New Pictures and Family Visit

New pictures are up from my trip to Manali. Click the link below the rolling slides in the future to see all of the pictures. The full slide show has all the pictures from my trip so far. Click on the pictures to read the caption. Special thanks goes to my father and sister who have contributed, yet again, stunning pictures to the Dave family photo collection.

In other (and more interesting) news, my family has come to visit from the states. My sister stayed for a week in which we journeyed to Rajasthan (Jaipur and Ranthambore Nat't Wildlife Reserve). The pictures are up, but I'll write about it later. She left, but my parents stayed. We are currently in Gujarat after celebrating the 86th Birthday of my Guru, Pramukh Swami Maharaj. It was a pretty intense birthday party, if you will, considering that 250,000 people came to the festivities on the last of the three days alone. More on that later.

Enjoy the pictures. And thanks to the anonymous commenter (KM) for the kind words. I hope my trip to India is filled with experiences like that.

The Krishna Mandir and Divine Intervention

On the suggestion of the stone-worker (from the previous post), I began the journey uphill to find the Krishna Mandir. About 3 Km uphill, I realized I was lost. I also realized I was thirsty, and worse, hypoglycemic. I had two cups of tea before I left for Naggar since none of the breakfast stalls were open. It was now 2 PM and I needed food. I decided to give up and head downhill to a little Italian joint that had a four cheese pasta that was making my mouth water. Ahead I saw sunlight shining brightly in a clearing - I figured this was a sign, so I headed in its direction. Another uphill climb and I came across a troop of monkeys. Not what I was expecting. But the road went around a corner, downhill, on the other side of the hill from Naggar. Not wanting to get lost I turned around for food, figuring I at least found some wild monkeys. I made it about a kilometer downhill when I came across three women carrying their moss-filled baskets. They looked surprised to see me and the words slipped out of my mouth "I couldn't find the Krishna Mandir so I'm heading down" as if I needed an excuse to be walking downhill. "But it's only just a bit up the hill." And at that point I decided that, no, He really was calling, so I would leave my health state in His hands and go have His darshan.

As I came back up the hill, I realized I was retracing steps. I came across the clearing where I saw the monkeys. But the road around the corner was calling, and I couldn't look away. And so I started walking. And only 200 yards down that road was the Mandir. A beautiful, old, isolated, and hidden mandir. I had been so close. I took my shoes off and went inside and knelt before Krishna's murti and thanked Him for His darshan. Exhausted, I sat down, ready to faint from the lightheadedness.

And literally, right at that moment, the pujari came from around the corner holding a pot of jal and a laddu. "Don't ask me how, but Krishna made me to keep some jal and laddu ready this morning. I think He meant it for you."

This is perhaps what I would call my first really spiritual experience. Call it coincidence, call it divine intervention. But that laddu and few sips of water kept me from passing out right there at His feet. "Sit and relax," said the pujari, "where are you from?" "America." (Laughter) "That's amazing. People from Naggar hardly come up here!"

It's a pity that they don't. It has the most spectacular view of the Kullu Valley - trumped every other one by far. And the only sound is the wind. Even the engine sounds of the cars in the valley below didn't carry to the mountain top. After about an hour of drinking in Krishna's murti and the beauty of His creation, I realized how hungry I was. And no kidding, right at that moment, the pujari came out with a steaming hot plate heaped with rice, daal, and rajma. "You must be hungry - you must not leave without having some prasad." Screw four-cheese pasta. That was the best meal I've had... maybe ever. And with the best view ever. Me, my food, and the sound of the wind.

I've always heard that God takes care of His seekers. Take one step toward Him, He takes ten toward you. For the first time, I really experienced it. I wanted to give back - "Is there some seva I can do?" I inquired. "No, we're just a simple mandir." "Then can I leave a donation?" The pujari laughed. I didn't understand what was so funny. Then I realized why he was laughing.

In the first temple, church, mosque, anywhere that I've really deeply wanted to leave a donation - there was nowhere to leave it. No accounting office, no record book, not even a daan peti.

