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
4)	I have neither merit (virtue),     nor demerit (vice). I do not commit sins or good deeds,     nor have happiness or sorrow,     pain or pleasure. I do not need mantras, holy places,     scriptures (Vedas), rituals or sacrifices (yagnas). I am none of the triad of     the observer or one who experiences,     the process of observing or experiencing,     or any object being observed or experienced. I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
5)	I do not have fear of death,     as I do not have death. I have no separation from my true self,     no doubt about my existence,     nor have I discrimination on the basis of birth. I have no father or mother,     nor did I have a birth. I am not the relative,     nor the friend,     nor the guru,     nor the disciple. I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
6)	I am all pervasive. I am without any attributes,     and without any form. I have neither attachment to the world,     nor to liberation (mukti). I have no wishes for anything     because I am everything,     everywhere,     every time,     always in equilibrium. I am indeed,     That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,     love and pure consciousness.
	Sanskrit:
	Mano Buddhi Ahankara Chitta Ninaham Nacha Shrotra Jihve Na Cha Ghrana Netre Nacha Vyoma Bhoomir Na Tejo Na Vayu Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham
	Na Cha Prana Samjno Na Vai Pancha Vayu Na Va Saptadhatur Na Va Pancha Koshah Na Vak Pani Padau Na Chopastha Payu Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham
	Na Me Dvesha Ragau Na Me Lobha Mohau Mado Naiva Me Naiva Matsarya Bhavah Na Dharmo Na Chartho Na Kamo Na Mokshah Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham
	Na Punyam Na Papam Na Saukhyam Na Dukham Na Mantro Na Teertham Na Vedo Na Yajnaha Aham Bhojanam Naiva Bhojyam Na Bhokta Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham
	Na Me Mrityu Shanka Na Me Jati Bhedah Pita Naiva Me Naiva Mata Na Janma Na Bandhur Na Mitram Gurur Naiva Shishyah Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham
	Aham Nirvikalpo Nirakara Roopaha Vibhur Vyapya Sarvatra Sarvendriyanam Sada Me Samatvam Na Muktir Na Bandhah Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham Source: Himalayan Masters

Recovery

Today is the first post operative day after my trauma surgery. I have been operated for a Grade I open comminuted tibial plateau fracture with bicondylar plating.  I had sustained a few injuries after a head on collision with a car on Saturday evening about 40 kms outside Coimbatore.
I had finished seeing some OPD patients in the morning and then operated on a patient before leaving for Vellakoil that fateful evening. For unknown reasons, I was tired since morning and slightly irritable too. I shouted at OT staff and spoke in a depressing manner with the cashier that day. I then left for my house, picked up my clothes for the next day and set upon for the drive. It was five in the evening when I started, still bright, with heavy city traffic slowing me down. Just after crossing Palladam, I am on my usual road at usual speed, debating whether to stop for coffee at my usual coffee stop at Pongalur. I remember seeing a lorry coming towards me in the opposite lane and then all of a sudden a car appears from behind the lorry and within a fraction of a second, the car had hit me head-on. All I remember is the sudden bang, I open my eyes and realise I had bit my lip, the airbag has been deployed, everything is fuzzy, smoke coming out of my dashboard, and I was struggling to breathe. the driver side door wouldn't open. Then I realise I had injured my left knee - proximal tibia. Then I find out that my right ankle hurts too.
Soon I see people rushing from outside, some trying to pull me out of the car through the passenger door. I feel totally weak, unable to stand on walk with blood oozing from my left knee. They made me sit erect along the road but I prefer to lie down. I now realise I have double vision. Someone comes close to me and reassures everything is alright. A lady is crying next to me. Somebody reassures her too. Then some one from the crowd appears claiming to be a doctor. I tell him I work at Ortho one. They make me wait for a few minutes when an ambulance arrives they throw me inside the unmanned ambulance on a metal trolley and I am speeded to Ortho one.

The love and care I have been receiving for the past two days has been tremendous. I have been taken care very well for the past two days at every level. What is daunting is the next 2 -3 months, the time I am going to spend in bed, walking NWB with crutches. I have never had so much time of inactivity with limited mobility.
I have planned to spend this time fruitfully, consciously.

Few things....

It's been long I wrote...few reasons, you need the mindset and the time to write, and then most of all, your urge has to be so much that you want to write, leaving everything else aside.
I was pained by the news of the killing of Gaddafi. I am not a pro Gadaffi mobster or something..I am just not happy the way human race is evolving, or perhaps not evolving.
I heard a psycologist speak in our national meeting that 75% of us get an instinct to kill somebody at some point of time in our life. Somebody, who can be your worst enemy or more commonly a person sitting next to you and annoying you while you are on the bus. It is just a momentary instinct. Most of us dont execute it. The psycologist felt tht this instinct is form the days of the cavemen. We liked killing. Have we changed much?
We talk about civilisation and justice and human rights and all that sh-t. But just in the past few months, we saw a mass genocide of tamils in Srilanka, we saw the brutal shootout of Osama bin laden and now Gadaffi. I dont justify the actions of Osama or gadaffi. The way human race behaves has not changed over millena. The whole concept of killing for revenge is not human, It is animal. Killing a fellow of your own species, how evolved that is! when that is done by countries claiming to be the epitome of justice and human rights, this means we 've got a long long way to go...
Killing would not end anything, killing would not end tyranny, it would foster if at all, it would not end terrorism, it would not end enimity, it would not end hate, to see this exuberant zeal in killing seen around the world today, it is just disheatening.
will a day come when we can forgive...deal with crime in a more humane way...really love peace...
will that day ever come?

The mind and its dances

Thought is solid as anything else in the world. A simple thought on repetition several times in the mind  becomes as big as a monster and frightens you with its might. It gains power from yourself, your mind and with its enormous power, enslaves you and convinces you to act on its whim. Any thought, for that matter, is as powerful, good or bad. Amplification of a thought makes it the most powerful thing in the world, capable of creating or destroying universes.