Of Blues, Beverages & Show must go on!

OF BLUES, BEVERAGES & SHOW MUST GO ON!

Monday blues is not new for anyone in this world regardless of being a school kid, college going teen or a working professional or even a seasoned war veteran. In my opinion, Monday should have been named as Munday instead of Monday for the fact that it brings a lot of mundaneness with it. The quality of Munday being very ordinary or lacklustre may be attributed to another fact that it comes after the Sunday which in turn should have been named as Funday. The Fun that Funday brings with it, even in sleeping and eating is really phenomenal. Anyway, regardless of giving a thousand rationale you still feel lazy to get up & reach to that alarm on a Munday morning. One can assume that a new week brings a new challenge & new people to work with & new surprises but let us face it. For eg. In your own neighbourhood, in your own school & in your own class how many new things are you going to meet? Even if you bump into something new & exciting you will soon realise that “It is the same cake in the new cup”. Speaking of cups, the only cup that you like is filled with tea. You listen to the old tragic Octal hits as it is the only mood that you have.

You somehow push the day & venture into the new day, the Tuesday, which can be called as Twosday as you have successfully came to the second day. You still feel the blue inside you but somehow make the day Useday by doing something that may work. You listen to the love songs of the 70s & 80s and have a glass of milk, hoping that the mood would somehow make you love your work. The thing that you managed to pull on Useday unexpectedly fructifies on the third day and it becomes a Winsday for you. Well, you feel elated that your work somehow worked in the end and so you end the day with a melodramatic list of songs and over a cup Jaljeera hope that you can have a happyday tomorrow.

Tada! There comes the Curseday which more aptly named than any other day curses you right in the morning. As you were happy last night you didn’t realise that you slept very late & to add to your own agony, you even forgot to keep your alarm. So you wake up late, worriedly hurry to wherever you had to be an hour ago. All the while thinking what that one person whom you hate the most in your life would say when s/he sees you reaching late. To your astonishment the place is empty. You feel relieved that you have somehow managed to reach before others or you may even go to the extent to think that, even others had forgot to switch on the alarm and that everyone have overslept. Mind believes what it wants! Anyway within minutes all your day dreams will be shattered as you learn that everyone are returning from the morning break. There you stand in front of others like a flag mast on an absolutely windless day. Adding injury to insult, your work whatever that worked goes awfully wrong! You think why wouldn't the world meet a grave calamity so that everything comes to a standstill as of now and you end up cursing the Curseday. Back in your home you listen to the Spanish & Portuguese songs about the revolutionary heroes of the Latin America over a cup of steaming coffee and immerse yourself in a time that you can only long to be in but never belong to.

Then comes the Fryday, the day that you get fried. You don't know if you can continue anymore or not. You wish you can quit or you would even feel it is better to be fired than to fried in this place. All that makes you to endure is the light at the end of the tunnel or may be just the Fun at the end of the week. You start to think about all the happy people in this world & you suddenly realise that countries in Arabian peninsula & most of the Islamic countries have a holiday on Fryday! You wish you had the Elvish power of magic with you & end the day with golden hits of Elvis. The day fades away slowly in your cup of Chocolate milk.

Somehow you find some new spirit in you as Satireday is going to be the last working day. You get an instant shot of creativity and find a wonderful thing on which you can work on for the next whole week. You start to prepare for it & suddenly you get a satirical response which in reality means NO from the person who is superior to you in the organisation. S/he says that it won't work & assigns you to another task which you neither like nor could do. Again in the afternoon, after the lunch you wish you were a Jewish & could take the Sabbath. You come out of the office in the evening and see everyone going out happily to their home. You slowly surrender yourself to the cup of Tulasi tea and lose yourself in the eighteenth century German composer's magnum opus.

You wake up early in the afternoon on Funday & make up your mind that things will work from next tomorrow. You somehow derive the power to push on from the “Roots of Reggae” & get a crazy idea to wander inside the concrete or complete jungles & take off. You come back to make your plan for the world domination during the week over a cup of a soda that you bought while roaming the jungles & listen to the Elton John version of “Show must go on...”.

