King's Healthcare Management Strategy

You must have read my post on the very good and kind king, who reigned centuries ago, and started a hospital for the poor people to give them state of the art healthcare. If not, read all about it here. The population of the kingdom increased because of the excellent healthcare given at the hospital (low death rate caused that). So he had to start three more such hospitals. The king did not want all the hassle of managing these hospitals himself. So he decided to appoint a master manager. The system he developed was so perfect that it went down in the history of the country as one which would remain applicable for ever. Its outline is as follows.

1. The king appointed the oldest courtier (अमात्य) in his court (दरबार) for doing this work, believing the oldest one would be the wisest one. This was based on the universal belief that people gathered knowledge and wisdom as they aged.
2. The oldest person in the king's court (दरबार) could be from any specialty - carpentry, plumbing, oil well drilling, pothole filling, trading, jugglery, gossiping, politicking, and whatever else one could think of doing. This was a democratic process of giving equal opportunity to all.
3. The master manager was required to make decisions on everything, including medical decision making, procuring medicines and equipment, human resource management, discipline and whatever else that happened in the king's hospitals. This made the management truly 'out of the box', the likes of which could not be found anywhere else in the world.
4. The master manager was guided constantly on all matters by the elected representatives of the people. This made the healthcare truly democratic, where the people could decide if they should have their appendices out, or H1N1 tablets in, whether they should have cesarean section or abortion, whether the healthcare providers really understood what they were doing, or people knew better.
5. The master manager had his own coterie, whose most important job was to praise his actions, and criticize everyone who had other thoughts on that matter. This helped identify stupid people who could not make out which side of the bread was buttered. The master manager could then devote his time and energy to improving such people.
6. If not so knowledgeable healthcare providers from obscure corners of the kingdom told patients to go to these big hospitals and get specific treatment, the patients expected exactly that treatment, irrespective of whether the specialists thought that another form of treatment was better. Peoples' representatives and the master manager had full powers to take the specialists to task for not doing what people wanted done to themselves.
7. The master manager automatically acquired special powers after appointment to that position, so that he could decide who was in error without inquiring into the matter. This shortened the process of inquiries and reduced costs tremendously.

We have reproduced the principles of the system here so that people in other countries can appreciate the wisdom in it.

Hibiscus Flower With Four Petals: A Letter To My Father

तीर्थरूप दादा यांना,
स. सा. न. वि. वि.
एकोणतीस वर्षांपूर्वी रामनवमीच्या दिवशी आपण देवाघरी गेलात. त्यानंतर काही दिवस डोळ्यांना काहीच स्पष्ट असं दिसत नव्हतं. नंतर वर्षभर खिडकीत उभं राहिलं की रस्त्यावरून जाणारी एखादी व्यक्ती तु्म्हीच आहात असा भास व्हायचा. पण ते तुम्ही नसायचा. कधीतरी चमत्कार होईल आणि तुम्ही भेटाल असं गेली एकोणतीस वर्षे वाटत राहिलं. डॉक्टर म्हणून चमत्कारांवर विश्वास नसला तरी या बाबतीत तरी तसं वाटत राहिलं. या रामनवमीला श्रीरामांच्या देवळात तुम्ही नक्की भेटाल असं अकस्मात वाटलं. वयाप्रमाणे मन हळवं झाल्यामुळे तसं झालं असावं. हॉस्पिटलात लवकर पोचणं आवश्यक होतं तरी मी देवळांत गेलो. देवदर्शन झालं, पण तुमचं दर्शन काही झालं नाही. 'काहीतरी वेडपटपणा!' असं माझ्याच मनात आलं. वेडेपणा बाजूला ठेवून मी होस्पिटलात कामाला गेलो.

