The Sentimental Idiot !

"I don't think I'm going to complete my project in time guys". Sherin said. I gave credit to her, at least she was thinking about work. 'Biriyani House' was packed that afternoon, we had walked over for our final lunch together of 2014. The loud clanging of utensils in the background only served to heighten the chaos inside the main dining area, we had to shout in order to be heard. Work-wise it had been a largely unproductive week. Coming to the office on the days between Christmas and the New Year was a challenge in itself. It is essentially a very confusing period between two long holidays. Karthik and I blamed our diet and briefly gave up our high protein sprout based lunch, we also started taking coffee breaks every 15 minutes but nothing was helping. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about work guys". I suggested. Most people on the table nodded in agreement. Then there was an awkward silence. That's when I realized on

Steve Jobs' biography is an interesting read. It is evident from page 1 to 656 that Walter Isaacson went above and beyond to present a fact based, accurate depiction of the Apple co-founder’s life. The book is brutally honest. I finally got around to reading it on a short weekend trip to Chennai.  While I’m normally a non-annoying co passenger, my fellow patrons on the bus were often distracted by my loud exclamations. On many occasions, I found myself pausing and saying out loud things like - ‘No way, there’s no way he did that’. In the end though I found Steve to be an interesting, complicated and controversial personality, all at the same time. One thing I could not deny was his unfathomable passion for everything that he put his time and money into, it was palpable in every page of the book. Whether it was him aggressively marketing Steve Wozniak’s circuit boards or pushing the Apple II’s team to the limits of exhaustion, his drive was incredible.

One thing I really missed about our first year in medical school was our classroom. I mean it, literally. It was this beautiful well lit oblong room with cross ventilation that could challenge the 'Hawa Mahal' in India. 80% of our subjects in year 2 were based on patient care and so they moved our classes to an odd square shaped room in the basement of our hospital. It was dark down there and it took  10 overhead lights to keep the room sufficiently illuminated. The acoustics were terrible, even with a microphone some of our loudest teachers were barely audible at the back benches. To keep a class engaged was no easy task for the speaker.  Not especially for a visiting psychiatry professor with a voice so soft, even dolphins had to strain their ears to listen to him speak. Dolphins are the best listeners! The first 45 minutes of his presentation are still a blur to me, I don't even remember the topic. But, from the 46th minute onward I began to