Figures.

Naggar

I was up at 6 AM on the morning of the 16th to catch one of the first buses headed to the town of Naggar. On Nirja mami's suggestion that it was a beautiful place (I didn't find out till later that she hasn't been there herself), I decided to go. It turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

The Rs. 15/- busride took about 45 min. and was my first experience with India's public bus system. Totally not as bad as people make it out to be. It was crowded like you wouldn't imagine, but not actually uncomfortable. I had to keep asking 'How far to Naggar?' to make sure I didn't miss the stop, but I eventually made it. My first stop on the climb up the hill was the Gauri Shankar Mandir, a 12th century temple dedicated to Shiva. The first thing I noticed was that I recognized the carvings. The lotus shapes, the plant pots at the tops of the pillars. They looked like older versions of the Swaminarayan Mandirs that BAPS is building now. There will be some pictures up for comparison.

The highlight of Naggar was not the temples, though. As I looked uphill, I saw a waterfall and decided I would climb to its source. As I climbed up its downhill stream, the sounds of the town, then the village soon faded away. I figured I would be all alone again. Then up ahead I saw a man sitting on the rocks by the stream, by himself. I folded my hands when he saw me as a silent namaste. As I reached him he asked where I had come from, and if I had spent a lot of energy climbing up the streambed considering that there was a dirt path not more than 10 feet away just up the embankment. I laughed and answered that had I been on the road, I wouldn't have noticed him sitting there. That's true, he said, have a seat. And he flipped over a stone so I could sit on its flat side.

He's a stone worker. You can see his colleague at work carrying stones in the recent pictures (my acquaintance is in the background). It's a brutish job, carrying 35 kilos of stone on your back like that. For the next half hour, though, my Rice degree gave way to the wisdom of a poor stone worker from the villages of India whose insights into life and religion left me thinking for the rest of the evening.

I came to India to see how Hinduism is practiced in its homeland. This stoneworker gave me some amazing insights. As we commented back and forth on the peacefulness of the surroundings he said,

"That's God's grace - you are made to live in a big, noisy, dangerous city. Yes, you have wealth and money, but you have no peace - that's punishment! Here there is peace. I'm not rich, but then again, I don't have to worry about trains blowing up or whether I can afford the rent. If I don't work, I don't get rotis. So I work for food. If I get it, it's thanks to Him. If I don't, it's thans to Him. I work for food. The rest is up to Him.

"I could make paisa into a Bhagwan like the city people do, but what good would that do? You think it brings you convenience, but its really just more of a headache. You wash your clothes in 10 minutes in a washing machine, but then work for hours to pay the electric bill. Big cars get stuck in big traffic. The worst traffic here is my neighbors herd of cows.

"I hear that in the city they think that God has forgotten us villagers. Bhakwas! (Garbage!) I have seen the madness of city life. It turns garibs (poor people) like me into bhikharis (beggars). God gives me the strength to work, the serenity of nature to surround myself with, and the protection of a village where I don't have to even have a door on my house to lock in the first place. I have food on the table and I have peace. I know what I could have if I worked harder, but frankly, I don't want it."

I get the impression that he's spiritually light-years ahead of the rest of us, and he doesn't even know it. I asked him if he goes to the mandir.

(Laughter) "Of course - I have darshan every morning at the Krishna mandir at the top of the hill. You should go there." And that was it. No satsang sabhas or large gatherings. Darshan in the morning for him was enough for God to pervade his whole day. I began to understand how Hinduism worked in the villages. It's not a religion in the villages. It's not something that is practiced. It is simply lived from moment to moment. It manifests as a contentedness. A freedom from want. In fact, every villager I saw higher up in the hills of Naggar was just that - content. Not because they didn't know what they could have. But simply because they didn't want it.

I began to wonder if they pitied my state of materialism.

