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.

Getting better

I have been calling home frequently to get updates on how my Dad is doing. He is recovering and is in post operative ICU, he is not feeling any pain right now.

I guess he would be discharged later this week. I am going home tonight, tomorrow and day after are holidays here.

Project Paneer

As a part of my new initiative to expand my cooking horizons, I had lined up Paneer butter masala as my next item. As always, my off-shore consultant was kind enough to send me a very detailed recipe on how to make it. I followed the instructions faithfully and here is what I got !!

Looks nice, doesn't it ? Tasted awesome too !! :-). First time I can really claim that after making something. I will shamelessly re-produce the recipe here soon , continuing my history blatant plagiarism :-)

Cooking has been a good diversion for me today. Been struggling with the news of Dad developing some illness. He is scheduled for a surgery on Monday, hope and pray things will be alright. Initial indications are that it is something minor, hope that turns out to be true

No matter how much we grow up, we never handle the news of a parent not being well, can we ?

Updates from the lab

Orkut baba says "He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals." 

I say "He that falls in love with his own cooking shall never go hungry" :-)

Vada pav experiment turned out with satisfactory results. I followed the recipe given here . I made the vada a touch too big, I think. Also it had bit of a strong taste. I suspect too much coriander or garlic could have been the culprit. You are supposed to eat it with some chutney. Being a keralite, I of course opted for a coconut chutney with onions.

Was lying around this weekend when this sudden urge to cook chicken hit me. Chicken tikka is what I zeroed in on. I always prefer bone-less chicken, much easier to handle for novices like me. I followed the recipe given at the back of the tandoori chicken masala. Not too much of a recipe, though. Marinate chicken in lime juice and salt for half hour. Then marinate it in a mixture of curd, tandoori chicken masala, ginger and garlic for a further 2 more hours. I remember some one telling me that it is best to leave the marinated chicken in the fridge , so that is exactly what I did. This was followed by cooking in in my microwave in grill mode for close to half hour, need to turn the pieces around couple of times.

Turned out pretty ok, very different from the hotel version of tikka, but very much edible :-)

Plan to cook paneer soon, been pressing my on-shore consultant for a recipe, have not got it in full yet. Should be able to extract it in full in like 4-5 attempts, I know the drill by now :-)

They say "A fool and his money are easily parted", I say "A female and her recipes are not so easily parted" ;-))

Project Poori

Before I jumped in with Vada Pav, this thought stuck me today morning as to why I cannot make poori at home . A phone call to my off-shore consultant and discussions followed. The key outcome was the advice to knead the dough more than what you do for chapathi and make it soft. Also I was told you have to fry it in full flame and really hot oil. My previous misadventures with hot oil did make me a bit nervous, but I was confident I could pull it off.

Spoke to my on-shore consultant during the day and was told that dough needs to be hard, only then would pooris come out well. 180 degree phase opposition between consultants !! Not entirely un-expected. ( It is a bit like Kimi Raikkonen and Luis Hamilton are unlikely to take the same driving lines in an F1 course. Why ? Because each has their own distinct way of getting the maximum performance out of the car. I am more of a Sakon Yamamoto when it comes to cooking :-( ). Finally I decided to take the middle path, neither hard, nor too soft :-)

After all the kneading and rolling, I started frying them on full flame. The first 3-4 came out like stiff papads, very crispy. I hate it when pooris are this crispy. S.O.S call to on-shore consultant followed. Got the suggestion that I was probably over-frying them. Good tip, started taking them out a bit sooner and suddenly things were a whole lot better !! The aloo curry was 2-3 days old and was showing every sign of going bad, just was too lazy to cook more curry. So managed with it for the time being ;-)

I am getting pretty happy with the slow expansion of my range. Future projects in mind including baking buns and cookies.

A Wednesday

Just one day after my lament about no one seeming to care about terrorism here, I watched this nice Hindi movie called A Wednesday, which deals more or less with exactly the same stuff that I was mentioning. Maybe I should focus on screen plays now :-). Movie was nice, no songs or typical Hindi movie dramas. Very gripping, superb acting and a decent plot line.