चमत्कारांवर विश्वास नसला तरी ते व्हावेत अशी माझी इच्छा सदैव असायची. आपल्या घरी असलेल्या जास्वंदाला नेहमी पांच पाकळ्यांची फुलं येतात, जशी ती जगात सर्वत्र येतात.. जास्वंद हे श्री गणपतीबाप्पाचं आवडतं फूल. एक दिवस चमत्कार होईल आणि आपल्याकडे चार पाकळ्यांचे फूल उमलेल असं मला रोज वाटायचं. दररोज मी देवासाठी झाडावरून काढलेल्या प्रत्येक फुलाच्या पाकळ्या मोजायचो. निसर्गाच्या नियमांत ते बसत नाही हे माहीत होतं तरी मी पाकळ्या मोजायचो. तुम्ही दिसाल असं समजून भेटलेल्या सर्वांकडे पहायचो, तसंच काहीसं. रोज पाच पाकळ्यांचीच फुलं यायची. पण मी पाकळ्या मोजायचं काही सोडलं नाही. काल रामनवमीच्या दिवशी सगळा दिवस उदास गेला. संध्याकाळी देवाला वहाण्यासाठी फुलं काढायला गेलो. काय सांगू? झाडाला लागलेल्या सतरा फुलांमधल्या पहिल्याच फुलाला चार पाकळ्या होत्या. मी फारसा पुण्यवान नाही. परमेश्वराने माझ्यासाठी जे काही केलं आहे त्यापलिकडे जाऊन मला चमत्कार दाखवावा येवढं पुण्य तर माझ्या गाठीशी नक्कीच नसावे. जेथे तुम्ही असाल तेथून तुम्ही मला भेटायला येऊ शकत नसलात तरी माझ्यावर तुमच्या मायेची पाखर अजूनही आहे असं दाखवण्यासाठी तुम्हीच हे फूल पाठवलंत असं मला वाटतं आहे. हा केवळ योगायोग होता असं इतर मंडळी म्हणतील हे मला माहीत आहे, आणि ते कदाचीत खरंही असेल. पण एकोणतीस वर्षांनंतर मनाला शांत वाटतं आहे. यापुढे तुमच्या भेटीचा ध्यास धरणार नाही. मी पुरेसं पुण्यकर्म गाठीला बांधलं तर पुढेमागे भेट होईल.

तोपर्यंत हे चार पाकळ्यांचं दुर्मिळ जास्वंदाच फूल तुमच्या चरणी अर्पण.

तुमचा शशांक

H1N1 Induced Discipline

Everyone is afraid of H1N1. It seems the political chief has already take at least three courses of H1N1 medicine that is not available at chemist shops. The last epidemic had seen very important persons demanding that medicine, and our hospital had reserved a stock exclusively for them. This epidemic saw no such stock, or if it exists, they are not telling us, possibly so that we do not ask for any.
Our team delivered a pregnant woman with H1N1 infection during one of our emergencies. (This one was different from the one that they had reported in the newspapers. That one was a known patient with H1N1 infection.) They had not known she had that infection until after the delivery. The next day I found a surprise waiting for me in the outpatient clinic. Everyone was wearing a surgical mask. I had always asked them to wear masks to protect themselves from infections when they examined a lot of patients in the outpatient clinic. They had never taken me seriously, and no one had worn a surgical mask before. Another surprise was an extension of this surprise. Every person's nose was properly covered with the mask. Otherwise the mask tends to slip down the nose in operation theaters - probably to make breathing easier.
"What is the matter?" I asked. "Why is everyone wearing a mask?"
"Sir, that woman we delivered yesterday had H1N1 infection. We had not known about it. So no one had worn a mask while conducting her delivery."
"But how does wearing a mask now protect you retrospectively?" I asked.
"All of us were not involved in conducting that delivery. Our senior resident was involved in her delivery. Now she has developed sore throat. We are wearing masks to protect ourselves from her infection."
Fear of H1N1 had succeeded where my wisdom and counseling had failed. When I entered the outpatient clinic a week later, everyone was without any mask. The senior resident had been shown not to have got H1N1 infection. Now there was no known threat. So no one was wearing any mask.
I wonder if they will ever realize that they can acquire that infection even from people who suffer from it, but don't know that they have it.

Intercom Substitute

I have to be grateful to the civic administrators for encouraging and promoting my intellectual development and innovative thinking abilities. I know I have probably not managed to achieve much in both areas, but that is not due to any fault on the part of the administration. Let us consider the example of our intercom system.
We have in the institute an intercom system that has so many phone terminals, that no one can remember even 5% of the numbers. Fortunately they provide us with a list, which is correct in about 85% cases at any given time. After the building was repaired by heritage architect hand in glove with a world class contractor (should I have said 'jointly' instead of 'hand in glove'?), the intercom system was never the same as before. One by one the terminals stopped working. For one week now, 99% terminals have been dead. They would not be repaired because of one of the following reasons (I don't know which one, and knowing that would not help us anyway)..

