Homeless to Harvard

Homeless to Harvard..........Sounds like two different worlds connected by a bridge. I was just surfing for movies and was attracted by the title. It is a story of a homeless teenager who gets into Harvard! An incredible story of creating a destiny exactly opposite of what could have been.

What is even more incredible is that it's  a true story. Liz Murray (Elizabeth Murray) and her sister were born to parents who were drug addicts . Walking into the kitchen and witnessing her parents giving themselves shots with needles and blood splattered on the walls was a part of her upringing. Her mother once tried to sell her sister's coat to a drug dealer to procure coke. Liz was a brilliant student but she dropped out of school. Her mother had never gone to school as she ran away from home at an early age to escape her abusive father. Liz's life changed when her mother died of AIDS and she became homeless. She realised that she is going on the same path as her mother. She decides to go to school . Takes extra classes to complete four years of high school in two years. She is still homeless but she doesn't let the school know. She works to eat and sleeps on the subway. She is determined to change her life.

The turning point comes when she starts looking for scholarships to go to college and finds about the New York Times scholarship. She writes the essay and posts it one day before the last date. She is called for the interview and wins the scholarship.

Despite of all the hardships Liz Murray has no trace of bitterness towards her parents. She always loved her mother dearly and still does. Her story is beautiful and inspirational for a lot of us who are tied down by our tiny hardships.

Liz Murray graduated from Harvard. She is married and recently had her second child, a daughter she named after her mother. She has written a book ' Breaking Night' and is an inspirational speaker who  runs workshops to help people discover and construct better lives for themselves.

The drug dealer ,whom her mother tried to sell her sister's coat had refused to take it. He instead gave her mother a coin . Her mother had come home frustrated and threw away the coin. Liz kept the coin which had the serenity prayer inscribed  on it's back. She considers it a source of strength and a beautiful memory of her mother Jean Murray.

Teach like a Lion....

His voice had an amazing enthusiasm. It exuded the knowledge and command he had on the subject. Anatomy lecture hall at KGMC animated and came to life  when Prof. Mahdi Hasan delivered lectures . 


Though he was retired, by the time we joined the college back in 1999 , but his love for teaching medical students brought him back to the lecture theatres as an honorary professor. His initial lectures for our batch was on Histology. I always had trouble with the microscope but I loved his lectures. More than the content of the lectures his passion for teaching mesmerised  me and I hated to miss any of his lectures. 


The best was when he taught us anatomy of the brain. 

The day of the lecture  he entered the  lecture hall  with a human brain on a tray and a large dissection knife. He sat down with an easy smile and started slicing precise sections at different levels of the brain and it seemed like the text book had come alive. 

We were all enthralled by his method of teaching. His loud clear voice reached the last benches ... no 'straining to hear' required. He would teach actively moving around making dramatic gestures with his hands ... almost like a seasoned actor on the stage or a musician charting the depths of music or a magician creating a spell. No one could doze in his lectures ( an impossible thing to do in his class). He taught us the neurological pathways, one of the toughest things to grasp , by making us Role play! What fun was that : ). 

He enjoyed and relished every bit of his teaching life. He had his eureka moments during teaching, like a yogi would get enlightenment during meditation. Difficult concepts spontaneously simplified themselves as he taught. 

The best thing about this passionate professor of ours was that he always said and lived by it... 

“Teach like a Lion but ask like a goat...” (the emphasis should be on teaching and not setting a tough question paper.) 

But what  motivated me to write all this after 13 years ? 


It was a picture circulating on the internet that I stumbled upon to my great delight. Our beloved professor was receiving Padma Shree from the President (the first one to receive it in the field of anatomy ). It was an immensely  proud moment and I felt totally thrilled . 


 In a time when teacher student relationship has lost it's sheen and education has become a business we Georgians are lucky to have had the opportunity to gain knowledge from a teacher like Prof. Mahdi Hasan.


This is my way of saying that I am privileged and blessed  to be his student and he totally deserves this honor.

Desta mander... God's work ... living Right...

Have you ever been to those stinky public urinals?


Natures call seems a real torture then. That typical suffocating stench could make you gasp for fresh air. You might hold your breath while your grimacing face is reflexly covered by your hand or 'kerchief. But the good thing is you can always leave that place just in time .....


 Imagine somebody who can't escape it.... 'cos her body itself has transformed into a stinky urinal.... and no matter how much she tries the stench never leaves her... and to add to her misery people shun and despise her...she is ostracized..


  I am talking about a much neglected obstetric condition caused during childbirth called  of vesico-vaginal fistula in which injury to the bladder during prolonged labour leads to constant leaking of urine for the rest of the women's life. It's not life threatening but that constant leaking is life damaging...


 In third world countries like India and Africa where good obstetric care is not available to a large population a good number of young women suffer from VVF post obstructed labour.... In Africa 1 in 12 women and approximately 3 million women worldwide suffer from VVF(vesico-vaginalfistula).


Now imagine that such a suffering young woman meets somebody who treats her and transforms her into a human again ....What would you call that ....??? I would call that reconstruting a broken life and mending a hopeless heart.....

