Hidden, screened, walled - the real us!

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up”.  Oscar Wilde

Have you ever been to a party and managed to be genuinely yourself? Without adjusting your tie or smoothing off your hair. No apprehensions when you walked, no mental counter checking of the words spoken or no suppression of overwhelming desire to laugh? I am sure most of the socially conscious people are able to understand the underlying meaning and will respond in negative. We all try to appear as the most ‘culturally sophisticated’ beings in a social gathering and neglect our ‘real selves’ entirely for a while.

And that’s precisely what happens when we sit in front of our PC and chit chat with a stranger, a colleague or even a friend on a ‘social platform’. Maybe our mental attire alters more than physical one but there are changes nonetheless.

Scientific studies too point out that a person is most comfortable when he is alone, amidst his own self or with people extremely close to him. And his level of ease declines when the number of people in his vicinity increases. Then how can one except his mind to be in a state of tranquility and natural true self in front of virtually a whole wide world??!!

The fact is that our brain automatically starts manipulating itself so as to ‘fit in’ the moment we type in www i.e., World Wide Web.

So much so for the ‘sub conscious’ state of mind.

Now, coming to the ‘conscious’ mortal chatting or putting up ‘updates’ on the various social networking sites.

Majority of us put forward our best foot much similar to how we act in our real lives when going to a marriage or a party, your first day at college or on a newly secured job. We tend to pick out the most apt words and present ourselves as a gentle, liberal friendly guy/girl even though our own genuine self maybe poles apart.

There is another class of people who believe in the mantra that virtual world is a place to crib and so they tend to pile up all their melancholy via various updates and uploads. These people are generally the ones who either suffer from an extremely low self-esteem or aren’t well adapted to the highs and lows of a life in reality.

Then there also exists a group of morons who are a malaise to the ‘virtual world’ identical to the ones we encounter in reality.

The point is that ‘whatever be the class of people, they are neither consciously nor sub-consciously themselves on any part of the World Wide Web’.

Reasons could range from our extreme dependency to easy popularity gained on social platforms. Plus it often happens that when we meet people in bone and flesh , imperfections are bound to appear while on the contrarily virtual media conceals all such human faults so the idea of faking perfect identity is not just more luring but also a sort of necessary gesture.

As Eddie Murphy said “All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece”.

The problem is the too much of sculpting can create even greater and more prominent flaws.

Such identity crisis is dismantling the idea of ‘being human’ and relations seem to loose their essential flavours.  Unconsciously, sub-consciously and more often consciously we are engaged in preparing a ‘tasteless curry’ without emotions and reality has already taken a back seat.

I began by quoting the great Oscar Wilde, and now I would like to end it by another quote of his:

“One's real life is often the life that one does not lead”.

In the tech savvy era of ours this quote somehow seems to make a lot more sense. Don’t you think so?

PS: this is an old post which couldn't get posted on my blog due to some reasons. 

 

Opinionated lot and the chaotic khichdi!

Opinions, opinions everywhere..not a single ear to listen them to! 

Ours is a tech savvy generation and we all know that. Children these days, cut their way directly through umbilical cords to iPods! Mobiles phones are our new best friends and gadgets an extended family.
Tech savviness has given birth to so many new social networking sites, discussion portals, instant messengers over the past decade. The result of which is an ever evolving and ever increasing number of opinions on any and every issue that finds a split second of a space on our mobile/laptop screens.

Humans have always considered judging their fellow species a birthright and with the advent of Internet where opinions afloat as freely and abundantly as mosquitoes in monsoons,our rights seemed to have received a stamp 'ISI purity'.

This opinionated generation of today cares  about everything and anything that seems to be occurring in the farthest of galaxies. Be it the #choices of a popular Bollywood actress or #losses of the Indian cricket team, we have been raising err typing our #voices, lour, clear, incessant and more often than not unnecessarily.

Pardon me for my bluntness henceforth and please bear my desire to wade through the same 'shallow opinionated waters'.

The issue that irks me most of the times is not why people speak out, but some inherent qualities that we possess as a Hindustani drive me crazily up the wall and I stomp my thumb, irritated, logging out of Facebook.

To begin with, we Indians believe in raising our voice. We have this preconceived notion that unless a man erects and upholds his #voice #number of lies #penis and of course the ever increasing vocabulary of #'Ch' words, no work or opinions can be sanely processed by another human mind listening to him on the receiving end. He does it with his children, his wife, servants, employees and he does it on social media. Happily throwing in a series of cuss words, proudly spitting out some more and also waiting to hear some more in the comments.

