Welcome to 's World

Inspiration

When does one decide what he/she wants to do with his/her life? Some may answer that question this way; it is all predetermined. If God has it written for you, you will do it. It’s in your destiny! It makes an interesting concept for a movie! If anyone has seen the movie Serendipity, you would agree with me.

I don’t believe in destiny because I believe that the concept was invented by people who are very lazy to achieve something in life. They are those people who have a lackadaisical attitude in life and are afraid to take decisions and back it up with action. Believe it or not, I am a lazy person too… I work hard to make sure that I am lazy.

Coming back to the point, when does one decide what do in life? Where does one draw such inspiration from? My mom used to teach science to high school children. She would always believe in making the subject as less pedantic as possible. She would conduct workshops, take the kids on field trips to the science museums, planetariums etc. She understood the importance of inspiration.

I have always been a very inquisitive kid and Lego blocks were my favorite when I was a toddler. As I grew up, I would dissect anything to know how it works. Sometimes it would land in me in soup. I had once opened up an electronic watch which was a birthday present for my brother, one day before his birthday.

I graduated to better things like the audio system, video cassette player, video cassette recorder, ceiling fans, computers and even motor bikes. Fortunately, the stuff would work even after I reassembled it. My grandma would joke, “If you become a doctor, you will cut off your wife’s hands and fix them right to left, just to see whether you can do it!” In other words, I was a terror to all my relatives. They all have a story to tell about me and now it’s a lot of fun.

My parents would encourage me to do well at whatever I would take up. I wasn’t much of the sports kind. I would read a lot of books on home projects and would try to make my own modifications to them. This was the phase of my life when I was sure I would venture into “home electronics”. I was into home security too and would design and construct various devices like the clap-switch, automatic garage opening system etc.

I was high into astronomy too and I read a lot of books. I fantasized that I would one day be a rocket specialist and would help put people onto Mars and other planets. I would spend many sleepless nights watching the stars and wonder if there was any intelligence on other solar systems.

Even though I liked the two fields - electronics and astronomy, the real inspiration was from this incident. I was in my second grade and I was being my naughty self. My mom was a specialist at channeling my energy into productive channels; or was I being the gullible kid, I wonder now!

She gave me the task of cleaning up her ‘Godrej almairah’. There were piles of papers which I had to rearrange in an order. While going through those papers, I came up an old piece of newspaper which was published in the 1970s.

It was a supplement to ‘The Hindu’ which was about the first heart operation in India that was attempted in CMC, Vellore. It had a lot of pictures that we taken during the operation. There was also schematic representation of the operation. My mom, being the science graduate and teacher, explained to me the whole procedure. That was the day I decided that I would one day operate on the heart.

The first heart operation I assisted was on a 15 year old girl who had a hole in her heart. It was the second day of my posting in the Cardiothoracic Surgery department. She was a very sweet girl and we chatted for a long time the day before her operation. She was in her high school and she too wanted to become a doctor.

The operation was successful and she was cured of her illness. (I guess I better not go into the details of the operation). The first question she asked me the next day was, “Doctor, how was my heart?” I might have touched her heart literally but she had touched my heart figuratively.

I met her after six months in the OPD and she told me that she was studying hard to get into Medical School. Her brief stay in the hospital was her inspiration.

While I was posted in the labor room, I would always see the newborn babies and I would wonder… what will this kid become in life? Will he/she be the next Aryabhatta, Albert Einstein, Sushrutha, Jagdish Chandra Bose, CV Raman, Satyajit Ray, Steven Spielberg, Aishwarya Rai, Amartya Sen, Arundhati Roy, Sabeer Bhatia OR Thomas ‘Neo’ Anderson?

And who will be his/her inspiration? You?

J Neo

PS: For my Gora friends: If you want to know who they are, ask me and I will tell you! Or you may look them up on Google. Who knows, you might find your inspiration!!