Well this angelic person who does God's work is Dr. Catherine Hamlin who had worked in Africa (Ethiopia ) doing reconstructive surgery for VVF almost her entire life. With her husband she constructed a Addis Ababa Fistula hospital in 1974... Since then they have cured around 30,000 fistula patients.... I was introduced to her amazing work in 2009 when she got the Right Livelihood award for dedicated work in Africa.... which is an alternate to the Nobel.... Hats off to Dr. Hamlin....and to her 'Desta Mander' (Village of joy ).

The Determined Danseuse:The Journey from Dying to dancing through life.

I was flipping through the pages of my personal journal of 2005 and I came across a few pages that I had ripped off the Reader’s Digest issue of March 2005. It was an article about an extraordinary girl who fought her illness and went beyond to become an inspiration. Well I googled by habit and found a link that said she has survived 25 years of kidney failure.

Niketa Ghiya is the second person under the label Featured on this blog  after Tejaswee Rao. Niketa was diagnosed with Renal Failure at the tender age of 15. She went through renal transplant when both her kidneys failed. The post transplant steroids turned her into an obese 20 year old with hirsutism crushing her self-esteem. She did her graduation but following that it was just managing her health. Her breaking point came when she developed cataracts and was operated at the same time as her grandmother was being operated for cataracts .... she failed to find a reason to live and the next blow was the beginning of failure of her transplanted kidney.

Luckily the medication worked and Niketa was in much better health.  Dr. Rajapurkar ,the Director of the hospital where she was getting her dialysis , brought a turning point in her life when he rebuked her “Why is a young ,educated woman like you wasting her life . You are now well enough to do something useful”. Those harsh words made Niketa retaliate but when she learned that Dr. Rajapurkar suffered heart attack at 29 and despite going through several surgeries did not give up on his profession she was determined to change things . Dr. Rajapurkar ‘s words transformed an ailing fragile body into a determined soul.

“Yes living with simple pleasures of life is difficult but I do not believe in being idle and living on sympathy”.

Niketa did not take long to discover her passion and destiny. She had learned Bharatnatayam in her childhood and after her first performance (arangetram) she was diagnosed with renal disease. She took back to dancing , found a teacher who though worried about her health was totally spellbound by her determination. Her first performance was at the Annual Function of Dr. Rajapurkar’s Hospital. Despite the fragility of her body she sailed through. Niketa decided to raise money for poor kidney patients who do not have money for dialysis . She has been doing that for the past 10 years . People have been inspired by her courage , determination and talent. Help poured in from all corners to raise funds and arrange funds for her noble pursuit. The lady of courage refuses to tone down her performance as she does not believe in compromising on it.“I want people to see a proper performance , not a patient “Her spirit to live “a useful life for as long as I live “ has made her survive the disease for 25 years.

The last lines of the article in the magazine quoted the song “Har pal Yahan , jee bhar jiyo ... Jo hai sama Kal ho na ho”. For some reason I had written those lines in my diary in February 2004 and I had found only apt to rip off those pages and stick it adjacent to that page.

Niketa is a true inspiration , someone who does not inspire through preaching but by practicing. She raises funds through dancing her way against adversity but more than that she raises hopes in the eyes of those who are suffering the hell she has conquered. Hats Off to you Niketa... I am inspired.

http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/GUJ-AHD-kidney-failed-her-but-she-dances-her-way-to-life-2175823.html

"Memories" "Loved ones" "19th january".....

This one is going to be incoherent and long. Most heartfelt things are. I would try to weave it in a way I felt it and probably all hearts with the natural frequency as mine may experience resonance. My need is to let it out. A plethora of emotions and weird link ups.... memories and some very hard to bear bitter truths of life unfolded compelling me to burst with words as I admire a vague warm aura aptly named to match her qualities as she was in life ...

I came back home today morning after a night long emergency shift at the hospital which went hectic and chaotic ...ended well ... but a little slip of memory made me make a mistake... and a call from the Senior Doctor made me feel crappy. I reached home in a dark dissatisfied mood ... an unintentional goof up that won’t have any major consequences except an annoying delay in an operative procedure.It felt stupid to feel that way after working all night.

As I entered home there was a lot of old stuff strewn all around .We are planning a major change of place in a few months and my mother is clearing up a motley of stuff that has piled up over the years. Old clothes ... books... antiques... letters ... papers... which lay dumped  in the storeroom with no real use.

She was just amused at how my brother never throws away stuff. She shows me a handmade watercolour birthday card he made for mom more than a decade back and a self –created amusing post-card.

“He keeps everything... never throws a thing...”

In my sulky mood I talk in my head “may be 'cos it’s hard to throw away memories...”
 This thought made me recall the face of a patient from last nights duty.As  a routine history taking procedure I came to know that her dad passed away due to lung cancer three years back .I could see her pain while she told me that.

“Oh my ... it must be so hard on her ...” I almost  self-talked. Then she revealed that she got addicted to sleeping pills for more than a year  and was on antidepressants for around two months after her father’s death. I was warm and supportive and just said it was a natural reaction to a personal “catastrophe”. Though calm on the outside I felt a chill pass down my spine.