Vashisht Village and Freedom

I made the next morning a late one, and walked out of my hotel around 10 AM to make the 3 Km uphill hike to the village of Vashisht. I'm walking everywhere and in the rarified mountain air, it's taking its toll, but I don't mind huffing and puffing my way along in air this fresh. You couldn't pay me to take one of those kerosene-doped rickshaws.

The village was supposedly founded by Vashisht Muni. Considering that he was Ramchandra Bhagwan's teacher in Treta Yuga, this town is pretty old.

The village itself is very quaint but unfortunately has been tainted by tourism. It's filled with cheap guesthouses and cheap dhabas (food stalls). I tired of the town quickly and kept moving uphill. Eventually, I reached the backside of Vashisht and as I walked through the maze of backstreets, I began to get the "What are you doing all the way back here?" looks from the residents. I ended up on a woodland trail and on a whim, decided to see where it led. I found a babbling brook and followed it up about 1.5 km, above all the houses and steppe farms. I sat there for an hour on a small stone slab that had been made into a crossing over the brook but hadn't been walked on in years, judging by the plant growth. I had an amazing feeling of freedom sitting there by myself. I could follow whichever path my mind fancied, and this far away from the town, there wasn't anyone to harass me to buy Kullu shawls - hell there wasn't anyone period. But I wasn't lonely - not in the least. Just peaceful. Feeling thirsty, I dipped my hands into the cold water for a drink. It was crystal clear moutain water. Cold and tasteless - pure snowmelt - just like water should be. I emptied my bottle of mineral water and filled up with the good stuff. This water was so delicious I was willing to pay whatever gastrointestinal price necessary to enjoy it. I suspected though, that there wouldn't be any.

As I trekked back downhill alongside the brook, I came across the first signs of civilization again - a trashheap dumped down into the brook gully. I'm guessing the water there charges a GI fee. It makes me sad that even the most beautiful parts of India are trashed by the locals themselves.

It makes me wonder. India needs the economic boon that tourism can give, but I am not entirely certain this country is ready for a tourist rush. The cheat-first-ask-questions-later attitude of the touts, rickshawwallas and the wannabe-priests combined with the dump-your-trash-wherever attitude of just about everyone except the tourists makes India a place that needs a change of heart before it reaches for the wallets of tourists. Otherwise they will come in droves once, and never come back. In all fairness, every country has this problem, but the economic disparities in India make it so in-your-face here that one has to make an effort to see the amazing beauty and rich culture that lays beneath it.

As I walked back through the town I stopped to eat at Chauhan's dhaba - and had one of the tastiest Malai Koftas EVER. Steaming hot. Perfectly spiced. Scrumptious. And filling. I then went for darshan in the town center's two temples, one dedicated to Rama and one to Vashisht Muni himself. The murtis in Rama's mandir are more classical, but the Vashisht murti is of the older stone-slab-relief design. It's really interesting to see the merging to philosophical lines of thought in practice in India. In Rama's mandir, the main sanctum has Rama, Lakshman, and Sita, but Hanuman is outside alongside a shivaling. Philosophically, the Vaishnavite tradition which includes Hanuman is very different than the Shaivite tradition - the Shankaracharyas and the Gurus will debate that to no end. My guess is that to the lay person, they are all just God. If they can't read the road signs, what can be said of the scriptures?

More on the practice of Hinduism in India later. Vashisht got boring by 4 PM and I turned in early back to Manali. I walked alot. Like 10 Km a day. Why is my potbelly still there?

The Rohtang Pass

The second day was taken up by a visit to the Rohtang Pass. This 13,000 ft.-above-sea-level pass is the Kullu Valley's only access point to the cities further north in Himachal Pradesh. Tourist buses (Rs. 210/- roundtrip) take visitors up to the pass, then bring them back to Manali. The day I visited (Nov. 14th) was the last day it was open to tourists because of heavy snowfall the night before. After that, only commericial vehicles can pass through it - and at their own risk.