Health is back to normal now. And my cooking speed is improving. managed to make 5 chapathis in around 25 mins from start to finish !! ( Used to take me up to 1 hour ). Happily reported this to my North Indian food consultant ( have a seperate one for non-veg, keralite food , cakes etc ;-) ), and immediately got ridiculed. Consultant claims she can do the same in 5 mins !! That is surely an exaggeration, no way you can do it in 5 mins start to finish. Or can you ??

Next in line is the humble Vada Pav. Hilariously, Shiv Sena is now interested in Vada Pav. They claim it is necessary to have a standard taste for it. Surely there are more pressing matters for them to focus on !! I guess I will wait for their standardized recipe , don't want to get stoned for cooking something else ;-)

Deja Vu

I was watching the shocking visuals from the Delhi blasts yesterday. I just could not help feeling an overwhelming feeling of bitter frustration as everyone went through their motions once more. The politicians expressing shock and sympathy, the news channels with their share of opinion polls and panel discussions, the mandatory cat fight between BJP and Congress. We have seen the same thing after the Mumbai and Ahmedabad blasts. Sadly, we shall see it again.

Picture this :  Some folks come in , murder 20 or so of our own citizens, taunt all of us with an e-mail which says "do what you can, but we will still kill you", and as a country we are not even outraged by it. Why can't someone from the government say something like "As a country we will not take this anymore. Wherever you are, we will hunt you down and we will eliminate you" ? In 2 weeks, no one will remember this, then they will strike again. In a different city, different head count and then the carnival shall start again.

Our own citizens being slaughtered in our own country, what do we care ? Life of an Indian is not worth much, is it ? Life goes on.

Does the word Indian mean anything any longer ? May be I am one of the very few idiots who still think it does

Return to blogger

Finally after sometime I am returning to blogging. Drove down home recently in my WagonR. It is a superbly scenic route to Calicut, especially once you enter Kerala. Sometimes it is easy to forget how breathtakingly beautiful God's own country can be. Couple of snaps clicked from the Wayanad Ghat section of the road is below, cameras can never do justice to this scenery.

My family came back to Bangalore with me and spent the whole of last week here. Yesterday was Onam and it was nice to have them around here. My wife and her team won a second price in their medical college pookkalam ( flower carpet ) competition with the following rendering, looked pretty nice

Unfortunately, I have been down with an infection since Thursday, throat pain and really high fever in the night. Gobbling up lots of medicines now.

Most of them induce drowsiness, so I am off to dreamland now.

Back in Bangalore

5 a.m , jet lag is really biting now. I am as fresh as a daisy and hungry !! Had a miserable flight back as usual, I just hate being inside those aircrafts for 18-20 hours ..

Did not make much progress on the V2 specifications front. As a first step I have brought back the long discarded jeans back into my wardrobe collection. Now I can save on my washing expenses :-)

Listening to the song "Maa" from Taare Zameen Par.Such beautiful singing, with so minimal instruments.

  I can rarely listen to this song without a tear or two welling up in my eyes. Which would sort of tell you why Pradeep V1 has been having some ups and downs of late, just the heart taking over the mind :-)) Internal wiring at birth, nothing I can do to change it, I guess.

Another song that always moves me, Hallelujah from Shrek. Again, just a piano as accompaniment, beautiful singing ....

V2 ..

You might have read about my Aloo paratha and cake versions 1 ,2 ,3 and so on.

Now what happens if you decide to launch a new version of yourselves !! No, I am not kidding. Just think through whatever you think are the problems with the current 'version', and come up with a plan for version-2.

What are some of the things that Pradeep - V2 could do with ? The question is definitely very deep.

So let me think a bit more and get back on this one :-)

Trousers, buttons and Engineers

How many engineers does it require to sew back the button on a trouser ?

Wondering where this question came from ? Let me explain. The amazingly lazy lifestyle that I have adopted has resulted in a few expansions in my life. Now generally expansion is considered good - expansion in your salary, expansion in roles and responsibilities, expansion of your house - all are just great. The expansion that I am referring to is around my waistline. You don't have to be the brightest bulb in the room to realize that this is NOT an expansion that is desirable.

And you don't need to have a PhD in Mechanical engineering to understand the stresses and strains experienced by my trouser button, which has been fighting a valiant battle for survival against my waistline. Well, sometime last week , the unthinkable happens. I hear a pop sound around noon in office one day. Sure enough, there goes the button, severed from the umbilical cord that tied it to my trousers. Sadly I picked it up and put in my pocket.