1. The hand in glove duo had been paid fully. That probably did not leave them any incentive to work on the same things again.
2. The duo did not work on the same thing twice, just like lightening does not strike the same place twice.
3. Local engineers could not repair it because they had no layout plans or circuit diagrams (or whatever) required for repairing the network. The duo did not and would not (despite requests) hand over the diagrams.

To add insult to injury, a divine thinker in administration sent us a Fatwa that mobile phones must not be used in operation theaters. This was akin to the situation आई जेवायला घालेना आणि बाप भीक मागू देईना in Marathi, which translated freely into English would be 'mother would not feed us and father would not let us beg'. I hope you understand the father figure was the duo, and the mother figure was the divine thinker. You must understand that a father figure can be a duo in civic world, because anything is possible in the civic world. To overcome this problem, I thought of a solution, which many of you must have played with as children.

The contraption consists of two styrofoam cups, their bases joined by a strong thin string. One person speaks into the cup while the other person puts the other cup to his ear. Then they reverse roles. This system has a number of advantages.

1. Cost effectiveness: the styrofoam cups are thrown about by visitors everywhere in the campus, after they drink tea or coffee from them. Thus there is a free supply of free cups at all times.
2. Using the discarded cups can be counted as participation in PM's swachh bharat abhiyan, which the civic body has forced the employees to participate in.
3. The string comes with stationery supplied by the health university for conducting exams. I have to admit the supply is often short, and civic body may have to buy some string. But it is far cheaper than telephone wire.
4. The design is simple, and can be mastered by anyone who can do anything with their hands. Surgeons probably would do better than physicians. The patients who need occupational therapy can be given this task, combining their therapy with social service.
5. Repairs are not required. These contraptions are of the 'use and throw' type, which is the strategy on disposable medical instruments in all the developed countries.

There are some disadvantages.

1. There is no scope for anyone to make money in tenders etc.(Oops! Should that have been in the list of advantages? It must be my old age which is confusing me.)
2. If pigeons sit on the string (after getting tired of flying in our corridors), sound transmission can be interfered with.
3. If any unscrupulous person decides to eavesdrop on any conversation, he just has to put a hook on the string, and fix a styrofoam cup at the other end.
4. Connecting two terminals around bends may be difficult. But the civic administration has a few people who are very good at driving employees around the bend. They can tackle this problem very easily.

I am not going to suggest this to the civic body, because their strategy is to ask people who make brilliant suggestions to conduct a pilot study on their suggestions. They might even get angry with me for interfering with their utilization of the budget earmarked for intercoms. They can read my blog, and use my idea as their own. It would be a win-win situation. They would get credit without having to make any efforts, and we would get functioning intercoms.

What To Do If Great Chief Is Dumb

You may have a senior officer who is dumb. If he/she knows he/she is dumb, it is OK. If he/she believes he/she is better than Archimedes in intellect and Covey in management, you can do any of the following, as recommended in ancient Indian text चाणक्यनीती.

1. Bang you head against the wall until you break your head (does not solve the problem, just provides you with something to do).
2. Tear your hair out until you go bald (comment as above).
3. Pray he/she gets a heart attack before you do (it is not cruel or unethical, it is just survival instinct. Prayers of this nature usually do not work, but there is no harm in trying).
4. You sell your soul to Satan for a greater price than he/she did (dangerous, not recommended. Satan may not want your soul in preference to the one he has already got, anyway).
5. Change job (best solution, unless you love your current job. There is no guarantee the Chief at the new place won't be as dumb or dumber anyway.)
6. Flatter the Chief's abilities (don't ask which ones, just do it).
7. Bribe the Chief (greed has no limits anyway).
8. Take voluntary retirement (tempting, huh? But that is running away).
9. Believe in fairy tales or Hindi movies, where the good guy wins in the end. (It does not happen that way in real life.)
10. Ask some agony aunt what to do (agony aunts give good advice sometimes).
11. Laugh it off. Don't you know idiots will be idiots? (the best solution).