The fresh snowfall made the place very serene. But its ability to erase tracks quickly gave an inkling of how forbidding a place the mountains can be. As soon as we got down, I moved quickly away from the bus (read: other people) and into the mountains. The 10 minutes of silence was stunning, for lack of a better word. The only sounds were my feet crunching the fresh snow, and the wind blowing more snow over my tracks. I came across some powerlines upon which hundreds of prayer flags had been hung, but further up, there were more, tied between rocks - tattered by the wind, their colors long since faded. A local riding a tatu (mule?) came up. I asked in my broken Hindi how long these prayer flags had been there. He held onto one strand and pointed to a date on written in tibetan (?). 1906. Damn.

Our silent amazement at the journey someone made up exactly one century before, most likely on the back of a mule was interrupted by the gleeful shouts of a newlywed couple frolicking in the snow. I was tossed into an impromptu Hindi movie as the husband began singing (very poorly) some love song to his wife who, despite her brownness still blushed. While definitely cute (and ridiculously sappy), it totally ruined my desired ambience of silence. I decided to make a snowman while I waited for them to go away. Bad idea. My hands froze immediately in the loose snow (that doesn't pack), I couldn't make a snowman, and the people didn't go away. The worst was yet to come though. Turns out Indians are their own worst tourists. As more of the people from our bus made their way up the hills, they brought with them bags of potato chips, bottles of coke, packets of biscuits and cups, all of which by the end of our visit, were sad reminders of recent human presence in the fresh snowfall.

And for as much as they complain that their cities are noisy and polluted, they came to the silence of Rohtang and instead of enjoying the silent and fresh air, they brought radios blaring bhangra and lots of cigarettes. My two Italian acquaintance, Marco and Tom, both avid smokers themselves, couldn't believe it either.

I am realizing that I really enjoy the sounds of nature and her silence. Even when she's noisy, she's not loud. And even the cacophony of the wind over the snow and the snort of the mule has a certain harmony to it. Maybe I'll buy a secluded hut in the mountains.

Busride and First Day in Manali

Wow. Manali was absolutely amazing. I think again, I'll share only the highlights and some of my thoughts that occurred to me along the way. Jean Marc made the astute observation that I talk a lot in the blog (which may be discouraging my readership). In that case, I'll try and keep it short and simple.

The Busride is worth commenting about in brief, mostly for the irony. Since foreign tourist season in Manali ended with summertime, the arrival of fall and winter brings the honeymooners who take advantage of off-season hotel prices and million-dollar views. So my busride up to Manali consisted of me, and a whole bunch of newlywed couples, henna'd hands and all. As the bus began winding uphill into the Himalayan foothills, the new husbands got their first taste of married life - holding their wives' hair back as they puked into plastic baggies. For the better part of 7 hours. Isn't love grand? I'm glad years of traveling have made my stomach pretty strong. Thanks Mom and Dad for all the busrides through the hills of Europe.

Manali is the last settlement in the Kullu Valley - the Valley of the Gods. And judging by the spectacular views from basically every point on the hillside, with the formidable snow-capped Himalayas in the distance, it's little wonder the ancients believed that this is where the Gods lived. Only they could survive the Himalayas, and only a place as beautiful as these valleys could be their sporting grounds.

My 'hotel' room had a million-dollar view of the Beas River - it flowed right by my window. A pretty good deal considering I paid no more than $7 a night for the room. But travels for the hotels? My first stop was a Tibetan monastery - the Nyingmapa Gompa. As I walked up to it I realized that it was the first time, despite my numerous previous visits to India, that I had seen a tibetan prayer flag. The main sanctum of the monastery was really interesting. The image in the center was most obviously Buddha (duh) but there were a couple of other murti-like images on the sides. One looked particularly angry - the carved skulls did wonders to that end. The visit ended up being a lesson in the fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism. One of the elderly gentlemen seated in the monastery saw my puzzled look and explained that they were Mahayana Buddhists, who acknowledge Buddha as a teacher - not a deity like the Hinayana Buddhists do. You can imagine my surprise when he said that angry-looking murti was a Vishnuswarup - a form of Vishnu. I asked how Vishnu fit into the picture considering that most Hindus believe Him to be God. Do you pray to him? Where does he fall into the Buddhist line of thought? He said that Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, like Buddha are all believed to be great teachers. You can pray to them and they may grant your wishes, but they are not deities. Interesting to see how despite Buddha's attempt at a clean break through the "Middle Way" Hinduism has worked its way back into Buddhist thought.