BUILD BLOOD

On March 14th, I went to the District Government Hospital, Rae Bareli to donate blood as it had been a long time since I last donated blood. Although I wanted to donate in December I have forgotten it due to the hurry-burry created by Peer learning workshop & Jagriti Yatra. I was happy to donate it after a gap of exactly 7 months. The last that I donated was on 14th of August, 2012 in Chennai where my friends from MAATRAM THAEDI organised a blood donation camp in an engineering college.

To give you a prelude I have been in Rae Bareli for almost 6 months now for my project with Lok Mitra. & I have never visited any hospitals in this place. I went to the hospital & asked for the blood bank as usual. To my surprise I got the information from the old man who stood behind me in the line not from the man inside the information counter. It is either the people here are extremely helping (& informative) or the authorities are lethargic in their responses. Whatever. I got the information & walked towards the Blood Bank. The scene was similar to all the government hospitals that I have seen crowded, busy, lazy, long queues, a little litter here & there. All the same. Except for one thing... There was PAN everywhere. I won't be amazed if Uttar Pradesh is going to be called as "RED STATE" in some years from now, similar to the Pink City. Anyway as usual I navigated myself through the PAN spits & reached a very crowded place. It was like a detention centre in a police station. People of all kinds (mainly the poor) tall, short, women, men, children, Muslims, Hindus & the others like me were also there. After at least 90 minutes, I was done & returned to the office of Lok Mitra. 

The main reasons for me to write this are as follows. 

 I will try to crystalise the conditions that I have seen without adding too much of my words or my insights. I am not saying that all the things were bad BUT it was mainly disturbing.

I was happy that this is not the SAFE BLOOD!

1. Although the blood bank always constitutes of the testing centre too in other places that I have seen the storage room, bleeding room & testing centre are clearly demarcated. In Rae Bareli even though they were all separate rooms, the people were made to wait in the same place. It could have been organised better.
2. When I finally went inside the bleeding room after waiting for 20 odd minutes, I found that there was no forms to be filled. The man in-charge was with a notebook & he asked for the details. I told him that I will fill the details & then he handed me a form from inside of the locker. Given that the literacy of the people is generally low, it is the best way to maintain the records.
3. After me filling the form with some help from him (the form was monolingual & in the Rashtriyabasha) Then I was asked if I want tea or any drinks. I was amazed for two reasons... One - They didn't have any stocks of the drinks that were to be given to the donors after donating, signalling either that the donations were occasional or that the donors were not properly taken care of. I thought what if I say that I will have a bottle of Kingfisher! Anyway as usual keeping my humour suppressed, I went on to say to him that I needed Frooti.
4. The process started & I was giving the blood already. Well, there was no process at all. They didn't have a declaration in which I had to sign. They didn't have the height, weight & blood pressure test. Not even the Haemoglobin test. He opened the cover of the bag & directly inserted the needle in my vein. I was relieved that the bag was new & hopefully is not a carrier of any serious pathogens. 
5. The ball that he gave me to give pressure was a bloody hard tennis ball. I was not even able to press that. :-) Anyway that is not much of an issue as it is just the effort that matters.
6. After the bag got filled, he took the needle out & pressed my arms with a cotton. I bet I have never seen such a cotton in all my donations. I have donated in Thirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Madurai, Dindigul, Thiruchchirapalli & Chennai but never did I see such a piece of cotton used in a blood bank. The cotton looked as if it was taken out from a pillow or a mattress. It was not clean. It had many particulates.
7. When he went to give the bag to the testing centre, I drank up the Dabur Real Mango Juice & to my surprise there was only one dust bin with the symbol Bio-waste. So I was waiting for him to return. As soon as he came he threw that tetra pack in that same dustbin. To my surprise it had all the wastes including plastic tea cups, waste cotton, polythene bags & some left overs of food. The wastes could have been separated.
8. Then we spoke for sometime & when I enquired about the general availability of blood & needs of the hospital, he said that around 4000 units of blood are being used in the hospital annually. I was relieved as it was not too big. On an average just around 10 units per day.
9. He said that the people here are not open to blood donation & many think that giving blood will make them to die. He even said the story about a man who was not ready to give blood for his own daughter. I felt bad about this. He was sure to point out the reason that the awareness among the people is pathetically low & they hardly get any voluntary donations. 
10. At last I asked if I have to wait for any cards/certificates or if I can go. To my surprise (again) there was no cards or certificates given. The acknowledgement of the donation is something which is very important. I was eager to see the certificate given by the Uttar Pradesh State AIDS Control Society but that eagerness is to wait for some more years, I guess.