Gudi Padwa

Wishing you Happy Gudi Padwa
A Happy New Year

(Note: the animation is not seen on an Android phone. It is not awesome, but if you wish to see it, see it on a desktop or a laptop in a web browser.)

Discordant Plants At One Spot

I found a plant growing on the outside wall of our building, below the level of our balcony garden of potted plants. I suppose the maintenance people will remove it when they decide it is the right time to do it. I obtained this picture because there are two types of leaves.

The black arrow points at a leaf of a Pipal tree. The red arrows point at what appear to be leaves of a Banyan tree. Both of them have sprung up from one spot where the drainage pipe is leaking on the outside wall of our building. There is actually no major leak, but some moisture does seep out, which is sufficient to nurture these plants. I could not (and would not) climb down to see if they were two separate plants or a single plant. I know it is impossible for them to belong to a single plant unless one was grafted on the other. This is not a possibility because they have grown on their own, without any human intervention or interference. It is still curious that they should grow at one spot, their seeds carried there by wind.

aiwa-naiwa Scam

There is a place in my city where electronic gadgets and computers are sold. It is not a wholesale market, but there are a lot of shops selling similar goods. I used to get computer parts there when my computer needed any. One day (a long time ago) I decided I would buy a portable AM/FM radio, tape player and recorder. There were a number of shops, of which I entered one.
"Take this one" the shopkeeper said. He looked sly (in hindsight at least).

I looked at it. The name of the manufacturer, 'aiwa' was on the front of the equipment. aiwa was a Japanese consumer-electronics company. I was impressed, because he was selling it for just Rs. 350/-. I paid the amount without any haggling, and brought it home. It worked for a few days, and then died. As with other items sold in shops on that road, there was no warranty for goods purchased there. I had lost my money. I looked at it carefully. There was a sticker, which said 'No. 1'. It implied the equipment was No. 1. The sticker was just to the left of the name 'aiwa'. I trust people, but not when I am cheated. I lifted the sticker from its edge using my finger nail. The name was 'Naiwa', and the sticker was covering the N, so that it looked like 'aiwa'.

It was brilliant. No one from the company 'aiwa' could catch them for using their brand name. A buyer like me could not drag the seller to a court, because it was not a crime to put a sticker on the equipment.
It has been many years. I have still not thrown away that 'Naiwa' radio/tape player/recorder, because it reminds me that I am not very smart, and there are plenty of crooks out there who can fool me. 

Equal Streets and Us

In November 2014, there was an ad, (or was it a news item?), which invited people to do the following. It is on their website if you wish to see it..

JOIN EQUAL STREETS EVERY SUNDAY!

There was an invitation to join them as they reclaimed their streets, to walk the line and join the journey:
They wanted to make a difference together. Then there were pictures in the Times of India almost every week, showing how well dressed people sat on the pavements while their children played on the streets, how some people displayed their craft to others, how some people taught children how to do things and have fun. The initiative was jointly with Times of India, and there was a lot of publicity. There were no cars permitted on the said roads at those times.

I wonder why these elite people took so long to see what the poor masses of India have been doing all along. Boys have been playing cricket on the roads irrespective of the traffic on Sundays and holidays. According to law, it is a crime to play on the road and obstruct traffic. When it becomes too much, sometimes police come and drive the boys away. Other children play other games on the streets. They do this because they have no playgrounds, no money to pay for club memberships, and anyway those clubs would not take in such poor children in rags. Then one wonders why these people who move in cars and create the traffic themselves on other days want to play on the streets and block traffic.

Is it slumming? For those who do not understand what is slumming, the meaning can be found by doing a Google search for "to slum". I found the following meaning.

To slum: to spend time at a lower social level than one's own through curiosity or for charitable purposes.

I cannot find any charitable purpose in this movement, but there could be some purpose that does not meet the eye.

A Psychiatrist Who Rocked

We are not speaking of the verb 'to rock' which means 'to be really great'. We are speaking of it with the meaning 'to move to and fro in one place'.

