Driving ..

Driving on Bangalore roads is at times a dangerous thing to do. What if you are in a car with someone who is just learning to drive ? Well, need I say more ? :-)

I had promised one of my closest friends that I would let her drive my car. The wonders of the Indian driving system has ensured that she already has a valid 4 wheeler driving license, without ever having driven one :)

She was very confident. Perhaps a touch misplaced confidence  ........

It was a thrilling experience to say the least !! The kind of thrill you face when you jump out of the plane and your parachute fails. Or the kind you get when you realize the oncoming headlight which you thought belonged to a bike is really that of a tanker lorry with one light non-functional:-)

After 30 minutes of intense near misses, missed braking points for humps, stalls in mid road and abuses hurled at us by a truck driver , we were done. My cardio-vascular system was responding as if I had just finished running a marathon ( Not that I can run even 42 meters, but a nice comparison to put nonetheless )

Looking back at the half hour from the comfort of my bedroom, I have to admit that it was not all that bad ;-). Just the common mistakes all of us make when we start. I am the co-passenger described below, cop for short, pun intended ;)

• Stalling in first gear while starting, and again and again and again . cop begins to get a touch nervous.
• Popping the clutch too fast after shifting to second gear, resulting in a violent lurch forward. cop gets the impression that he is sitting on a horseback rather than in a modern car
• Not braking for the hump / taking it in the wrong gear, resulting the cop nearly hitting the roof due to the choppy helicopter like vertical lift
• Swerving suddenly to right to avoid vehicles on left rather than slowing down or even stopping causing a near heart fail condition for the cop
• Forgetting to apply full clutch while stopping in gear resulting in stall. Only minor blood pressure increase for cop on this one
• Inability to start the car without going backwards or stalling while on an up-slope. The last one resulting the famous maneuver of cop actually getting out of the passenger seat and into the drivers seat after traffic pile-ups in all directions

Did she really do all of the above or am I just listing the stuff that I did while learning ?? ;-))

Scientifically it has been proven that victims of severe trauma often have a distorted idea of what really happened. I take refuge in that study just in case the above list offends anyone :-). Also as a writer, I am allowed to take a few creative liberties.

Incredibly, I am ready for more . I guess it gives me topics to write about in my blog :-))

Defection of the taste buds

What if my cooking has been such a brutal assault on my taste-buds that they are finally beginning to die ? What if they have given up the ghost, surrendered, sold out to other less 'talented' cooks ?

God knows, my taste-buds are so happy and over the moon when I eat out. I mean it could be any Tom, Dick and Harry place and not a squeak from them, they like it all. The moment I start my cooking the protests start. "Too much chillly", "Too little salt" , "Its ok, but it lacks something" , "not quite there yet" , "if you say that is a curry, then I'll believe it". I don't believe these guys !! To think we were all part of the body called Pradeep, and now they are shameless defectors. Shame on you taste-buds, shame on you !!

Well they say Genius is rarely appreciated in his lifetime. Add one more name to that list .....

Cooking tip

Came back from office today at 11 pm and made appams. Ate them with the egg curry that I made yesterday. Now if you are wondering where the cooking tip is , here it comes

Turn off the gas burner once you are done making appams .

Rather disastrously, the humble one forgot to do this. Happily I settled in front of my TV with my late dinner. 20 minutes later I strolled back into my kitchen only to be greeted by this incredibly strong aroma of red hot metal. Quick glance at the gas confirmed my worst fear. Thankfully my non stick tawa is not damaged .

This happened nearly an hour back, still there is a strong smell in my kitchen :-)

Happy birthday to me !!

And several years back a 4.5 kg baby was born, and the world was never the same again !!

I used to look like this when I was very small. The abnormally big head is surely an indication of superior intellect :)

I guess I will sing myself a birthday song tomorrow, cut an imaginary cake and head off to work. Yet to decide what the birthday special dinner should be. It is just me who will eat it, so should not be a tough choice to make ....

Happy birthday to me , happy birthday to me !!

Random Thoughts

I suppose all of us have had moments in our life when we thought what the whole point of our existence was . What is your calling in life ? Is it to work in a certain company ? Is it to help people ? Is it teaching ? Writing ? I will turn 32 shortly and I still have not figured out what exactly I want to do.

Occasionally comes the moments of despair when everything seems hopeless, followed by moments of peace and harmony when the world seems a perfect place to live in. Is it just me, or is rest of the world also like this ?

One thing you always hear people say is Life is all about choices. Can you really tell which of those choices were really made by you, with no other incidents/persons influencing you ? None, I bet. So does that really mean that I have been just a pawn ever since my birth, with everything programmed to happen in a certain way ? I would like to think otherwise. I am getting into The Matrix territory here :-) , which happens to be a movie that I absolutely hate.

I can tell you one thing life that is absolutely precious. Taking a walk with your 4 year old daughter and just listening to her shooting questions and comments at you non-stop. The world through the eyes of a 4 year old is so refreshing. I know it sounds very cliched , but it is surprisingly true !!

Robert Frost and medical students

I am not well read in Frost ( or poetry in general for that matter), but there are some lines that somehow stick to you over the years

Like the classic
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep

Or the lesser known, but equally memorable

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now why this sudden burst of poetry , you may ask. Well, the poems above must be appealing to any student in Kerala unfortunate enough to choose medicine as their career. I share part of the pain as my wife is a medical student too.

Now here comes the "unfortunate" part of the choice of a medical career. You would know that MBBS is worthless, you need an MD to survive. If you want to excel, DM is a must. Here is where the completely illogical compulsory rural service bond enforced by the Kerala government comes into play. See the table below to get a sense of this atrocity. 

Degree	Years to complete	Bond period  (years)	Amount to break the bond ( Rs. Lakhs)
MBBS	5.5	3	5
MD	3	3	15
DM	3	2	25

Total years for completion = 19.5 , assuming that you clear all the entrance exams in first attempt. You enter the system as an 18 year old, and if you are really brilliant, you can leave at the tender "young" age of 37.5 !! And during the bond period, you could be posted to any village health center, pretty much anywhere in Kerala.

Contrast this to engineering where right after 4 years of studies the students start earning. Higher studies in Engineering ?? You must be kidding !! Why this disparity of treatment is something that fails my logic. What we lack in rural areas is not so much in terms of healthcare, but more in terms of basic infrastructure like power and roads. So all the case of government to do rural service agreements for engineers, one would think ...

As a husband of medical student, I know I am doomed :((. There is pretty much no hope of a family life any time soon .... Maybe things will change , maybe sun shall rise from west.