Life and music!

Can you imagine our life without music?

Cancer’s a Funny Thing!

J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964)was a British-born evolutionary biologist and one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of population genetics. He wrote comic poem before his death making fun of his incurable rectal cancer. I think that this illness is one the most horrifying surgical diseases which unfortunately is discovered late due to its location and lack of experience on physicians side! So, I think rectal examination is a "must" in any patient-doctor encounter when they are seen by their family doctors! Most of people are uncomfortable with this part! For them it is a private area but for doctors it is another natural orifice like mouth!! Once I asked one of my patients to get ready for the exam and he looked at me and said "you first to see how it feels!"


Cancer’s a Funny Thing

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.
Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills,
It can be killed before it kills
Upon a scientific basis
In nineteen out of twenty cases.
I noticed I was passing blood
(Only a few drops, not a flood).
So pausing on my homeward way
From Tallahassee to Bombay
I asked a doctor, now my friend,
To peer into my hinder end,
To prove or to disprove the rumour
That I had a malignant tumour.
They pumped in BaS04.
Till I could really stand no more,
And, when sufficient had been pressed in,
They photographed my large intestine,
In order to decide the issue
They next scraped out some bits of tissue.
(Before they did so, some good pal
Had knocked me out with pentothal,
Whose action is extremely quick,
And does not leave me feeling sick.)
The microscope returned the answer
That I had certainly got cancer,
So I was wheeled into the theatre
Where holes were made to make me better.
One set is in my perineurn
Where I can feel, but can’t yet see ‘em.
Another made me like a kipper
Or female prey of Jack the Ripper,
Through this incision, I don’t doubt,
The neoplasm was taken out,
Along with colon, and lymph nodes
Where cancer cells might find abodes.
A third much smaller hole is meant
To function as a ventral vent:
So now I am like two-faced Janus
The only* god who sees his anus.
I’ll swear, without the risk of perjury,
It was a snappy bit of surgery.
My rectum is a serious loss to me,
But I’ve a very neat colostomy,
And hope, as soon as I am able,
To make it keep a fixed time-table.
So do not wait for aches and pains
To have a surgeon mend your drains;
If he says “cancer” you’re a dunce
Unless you have it out at once,
For if you wait it’s sure to swell,
And may have progeny as well.
My final word, before I’m done,
Is “Cancer can be rather fun”.
Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan
The NHS is quite like heaven
Provided one confronts the tumour
With a sufficient sense of humour.
I know that cancer often kills,
But so do cars and sleeping pills;
And it can hurt one till one sweats,
So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.
A spot of laughter, I am sure,
Often accelerates one’s cure;
So let us patients do our bit
To help the surgeons make us fit


*In India there are several more
With extra faces, up to four,
But both in Brahma and in Shiva
I own myself an unbeliever.

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
Ray Bradbury (1920 - )

The tragedy of life!

“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

Steven Weinberg

I think we will never know the essence of this world and the answers to many questions. Death is the most tragic event in our life. Every time, I see a dying patient, young or old, it reminds me the sadness of this misfortune!

Khayyam was questioning the same matter in his fascinating poetic way:

"We are the puppets and fate the puppeteer
This is not a metaphor, but a truth sincere
On this stage, fate for sometime our moves steer
Into the chest of non-existence, one by one disappear"

Music of yearing and longing

I was introduce to Lhasa' music by a friend.I am mesmerized by her voice, smoky vocals, dream-like imagery and an ability to look life straight in the eyes, they call it.I have not been able to stop listening to her for the past 10 days!!

She also has had a fascinating life which has made her character and art, her nomadic childhood.