There was a psychiatrist who was a good psychiatrist. But he had higher aspirations. So he decided to dabble in administration. He took up a job of an administrative head, to be carried out along with the job of a psychiatrist. Being a friend, I warned him that being an administrator in a government or civic organization was not just administration, but was more of pleasing people with greater power, and that would be quite stressful to him, considering his straightforward nature. He thought he could manage. So he continued. Or perhaps the desire to wield power overpowered his caution. I left him to his work and continued with mine. After a few months, I met him again.
"You, know, I have no desire to hold on to power that I have. That's why I can continue doing my job" he said.
"Hm..." I said. I did not know where this was going, but I decided to wait and see.
"But it really gets to be too much at times" he said. "The political pressure, the pressure of higher ups at head office - all that is not good."
"Hm..." I said. I had an idea where this all was going.
"Now I have started feeling I should give this all up. I am continuing because I am really doing some good work, which I could not do when I was not the administrative head."
This all sounded fine. But his actions did not lend credence to his speech. He was clasping his hands together and was rocking to and fro, like people who are under stress do. This action is described by psychiatrists as one which reminds one of the time spent in his mother's arms, who soothed him as a baby by rocking him. What was disturbing was that here was a senior psychiatrist who had treated hundreds of people like this, and was doing it himself.
"I think you are severely stressed" I said. "You should give this up and go back to being just a psychiatrist".
I don't know if he liked the advice. Eventually he probably stepped on enough toes and someone else replaced him. Now he seems happier. 

Crows With Attitudes

We have put up a water dish for birds on our window sill. The original idea was to let all sorts of birds drink from it. But only crows have monopolized it. The sparrows are afraid of crows, and do not even look at the water dish. Pigeons keep a safe distance from the crows, possibly because crows eat non vegetarian food and are not very clean. Perhaps pigeons remember crows which stole their eggs from their nests. Other exotic birds (only robins and another type whose name I don't know) which visit our balcony garden prefer to drink water somewhere else.

Our crows are special. They do not just drink water and go away. They have attitudes. Though they look similar to me, I can identify three of them as individuals, from their cawing. They visit the water dish before retiring for the day. One of them is a gentleman. He caws as follows.
"Caw .. caw. Krrr caw Kawwaa? Kaa Caw" in a low volume, gentle voice. My interpretation is that he says "Hello, hello. How you doing? Good night." He goes away after I say good night. But it may not mean anything, because he goes away even when I say nothing. Please note that I never say "go away" to him.

The second crow looks sly. He also speaks softly. "Caw .. caw. Kra kraa ka?" My interpretation is that he says, "Hello, hello. Anything to eat?" Since we do not feed them in the evening, I usually ignore him, and he goes away quietly.

The third crow is stout, dark (I know all crows are dark, but this one is darker) and looks like a hooligan. He checks out the water dish. If it is nearly empty, he says angrily, "KRAA..KRAA..KRAA..KRAA", which I cannot put in words, because I am sure he is an illiterate (or its equivalent in crows) and cannot speak crow language. But I am sure he scolds me for letting the dish get nearly empty. A nearly empty dish in the evening means an empty dish in the morning, and he has to wait for us to wake up and fill up his dish before he can drink.

I could be wrong, but I have a strong feeling that I have met people with similar attitudes.

Naughty Father - Naughty Son

The woman was not only quite emaciated, but was looking tired and old too. But she was in the ward for pregnant women. Such an old woman with a pregnancy was not so common in our practice.
"Sir, this woman is admitted because she is HIV positive" my Registrar said. HIV is the virus that causes the dreaded disease AIDS.
"How old is she?" I asked.
"She said she was 28."
"Huh?" I said.
"Yes, Sir. She looks quite old. But she has a small child."
A small child ran to her from the door of the ward, said something, and ran out again. It was just three years old."
"That was her child" I asked.
"Yes, Sir."
"Is her husband HIV positive too?"
"Yes, Sir. We have referred him for treatment to the HIV center."
We finished round of that ward and went to another ward. On the way, the same child ran across our path, stumbled on a kitten, jumped, ran again, only to be caught and picked up by a man who looked like a laborer. The child giggled, the man grinned, and it was a happy moment for them.
"That is the HIV positive patient's husband" the Registrar said. "The child is always playing here. Quite a naught boy!"
I knew they were naughty in different ways, but could not help saying "Naughty Father, Naughty Son! No wonder that woman looks so old and tired at 28."