I weaved my way through a beautiful nature park that the government was obviously trying very hard to preserve. The Rs. 5/- entry gave access to a 4 sq. km park filled with virgin forests and beaten down walking trails. I walked and walked and walked, and for half and hour didn't see a single other person. That kind of silence is amazing. As I came to the back side of the park (and society), I realized I was quite nearby the Hadimba Temple. For those of you not versed in Mahabharat lore, Hadimba is a rakshasa (demoness), who, in disguising herself as a beautiful woman (I'm sure some believe that ALL beautiful women are this way...) woos and bears the son of Bhima, one of the five Pandava brothers. Their son, Ghatotkacha - half demon, half demi-God, and as a result very powerful - would be killed by Karna's only brahmastra (an arrow that will destroy any target), which Karna was saving to kill Arjuna. The temple itself looked like a fusion between pagoda and something else, and, being wooden, came out looking like something Native American. On my way out after having darshan, I was accosted by two young men that came up close to me and started whispering if I wanted to buy something. Remembering that tourists have disappeared from Manali in drug-related incidents, I figured they were trying to sell me drugs, and so I quickly walked away. About a 100 yards later, another two guys came up and asked me the same thing - and I finally heard what they were selling. Not drugs. Black market... Kesar? Why would I want to buy saffron on the black market? When I started laughing at them, they left me alone. Then came the ladies with the Angora rabbits. Didn't realize temple visits could be so humorous.

The last stop was the Temple of Manu. In the Indian tradition, Manu is the first man. Interestingly enough, he survives an epic flood that inundates the earth and, saving a number of species of animals along with him, repopulates the earth. Sound familiar? It is said that Manu meditated on the spot where the temple is built. It's a pretty temple and (prior to there being a large development around it) has a spectacular view of the Kullu Valley. I wanted to meditate there too. But it was getting dark and Old Manali doesn't have any street lights.

Hm... so much for short and simple.

American Oddities...

First, the democrats win both the house and the senate. And then the Owls win four straight. It seems I've just missed hell freezing over. Suddenly India seems so... normal.

In Manali...

Just a quick note from a (surprisingly fast) internet cafe. I'm in the small valley-town of Himachal Pradesh known as Manali. It's the last stop in the Kullu Valley, and the views are gorgeous. There aren't a lot of tourists here (now that winter is setting in) but there are a lot of honeymooners... It's funny to see Indian couples furtively flaunting the permanent cultural moratorium on PDAs.

Stories from the bus ride and the first day of sightseeing to come later.

Vindhyavasni and the Village

The Vindhyavasni Temple

I've posted pictures of the (late) Diwali festivities at the Vindhyavasni Temple in the nearby town of Vindhyachal. The place was amazingly crowded, but the thousands of diyas and the flower-petal rangolis were beautiful. The floor was absolutely covered in ghee (clarified butter) and oil for the diyas. "This is Bhagwan's kripa (grace)," said Dr. Ashwani, "that year after year, this floor gets covered in fuel during this celebration, and a despite a thousand flames, this temple STILL doesn't burn to the ground." Good point. I'll let the photos do the talking.

Village Life

The ashram itself was between the towns of Mirzapur and Vindhyachal, nearby the small village of Amaravati. And when I say village, I really mean village. Mud-huts, oxen-pulling-ploughs, cow-dung-patties-on-the-wall type of village. And every day, in the morning at 7AM, I would walk over to this village and pay a visit to the local chai-walla and buy what I can only describe as a "shot" of chai. The little kulladis held one mouthful of steaming hot, delicious, freshly-brewed chai. And each one cost Rs. 2/- ($0.04). So I'd have two or three, and he'd take only five rupees because he knew I'd be back the next day.