“It must be scary to lose a loved one specially a parent or a child”...

I shirked the thought instantly 'cos I don’t even have the mental strength to dwell on it.

“Memories”.......”loved ones” ... suddenly both thoughts merged but soon they were overshadowed by the thoughts of the “slip up” that nagged me still.My thought trail was broken by mom's query.

“How was work?” “Did the patient deliver  for whom you left early”.

“Well we tried and she progressed well but then the baby got stuck and we had to do an emergency caesarean (I kept the medical jargon away)....it was tiring ....and the poor patient was so exhausted .” I replied and retired to freshen up.

Another flash from the past night

“Doctor I want my baby to be born today not tomorrow.” The patient in labour had communicated last night while I examined her.

“Why?”

“Cos tomorrow is 20 january and they say number 2 is not good .”

I had smiled at that superstition and said “ Well all numbers are good and it’s really not in our hands ..”

Soon after the patient was in too much pain to worry about numerology.

I had my breakfast and I understood that the sleep deprivation is making my mind flash unrelated stuff but a few words echoed in my head without permission
 “ memories “
 “loved ones”
 “19 january”.




 I felt uneasy and decided to log in check my mail and read some good blogs before I  catch up some sleep.My inbox showed a comment on my blog post "Lajja" by a blogger named "Indian Home Maker (IHM)".I read the comment and decided to read her blog.I was happy to find a very interesting blog to read without much surfing.However the picture on the sidebar which I thought was the blogger's photo had a subtitle that said "Tejaswee rao , My daughter ". The dates beneath the picture made me realise that Tejaswee   was n more .Then I realise that I had read about her demise on an early August morning in 2010.  I had gone very upset while reading about a young teenager and an excellent blogger who succumbed to Dengue.It made me angry and sad at the same time.I still have a vague memory of that article.I guess it said a cake recipe was her last blog post.

By weird coincidene today I was reading Tejaswee’s “Letter to the Future “ ......

I would take the liberty of selecting some words from it which she chose to write at 17 years of age to her future daughter ...so that her daughter  can know what she wanted to say when she was her age.This letter somehow ended up giving me solace .....

“Don’t be scared of making mistakes. I am, but that doesn’t stop me from making them all the time. It just makes me more conscious of every trip and stumble, when I pick myself up again.”

“I want you to have principles, and stick to them. If you believed something once, you had a reason to think that way. Don’t let peer pressure make you forget what you once stood by. But don’t be stubbornly resistant to change either.”

“I want you to know, that everyday is a challenge, but that every time you walk out that door, there will  be someone waiting for you to get home to whom you can proudly display your battle wounds. There will be people who’ll try to change you to suit their needs, but for each of these, know that there are others who’ll help you change to better yourself. Learn to recognise the difference. I took me ages… you won’t always find people exactly like you, but no matter who you are with be yourself "

“Never forget your ambitions, even the ones lost or changed. They have strange ways of cropping up again and fitting into your life. Am I a vet or an editor? Or do I work for the Indian Administrative Service?”

“Never, ever make the mistake of convincing yourself that your instinct is wrong. If something looks or feels wrong, then it most probably is. Trust your instinct. Remember the cat, Puppy? The one I told you about? If I haven’t yet, then ask me… I once saved him with pure instinct. It’s a long story.”

“Do I sound like a teenager to you?

Enjoy each day like it’s the last one you’ll live. Is this saying still a cliché?

One day you’ll meet the guy you’ll love. Maybe you’ve already met him. Wasn’t it the headiest feeling in the world when he said he loved you? It was for me. But, also the scariest. It takes a trust I’m still learning to give.

I dream big, and I watch my dreams fall. Right now, I have the strength to rise.

Listen Kid, I love you. I’ve never seen you, but it’s as if I’m talking to myself all over again.

Is this a selfish letter? In a way, yes, but it’s heartfelt.

Lots of Love,”

I was amazed... impressed ...soothed ...comforted.... and sad all at once. Yesterday was her birthday. If her belief of living a very long long life was granted she would have been 21 now.

I flipped through the pages of her blog ... listened to perfectly lonely.... was taken aback by her blog post “Growing old and dying early” .The sad irony just made my heartache....

Last night even after trying  our best  we could not deliver the patient normally and had to do an emergency caesarean section ..... 19th of January was about to end and I wondered if my patient would reach the OT in time to deliver on the date she wished for.

At one 1:30 am 2011.... I jotted down in the post operative notes ....

“Female baby weighing 3.69 kgs  born  at 11:43 pm  on19^th January 2012”.............





 Dear IHM (Indian Home Maker)

You are  a wonderful mother as reflects in every bit of Tejaswee’s blog that makes her live on. She was aptly name and she shall exude optimism ,warmth and beauty like the  sun even when its distant and melting away .I do not know if 20th january was a bad date  but after going through Tejaswee’s blog through yours ...I am sure of one thing 19 January  is an awesome date .....!!

( With this post I start a featured section on my blog... where I want to acknowledge all those who make a difference by being themselves.... thanks Tejaswee for being “you” ... and lots of love..RIP....)