They Gave Happiness Too

Once upon a time, there was a  king who was very good and kind. He started a hospital for the poor people to give them state of the art healthcare. The hospital got so famous that patients flocked there not only from his own kingdom, but even from far off places, where the kings were not so industrious. The king appointed all sorts of specialists and super specialists, and provided them with the most advanced equipment that his gold coins could buy. There was no reason for the patients not to receive the best possible care there.
There was one department where they could diagnose ailments within the body by passing sound waves inside and catching the reflected sound waves to analyze them and get an internal picture on a monitor. The machine was called a sound machine.  The department had staff members, but they trusted the postgraduate students so much that they left most of the work to them. Difficult cases were handled by the staff members. A special feature of this department was that they not only provided diagnosis, but immense happiness to the patients and their treating doctors too. The following examples will make this clear.

1. There was a patient who had presented with acute pain in abdomen. The sound machine department diagnosed a ruptured aneurysm of the external iliac artery. The doctors panicked and started making arrangement to get blood bags by dozens. They started hunting for a vacant bed in any intensive care unit. The patient would be luky to make it, they thought. One maternity resident had a bright idea. She did a pregnancy test on urine of the patient, which turned out to be positive. So they operated on the patient in a low end maternity section OT, removed an ectopic pregnancy, found no aneurysm - intact or ruptured - and closed the patient's abdomen. The patient got well and went home happy. All doctors were so happy that it was not a ruptured aneurysm of the external iliac artery, that they threw a party  that required their cumulative salary for one whole month to pay for it.
2. There was a pregnant woman. The sound machine diagnosis was fetal Arnold Chiari malformation, a very serious condition affecting the brain which would make the child a permanent vegetative person. The doctors were very sad, and the parents and family of the unborn child were crying continuously. The baby delivered normally, did everything a normal baby was expected to do, and tests done after delivery showed the brain was completely normal. The relatives rushed to the temple of their family God to thank Him for His kindness. The doctors were ecstatic, but did not throw a party because they had just blown their previous month's salary on the previous party.
3. There was another pregnant woman whose baby was shown to have a serious condition called pyelectasis. You must have guessed correctly. The sequence of events was exactly similar to the previous case, including the rush to the temple for thanking the God and doctors not affording to throw a party though they wanted to do so very much.

When the king heard of all these happenings, he praised the sound machine doctors and felicitated their head with a big award. The winner of the award was asked by a journo why they did what they did (what fancy people call philosophy). He held up the award for all to see, and said "our approach makes them understand the true value of what they have. They would not be so happy if we told them all was well, and all turned out to be well. If they fear the worst and all turns out to be well, they cherish it forever. We give them happiness which no other sound machine doctors do." This philosophy of management was (and still is) destined to be famous, and be taught in management schools world over.Future generations will be able to say proudly, "we gave the world not only 'zero', but a 'sound-based philosophy' of management too".

Getting Reimbursement From The Civic Body

A great quality of the civic body is its ability to hold on to money that belongs to others legitimately, but found its way into coffers er... treasury of the civic body.. If one accidentally pays any money into the treasury of the civic body when there is no occasion to do so, the civic body understands that this man has no understanding of the value of his money, and goes all out to protect his money in its treasury. This is done so well that no matter how hard the man tries to get his money back, the civic body does not let go. I thought this was its behavior with other people, but not with its own. The civic body has another great quality. It does not discriminate between its own people and others. It treats all people the same way.
We have this ultraviolet water purifier that I got installed using our own funds. But once something is given to the institute, it belongs to the institute. So this water purifier became the property of the civic body. It needed annual maintenance, which we expected the civic body to pay for. I asked and the engineer told me to go ahead, pay for it, and he would get my money paid back to me in due course. I trust people until they prove themselves not worthy of that trust. So I trusted the engineer and spent my own money to get the maintenance contract into force. A month passed, but there was no sign of any reimbursement. So I asked, and was told by the clerk that the proposal was lost. Two clerks of the engineering department kept batting me from one to the other department, until I lost my cool and asked them if they thought I was like the common man who had to run from pillar to post to get anything done. Then they told me to submit our office copies of the reimbursement proposal. I did that. After another month and a number of reminders, they passed it and sent it to the cash section, from where we had to collect that measly amount -  rupees 1650/- They did not pay me for another month, saying they did not have any money. I wondered how it could be so, considering the fact that the annual budget of the institute was more than rupees 2000000000/-. So finally I called the  head clerk in the cash section and asked what the problem was.
"We don't have money" she said.
"Despite a budget of  rupees 2000000000/-?" I asked.
"No, Sir. We had some money in between, but I asked the concerned clerk to pay a small amount to every creditor, so that everybody got some of his money."
"All except me, when I actually work here and the others don't?" I asked. "If you cannot afford to pay Rs. 1650/- at a time, at least pay Rs. 10/- per day, so that I get some of my money at least" I said. My sarcasm must have shown, for she immediately changed tack and said, "OK. I will pay the entire amount somehow. Please send someone."
If you think I got my money right then, think again. I got it on the third day after that. It has been a great learning experience for me. I hope this post helps people learn from my mistake instead of learning the hard way.