At last I came out thinking about the condition of the place.

I would be an idiot if I were to compare Rae Bareli with Thirichchirapalli but comparing two state capitals is not such a bad idea.

Lucknow population  - 4,588,455   - Number of blood banks found in internet - 30.

Chennai population    - 4,681,087   - Number of blood banks found in internet - 49.

 My search for blood banks in Rae Bareli ended up in vain.

http://www.asklaila.com/search/Raebareli/-/Blood%20Bank/?searchNearby=false

I was wondering about my fellow ICICI Fellows who will be working in this area in the field of Health. :-D

Losing oneself

Although I update all the blog posts of Gnana Deepam Trust (www.gnana-deepam-trust.blogspot.in) they are technically not mine. So this is my blog entry after a long time... Really long time.

"WONDERFUL, it is to lose oneself in the work.
BEAUTY, it is to lose oneself in the duty. "

                              - Anon.

I should admit that I have been lost many a time when I worked on some projects of Gnana Deepam Trust. I never felt bad about that. On the contrary I was more than happy to lose myself in my work. I have immersed myself in the works so much so that at times I would be preparing a document for the trust regardless of an assignment that is due or without preparing for a test. Similarly I have lost myself while playing CHESS or VOLLEY BALL!

In the recent times I have stopped doing the things that I hold dear to myself.

• Writing.
• Playing Chess.
• My poems.

When I look back for the reasons that made me to be away from all these... I wasn't able to find (m)any. May be the different things that I had in my mind like the poems, project, story, Gnana Deepam Trust, Experience, Civil service, age etc. made me to think a lot & as a resultI ended up doing nothing. MAY BE...

It is true that I can never take Gnana Deepam Trust out of myself. It is also true that I fell in love with the ICICI Fellowship. I have this huge passion for the story that I have came up with. Also true is that I am completely hopeless in my project with Lok Mitra. Although I am slowly picking up Hindi, it is almost impossible to prepare a curriculum & a manual for the running of residential educational camps for the out of the school students. All these things have kept my previously occupied mind as completely occupied!

BUT...

Was I really that busy? Was I too busy to write my journal?

The answer is  NO. NOT AT ALL!

I have always had problems with priorities and prioritisation. I will be doing something important rather than doing the urgent things. I slowly tried to move away from that and in the end I think I made a mistake. I prioritised the project (URGENT) now rather than doing the book & the blog & the game(IMPORTANT). When the URGENT things hit upon a rock & moved nowhere... I too was stuck. In fact I was lost... I didn't know what to do... I was unable to finish the URGENT things & as a result I was unable to move to the important things too...

Recently I started feeling the difference... I realised that I lost myself "TO" the work rather than losing myself "IN" the work.  The difference is just simple. It is the difference between you holding your breath inside the water for pushing yourselves to the limit AND someone pushing you inside the water. When you push yourselves to the limit you feel happy to have surpassed what you have previously did but when someone else pushes you inside it feels very bad & life threatening.

So... I found myself... I decided to swim & sink myself in the work.
So... I decided to losing myself in the work because...

"WONDERFUL, it is to lose oneself in the work.
BEAUTY, it is to lose oneself in the duty. "

                              - Anon.