#womeninsurgery and other things ft. Happy Women’s day!

“It’s a beautiful day to save lives”, a line from the show Grey’s anatomy which took a million girls by storm and thrust them into a surgical career to follow into the footsteps of Meredith Grey – someone I would learn off much later, connect to and sometimes be appalled at because of the hot mess she is. I had no clue, not a wee bit that looking at women in surgery and being a woman in surgery required such nerves of steel.

It’s a beautiful day today to pen down a post on what my almost inconsequential baby steps into the field of surgery has meant to me. From watching my mother run back and forth from home to hospital at any time of the day gulping an entire roti in bites of four – to me repeating the same pattern and barely managing to see my beautiful 2bhk that I maintain with sky high rent while working 90hr weeks and an NBM more than my patients.

The world has changed most definitely – there are more women in surgery – you have no idea how heartwarming it is to see when someone who said they are confused whether they should take Pediatrics or Pathology (because that’s what expected of ideal female doctors to get into and build family in a nurturing role that allows them to balance home with) instead of taking surgery, finally taking the surgical branch. There are more women in Super speciality surgical branches  even though a female pursuing an Mch degree is considered as ‘too ambitious’, ‘unsuitable for family life’, ‘won’t manage home’ and deemed unfit in the marriage market because the ones who make the demands are like fiefs sitting in a bazaar bartering women by the degrees and wanting the moolah alongside the demands of “Will you step back when it’s time to plan a family?” I had met a gastrosurgeon once who told how he led a busy life with 16-18 hours surgery and was unable to contribute to home yet he expects the surgeon wife in a similarly demanding field to be okay with him coming and going as he pleased and taking a step back when needed. He proudly declared how his friends had earlier told that a surgeon wife would be unsuitable.  It was almost funny, yet ironic. I have always watched how my father despite not being from the medical field has taken an almost indulgent share in my mother’s flourishing obstetric career braving her late night labour calls and OTs by dropping her back and forth from hospital sometimes sleeping in the parking lot. Never making demands of what a ‘conventional wife’ must do. Thinking of new ways to see her grow in her career and I have realized for every brave woman in surgery there also a braver partner who supports her through it. The ones who remind them that they got their back through it all. May we all be blessed with them.

Being a woman in surgery is knowing all this and also battling the learning curve alongside. While your biological clocks keep ticking you are their struggling in the OT under the lights. Your bodies through period flow and cramps standing through 12 hour OTs performing to its best –  because in surgery neither there are excuses nor sorry. You only get one chance and you have to grab it. For women these chances are also quite rare to come by.

I did my residency in one of the prestigious colleges in Karnataka – yet there was a whispered adage in the department – your life goes smooth in this department if you are a guy. The guys clinked glasses with the professors in private and in the classes gave mind numbingly stupid answers only to get away with it and be performing a procedure alone in OT the next day. The beauty of it was your self doubt would keep  increasing exponentially while they muddled in their ignorant bliss to glory. With surgical learning curve being so steep, you were left at the very negative odds of it. There are times you wonder if you should have taken a more female friendly branch – Dermatology or perhaps OBG. Yet somehow my uncle’s face during his last days of battle with cancer kept haunting my brain and I wondered what is this field which despite having a family of doctors we could never decipher or beat. Thus began my journey into it.

Four years down the  lane do I regret being in a branch that literally sucks my soul and makes me doubt myself everyday as I begin from the scratch – learning, unlearning and learning again? Yes, most definitely yes. There are times I feel I could have taken a medical branch and just been at it. Sometimes even the most ridiculously sweet patients, stories and gooey mush my heart is  in with the countless number of compliments, blessings that my patients give me falls short when a male surgeon misbehaves with me or tells me how girls are not fit for this – when the male locker room talk in operative procedures makes me feel like running away from the crassness of it all. When you do not get the same respect as a male surgeon by the nursing staff who treat them with more gravitas. Where your talent and skills are kept to the side and you can be just reduced to someone hit on or ogled at. When sheer exhaustion takes over with the balance of personal and professional. When yet another family friend – a doctor couple – tells my parents that they made a mistake letting me get into Head and neck surgery because guys do not see me as wife material. When yet another duty, yet another long shift and yet another exhausting day at work doesn’t leave me with the headspace to talk to my loved ones and suspect if everyone is actually true? That as a girl I might have forayed into something that’s professionally exciting yet personally draining. Maybe it’s time to take a step back?