Macho Women in Hospital

In olden days, there used to be macho men. Even now there are macho men. But whoever had heard of macho women? Someone had made a movie with the name 'They call me macho woman' in 1989. Other than that, there are few references to a macho woman. But now times have changed. We find macho women right at my workplace. I am not including the women security guards dressed in all black, like black cat commandos. Their uniforms incite terror in babies, but otherwise they look like other women.

I am talking about other women. There was one head clerk. I heard about her one story from other people, and read about it in the next day's newspaper. I knew this one used to be quite rude to doctors and administrative people. She was small, petite, and did not look macho at all.  But probably looks can be deceptive. One day she had a disagreement with the Deputy Administrative Chief, because he transferred her to another office as disciplinary action for doing something she (in his opinion) should not have done. So she went to see him, shouted at him, and held him by his collar and is said to have roughed him up a bit. He lodged a police complaint, and after an inquiry, she was transferred to another institute. He got so scared after this episode that he proceeded on long leave to recover from the mental trauma.

Then there was another one. She was from the healthcare sector. Her ordinary speech used to be in deca- or hectobels, instead of decibels. I understand there is no unit called decabel or hectobel, but I have used these words just to make the reader understand the volume of her speech. She was always fighting this person or that, sometimes both this person and that. She had an ongoing feud with her senior. The other day she went to ask this senior for an explanation for something she alleged the senior had done. The senior got scared and screamed for help when this woman allegedly threw a paper weight at her, and when that move was blocked, settled for a pincushion. A police complaint was duly registered. Further developments are awaited.

I have not witnessed both of these acts, and know about them only through sources like the newspapers and hospital complaints. If you do not believe these stories, perhaps we can arrange to get you introduced to these macho women, so that you can antagonize them and see what happens yourself. Our emergency surgical services and trauma center have just become functional after renovation and upgrade, and that may help manage the after effects.

Death Throes or Poltergeist Activity?

It affected our music system first. It was a quite expensive system manufactured by Panasonic. It worked well while it worked. Then one day it started putting out its CD tray like one puts out one's tongue for fun as a child, or as an adult if asked to do so by the doctor. Since the tray would be out, there would be no music. I opened the system and cleaned all dust inside, which was very little any way. It did not work. Then it started  running through all its menus in succession, which I could read in the display window. The only menu command it did not go through was the play command. Finally I pushed the tray inside with more than reasonable force and switched off the power supply, so that it would not put out the tray again. It does all of this every time I put it on to see if it is cured. I did not try to get it repaired, because it was easier to buy a new one. I did that and the new one is working fine.

Then my Amazon Kindle showed this activity. First its screen went all white, like deathly pallor. I charged it for almost two days, as was suggested by someone on a forum on the internet. Then its charging light and finally its screen came on. It started working. I switched it off and continued to do what I was doing when it displayed full function. Suddenly I noticed that it had switched itself on. This was something new. While I watched it, it started cycling through all of its screen savers. Then it started booting repeatedly. Finally it froze in early booting screen (with the picture of the tree it has, and a progress bar 1/10 filled below the tree). It has been like this ever since. Since Amazon does not repair Kindle, I opened it myself, and closed it when I found that there was no dust inside to clean, and no user serviceable parts that I could repair. I bought a Kindle Paperwhite, which is functioning OK.

I have not understood what happened with these electronic gadgets. Do all electronic devices get death throes like this, or is it Poltergeist activity, as was described in Harry Potter books by Ms. Rowling? Since I do not understand either of them, I am willing to believe both explanations, or even a third explanation, if there is one.