Secondly, Indians suffer from an array of eerie illusions! We certainly do! They range from illusions of grandeur to illusion of God's chosen to illusion of being a Mr. Right. 

Now when people with such illusions tend to judge and splatter opinions the outcomes of someone else being correct or wise is as rare is a tanzanite stone.

The story however, doesn't end here! We have been candidly passing opinions day after day and this infectious malice of vomiting out ignorant, baked and burnt opinions is becoming chronic by the day.

So much so that it has reached ad nauseam levels now. But our fellow social networkers and twitterati fail to realise or accept it. It seems that a trending news is religious chant that needs to be oft repeated in the form of tweets and statuses or you shall face God's wrath.

I am not against people sharing a piece of their minds or speaking up against issues that inflict upon us. I am only irked by the ever and increasing chunk of useless, half cooked, rotten and negative ones out there. And of course the repetitive ones. 

I seriously feel that now is the time to bring back some old adages to practice. To listen and analyse more and speak less. To De-connect and seek solace within. Or the day is not far when all our raised voices and agitations will bang those walls and die out. 
Unheard. Wiped out. 

The 'alternate' doctor!

We humans are functionally and fundamentally a complex combination of tendencies, instincts and inclinations. A very marked one, out of these, is to be a 'priority'. To never be an option or an alternative. Athough we are quick to chalk out our own choices and priorities, no one wants to be listed as secondary in someone else's list of importants.

The irony of today's time however is that we live in a world of ever increasing alternatives. Whatever displeases our sense of perfection even by Nano-inch is automatically replaced by something new. Which is why being an alternative is getting even more scarier in this extremely competitive and perfection demanding era of today. 

Having said all that, here I stand, a doctor pursuing an 'alternative' system of medicine. Yes, this very word alternative would make a majority of the world either pay no attention to it or neglect it ever so brutally. Many of you might question, why have an alternative system after all when the mainstream system of medicine is flourishing. Backed up by the greatest pharmaceutical giants it is now no more an orthodox system of medicine. The doctors of allopathic system are met with this dignity and respect, no matter what actually goes beneath the teachings of the coveted white aprons.

Oh no! Before you get me wrong or pity me or presume this to be one of those 'whining with a glass of wine' post, let me tell you then I plan not dirt slinging but of whining, well, I'm not very certain.

So anyways, having completed my BHMS this month (for those of you who don't know, BHMS stands for Bachelor of homoeopathic medicine and surgery) it scares me an awful lot to be labelled and reckoned as an alternate, a second choice or maybe the last of all. 

No matter the effort I have put in, the knowledge I acquired, the compassion in my bosom to treat and cure, the will to heal are suffering humanity-I will, most probably be unable to prescribe off this ailment of being labelled as secondary.

For many of you reading this, it may not seem to be a big deal but if you think of it all in terms of your health it might ring a bell somewhere near you. If you as a patient, come to visit the doctor with a biased mind, of him being an alternate how can there ever develop a primary doctor-patient relationship? How do you expect me, the doctor, to give you my best when I am just a secondary substitute?

How wise is it to label a doctor as a substitute or an alternate just because he practices a pathy that is an alternate system of medicine in the country? Haven't we, because of our ignorance, misinterpreted and mis-designated the doctors of today? The reason why the word alternate was attached to different systems of medicine was because they moved parallely with the modern system and in many cases worked much better than allopathy. Their principles and foundations being much stronger and older than the modern system. But as it happens in all civilisations, people judge rather misjudge the reasons and formulate new ones, the alternate system stooped down to the level of being a last resort and the doctors being called as quacks.

We, the doctors of alternate pathy may not be able to fight with the moneymaking pharmaceutical companies out there or with those who leave no stone unturned to prove us to be nothing more than a placebo. But we surely have hope. And our hope is our patients. The faith of our patients is what has kept our pathy consistently rising above all hurdles and proving that we can do miracles. 

I have no qualms in being labelled as an alternate if I am a priority for my patients. If they consider me something more, something above and beyond the last and final resort/try and error method. I sincerely wish that come soon the day we, the homoeopaths are able to prove what a wonder our pathy is. Giving homeopathy the place it truly deserves. 

Signing off, me, the alternate doctor trying my best to reach and help you with this extraordinary pathy!