But again I hold the scalpel and get the shivers like I did the first time – the happy ones – and as I slice open a neck I realize I am doing something that none of my forefathers, family or friends have dreamt of doing. I get to see the things that no one in my vicinity has done and tell a silent prayer to that little girl who dreamt big dreams and is getting to live it. I do my OPDs and rounds and ward rounds and know that I bring an empathy that most men can’t and that’s what sets me apart every time a patient smiles and remembers my face even after days.  I get handed a oddly sketched drawing by a patient’s child who wanted to give me a chocolate or get a text from patient I discharged home happily a week back,  “thank you happy women’s day for all that you do so exceptionally” or get hugged randomly by a patient or an ajji through a difficult diagnosis and know that some way I have impacted and made someone’s life better. When I am in my night shifts or in between OTs and have someone to ask me if I ate or slept through my shifts and bear my mood swings through it all and I wonder – being a woman in surgery is not a big deal once you have the right support system for it? Having parents who nitpicked yet let me grow academically/ professionally to the fullest which many, many, many girls step back with the lack of fills my heart with plain gratitude. No one will ever understand the sacrifices it takes to be family or a friend to a female surgeon – yet people do, and I am grateful for it. I am grateful for all the mess I am and every person who takes the pain and pleasure in unraveling it. Being in an unconventional path might have taken its toll, but in the end I have been left only with the realest ones.

As women we have held ourselves back for far too long by confining ourselves to the purview of what can be done or cannot to a point we don’t even know what we want anymore. We do not take credit, we do not make our presence known, neither our sacrifices or the work or love we put into the tiniest of things in our day to day lives. Here is to speaking up more, letting our presence known and most importantly letting ourselves be okay with acknowledging it.

So, here’s to all the brave women and braver #womeninsurgery – may we know them, may we be them and may we raise them. To having the magic of scalpel in our hands.

Happy Women’s Day ! 🙂

Love,

P.

PS:

The sketched chocolate my patient’s child gave me. ❤️

PPS:

In my happy space.

Woman

I am convinced woman is not a human
I am convinced.
She must be made of clay and paper
Forever mouldable
Forever weighed
Forever written in
(With no words of her own)
No speech
No tantrum
No opinion
(Her adulation compared with her silence)

I am convinced a woman is not a human.
I am convinced.
She is pitted against each of her own
Like mad bulls.
Sometimes beauty
Sometimes fidelity
A man’s disgress being always pointed
To a woman’s folly.

I am convinced a woman is not a human.
I am convinced.
She is made to fit into sizes and labels
Counted by dowry not degrees
Skin tone and measuring scales
Recipes and confined spaces.
All to be born with a pleasant demeanor.

I am convinced.
I am convinced a woman is not a human
She is a toy for the world to do as they please.
Think less
Talk less
Do more
Silence your mind for all you know
For the doll given to you as a kid
Is the woman you ought to become.

Mine

There are two sides
Two sides to me
They bicker
They screech
They nail each other
Till they can nail
What makes them different
What makes two
When the soul is one
Why the heart wanders
When the mind stays
In some twisted page of a rat race
Why every day feels like another day
That could have been lived
In another way
Why the sky is crimson
Why the leaves maroon
Why the whys I stopped asking
To fit in
Don’t find their voice anymore
Why I have to live in a way
Thats less of me
Less of what I feel
Less of everything I dreamed
Why
Why
Why
Yet nothing can show
How the wheel can be stopped from turning
The sands of time
And watching everything disappear that I used to call mine.

Again?

There are feelings

Solitary

Empty

I feel mostly

Yet feelings have no meaning in them.

They are mixed –

Like every other attachment I’ve felt in the past

Careless

Idiotic

Like a summer sunset you would miss out on for the accompanying heat.

But the feelings feel different this time

It’s a strange mix of yearning and guilt

Being the perpetrator and not the victim

Being the loved not the lover

Being the one who didn’t stay

The one who didn’t say.