On two of the mornings, the husband of the French couple that had come along to film a documentary on the camp, Jean-Marie, came to the village with me, with his rather high-tech Sony DVCAM. As we walked around one of the houses on the edge of the village, I struck up a conversation with the resident. I managed to explain in Hindi (I'm not sure how) that Jean-Marie was making a film on the medical camp, and he wanted to also capture the setting in which this camp took place. He invited us for chai, and we accepted. His name was Sheshnag and he was "the adventurous" one of the family because he had struck off to find his fortune in Mumbai. Considering that a "family vacation" is a day-trip to nearby Mirzapur, his family had thought he had seen the world. No wonder they looked at Jean-Marie so strangely. He really might have been the first white person they'd ever seen. As usual, the tea was delicious and we were also served Parle-G biscuits to dip in the tea. A pack of these costs about Rs. 15/- for eight tiny wafer-like biscuits. In a village where they easily make less than Rs. 1000/- ($20) per month, this is a treat for guests and special occassions. Jean-Marie was surprised at Lesson 1: Even simple huts can be superbly clean, neat, and cool. I guess he hasn't seen anything this village-like before, either. I vowed not to forget Sheshnag's hospitality. The next day I brought him prasad from the ashram - four fresh apples. His kids were thrilled. Lesson 2: Apples are a commodity. Because they're not easily obtained, they're given as prasad in the ashram because they really are like a gift.

As we ventured further into the village, the crowds became to come out to observe the strange looking visitors holding these strange gadgets in their hands. When they realized that we were holding cameras - everyone wanted a picture. Turns out, though we came to capture they're village life, we were, in fact, the celebrities. What's routine isn't particularly interesting, and what's different is. That we were interested in them, and them in us was simply two manifestations of the same principle.

And one small boy made it all too clear when he said, "You mean they've come all the way from America to take pictures of us making cowdung patties? What's so interesting about that?"

Indeed.

The Kali Temple

My visit to the Kali Temple near Mirzapur reminded me of what I don' t like about the some of the temples of India. The "priests" if you can call them that (they aren't really holy in any way, shape, or form) immediately pounce on you calling you to their little shrine. The murtis are gorgeous, as always, but these guys wouldn't shut up for ten seconds to let you do darshan. They kept saying over and over again, "Mother Kali wants you to leave a donation. She wants (insert value here). Leave it at her feet." You mean leave it at YOUR feet. The normal values they begged for ranged from Rs. 50/- (the largest note I saw was Rs. 20/-) to, get this, $100. Riiiiight. I gave Rs. 10/-, the first bill that came out of my pocket, and I only had Rs. 30/- with me. The priests looks at it and gives it back in disgust saying, "Kali wants more. 50 rupees, you leave 50 rupees." So I told him, "Well, I don't have fifty rupees, and Kali won't take these ten, then I'll give it to someone else." His reply was quick, "No. No. Kali is happy with Rs. 10/-." I left him with the note. As I turned away, I saw out of the corner of my eye him stuff it in his pocket and give me the finger.

In all fairness, many, if not most temples in India are not like this. If you want to take part in a puja, you leave a donation, if you don't, you don't, no one forces you to do anything. If they ask, they ask once, maybe twice, then leave you alone. Mandir's are supposed to make your mind (man) still (dhir). Not leave you more agitated.

Allahbad and the Triveni Sangam

Before we caught the train back home, we stopped in Allahbad, the birthplace of Jawaharal Nehru, to have snaan (a bath) in the holy waters of the Triveni Sangam. This sangam (confluence) is where the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati join together to become just the Ganga as it flows onward. Over time, the Saraswati has dried up entirely, but a scientific debate still goes on as to whether She still flows underground. The Yamuna is being drained heavily for agriculture and doesn't make much of a river anymore. That leaves mostly the Ganga - in which we had our snaan.