Now the options for me were (a) To buy a new trouser (b) Sew the button back on . Being a non-IT engineer , the pay check more or less ruled out option (a) . I am not much of a tailor, but hey if the other option is to actually spend like 1500 Rs on a new pair, bring it on buddy !!

Frantic search of the home landed me with the tools for the job, the thread the needle. Several challenges popped up as soon as I start stitching. The main one being the apparently simple process of pushing the needle from one side and getting it through the hole of the button on other side. I just could not get them aligned. On the rare occasions in which I did manage to thread it though, I also managed to maintain a 100% hit rate on my finger !! By the time I finished stitching, my fingers had neat rows of perforation marks. I will omit the bloodbath details in interest of the family audience :-) All the bloodshed paid off in the end though, got my button back on and the trouser is ready to go !! It is stuck at a slightly odd angle, but hey , who cares as long as it does the job ..

Pradeep the tailor though may not have too much of a future, I doubt very much if I am gonna make Versace turn over in his grave. Unlike Pradeep the cook, who will definitely give Gordon Ramsay a run for his money :-)

Quote

Walk a mile in my shoes, you may find that it is the most painful and loneliest walk you ever had ... ( source : myself )

In U.S !!

Finally landed here in Albany yesterday evening around 6.30 pm. Flights were long and tiring and usual. The Bangalore Frankfurt one was ok as I slept through most parts. The Frankfurt-Washington DC one was awful , could not sleep a wink and nearly 9.30 hours !! The DC-Albany one was just about an hour, the plane looked awfuly shady though. One of those Embraer jets which looked as if it is falling to pieces. There were 2 seats which were damaged and had no back rest !!

Slept like a baby yesterday. Woke up at 3 am watched some TV and fooled around on the laptop, then slept back again 4 am, just like a baby would do ;-)

I had booked a Mazda or equivalent car. When Hertz lady told me that they will give me a small upgrade,I thought maybe I will get a Corolla or Camry. I got a Ford Edge SUV instead !! Now I am in trouble , the thing is so big that I am finding it tough to manouvere around. I will be doing a demo run to Walmart today, hopefully would reach there and not the police station :)

We went to Lathay Biriyani yesterday for dinner. Most of my colleagues here have been in US for past 2 weeks and are really desperate for Indian food :-)) The food was excellent, better than Biriyani's you get in most places in Bangalore.

Today will mostly be just some shopping and roaming around. Have to catch up with some work also later in the day.

Will the real me please stand up ?

I had a bit of time for reflection in my last trip home. If you have been reading my blog, you would know that I do this reflection thing quite often !!

Looking back at the past 8-9 months, I realize that a lot of the time I have been behaving a bit out of character. I have complained and whined a lot, which is unlike my normal behavior of just accepting things the way they are and moving on silently. ( At least I think that is my normal behavior. I know that self-assessment often leads to wrong conclusions in behavioral analysis)

Which begs the question , will the real me please stand up and be heard now ? My sense of humor seems to have taken a back seat. Need to bring that passenger back to the driver's seat for sure !! The ability to make others laugh , to share a good laugh and even laugh at yourselves from time to time , is a grossly under-estimated quality in a person.

Being the darker side of me is no fun, I am off to the fun side now !! :-)

Abhinav Bindra, you beauty

Finally I witnessed something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. An Indian winning gold medal at the Olympics !! Just incredibly happy that this long long period of shame has finally come to an end. I'm a blogger from a gold medal winning country now, don't mess with me !!

Started off my trial work from home program this Friday, turned out really well. I really should have done this a long time back. Better late than never, I suppose.

Indian cricket team of course slumped to a miserable spineless defeat once again. One idea that was doing round in our office was that let us use the cricket players as targets for Indian shooters. Interesting one that, I must say :-) .

I have this nasty feeling than within couple of years, it will be Abhinav who ? . That is the sad state of recognition for our true heroes ....

I am planning to travel to the U.S from 16th to 29th August. I am a very reluctant traveler, just hate the thought of spending 7-8 hours inside a plane. I get more leg room in local BMTC bus !!

But coming back to the main thread- Abhinav Bindra, you rock buddy. Thanks for restoring some sense of pride to all Indians.