The neat part about Indian rituals is that they're mostly symbolic. While some of our group members stripped down to their underwear to plunge fully into the waters, I was a bit more realistic about the fecal coliform content of the water as I knew Allahbad was draining sewage into the sangam (search: Triveni Sangam). I took a handful and sprinkled it over my head and called it a snaan. It's the thought that counts anyway. Right?

Medical/Surgical Camp

With my tenure at Swaminarayan Akshardham now officially over, I departed on a week-long medical/surgical camp to the Vindhya Hills of Uttar Pradesh. An overnight trainride (in sleeper class, for those of you familiar with Indian train systems) brought us to the small hamlet of Mirzapur, where, after a half-hour drive in a Tata Sumo caravan, we arrived at the Ashram of Devraha Hans Baba. Perhaps some more on him later.

The camp leader was Dr. K.S. Charak, a colleague of my mother's from medical school. He is the chief of surgery at one of the leading hospitals in New Delhi and very well respected. He is also known as one of the world's foremost scholars on Vedic Astrology. He is a Renaissance Man - a trekker, a spiritualist, a surgeon, an astrologer, and deep thinker. Accompanying him were 6 other physicians and surgeons. Together, along with three nurses, and 5 technicians composed the volunteer healthcare team that would provide free medical services for one week to the villages surrounding the Ashram. The group also included family members of Dr. Charak, colleagues of his from his hometown near Jammu, and a cooking crew to make meals, bringing the group total to about 35.

This group worked tirelessly for 7 days straight, waking at 6:30 AM and going to bed past 11:30 PM. They performed surgeries (major and minor) and treated all sorts of illnesses. I'll just stick to the highlights.

Surgical Camp Highlights

The throngs of people that swarmed the camp the first day made it very clear that the economic principal of overconsumption of public goods was definitely in effect. The first day was crowd-control duty for me. I had to learn to be forceful in Hindi, which was a challenge, considering I'm not particularly good at it in English. Oddly, the most difficult part was trying to keep their curious eyes from peeking into the out-patient examination rooms. Three doctors would see patients simultaneously, and one small area had been curtained off for physical examinations. But people would just crowd around the door to watch the doctor at work. Or try and peek over the curtain into the examination area. The strange part was, basically 85% of the men that came to this camp were suffering from the same problem - the hydrocoele. I'll let this website explain it in detail. Suffice it to say that most men had only to look between their own legs to find the problem the doctor was examining behind the curtain.

I tired quickly of crowd control because as soon as a line was formed, someone would try to jump the queue and in doing so, the line would disintegrate as everyone then tried to make sure they weren't cut in front of. So I went to surgery. I spent 3 days of the camp helping out in surgery - there were all sorts of cases, hydrocoeles, hernias, gall bladders, urinary bladder stones, hystrectomies. And Dr. Charak and his team performed all of them in a makeshift operating theater. The most amazing part of this OT was that it was the most disgustingly filthy and bug-infested room when we got there, but after a good 24 hours of cleaning and fumigation, it was as sterile as any major hospital theater. There were scrub protocols in place, and despite conducting over 80 surgeries in this environment, there was not a single post-operative infection. I got to help out, too! I assisted on a gall bladder removal that was complicated by extensive liver bleeding, a couple of hernia cases, and a cystolithotomy on a 10-year-old boy. When they said it'd be hands-on experience, I didn't realize they really meant hands-in experience. Reaching into a living human body and clamping a bleeding vessel shut is a bit eerie the first time, but definitely an amazing feeling the second time. All in all, I helped out with 6 surgeries and didn't mess up on scrubbing-in even once, despite the extraordinarily strict scrub-nurse.

I've finally figured out that I learn by doing. If I hear, do, then teach, I remember. Gotta remember that for medical school. More camp stories in the next post.

Back from the Camp

I just got back from a week-long medical/surgical camp in the Vindhya Hills near Mirzapur and Vindhyachal. I will spend tomorrow at an internet cafe, I think, catching up on the blog and posting pictures.