And now that I feel this

I feel it’s good to have overlooked, over loved, over cared in the past

Because this guilt,

This burgeoning ball of guilt

Makes me feel I have fallen

With no arms to catch me,

Because I had cut them myself.

मौसम

He said he can’t tolerate
Shades of me
As varied as the weather of the city we lived in then
He couldn’t tolerate
The way I had an opinion
Loud enough to break the glass his thinking was entrapped in.

He said I wouldn’t be
What they said was “domestic”
I had ways too unbridled
Too free
Too uncharted
For him to a put a finger to

That my unique was a hindrance
My different was a difference
Both could never meet
And he was happy to let go
And shove another on my face

One who knew how to play the cards well
Knowing to push and pull
Knowing not to be everything to him
Knowing how guys like him detest girls like me

Girls who want to be something
Before becoming someone’s
And for a long time I thought
The fault was in me.

He said he couldn’t tolerate
How I was as moody as the city we lived in
But now I am in a city
With a weather moodier than me
And people seem just as eager to love it.

A letter to my 3 day old sister

Dear baby,
I wonder what your world will be!
You’ll outlive me by a whole 26 years
I wonder what all you’ll see!

I have seen a tiny, tiny virus
Outsmart mighty, mighty empires
And our little wicked schemes
Taking down a rat’s race that thought itself bigger than nature’s scheme.

I have seen forests consumed by hell-fires
But nothing more consuming than desire
Of harrowed men trapped,
In a never ending stream of wanting.

I have seen faith,
I have seen love,
I have seen all you can,
And what to do when you cannot.

I have the felt the fresh breeze off mountain ranges
I have dipped my soul in holy Ganges
When I have washed off my sins,
I have added his name afresh.

The one that still makes me feel a million things,
Yet let me tell you
Most boys will break your hearts
Even if  butterflies and unicorns – are what you feel in the beginning.

But you’ll always stand,
Taller than ever,
Your heart will love harder than ever,
And at the end of it all, you’ll fall in true love – the one with yourself.

I have seen friends
I have seen friendship
Sometimes both seem different
I have wondered why it is.

I have had family though,
Mine and ours,
Standing by when noone did.
Cause blood respects blood but water takes the shape of every vessel it’s kept in.

Respect everyone,
Expect from none,
And maybe when you live another year after year,
You’ll thank your sister who lived 26 less, albeit happily.

Define : Love

Love is pure,
Love is kind,
Love doesn’t need you to tone down –
Your waist
Or your mind.

Love is Grace
Love is fine –
Like raindrops on dry soil
Scent wafting inside out
Firing up your senses every time.

Love is patience
Love is pain
The patience to endure through pain
Of time
Of life.

Love is needing
(Not wanting)
Love is divine
You know when you see her
Every time.

Love is knowing there are days
And there will be nights
When mistakes will be made –
Love is accepting
What we have is bigger than mistakes of the human kind.

Love is passion
Love is crazy
It is firing up the skin
While calming down the soul
Two sinners made right.

Love is letting me be the wind to your silent sails
The dream to your fluttering lids
The laugh to your morose days
Love is letting me,
And me letting you
To be any way.

DEAR VIKRAM FROM #THAPPAD – WHAT YOU AND I BOTH NEEDED TO LEARN FROM AMU

Vikram, tumhari galti nahi thi. I needed to start with this. You know, few days back in my locality a neighbor filed a domestic violence against her husband; when her husband hit her she filed an FIR, she stood in the dead of night in the rain not going inside the house – it surprised me in the most surprising way. I thought it was brave of her, not that it was logical – why didn’t I think a man hitting his wife is something that can be resolved, Vikram? Maybe because I have seen a drunken uncle beat his wife and watched her never walk away and people hail it as the ultimate sacrifice for keeping the family reputation intact. Maybe because I have seen the women in my family being taught their place too. Maybe because my mother defends that and tells me I should obey when my husband will ask me to do too. Maybe because my mother tells me stories of how when a man cheats on his wife it’s always because the wife never kept him happy; not that he cheated. Maybe because my father would tell a woman who speaks creates family problems. Maybe because the guy I dated in college told me he didn’t consider me wife material as I have a lot of opinions. Maybe I did tone down for him – removing myself from social sphere, wearing only ethnic, lowering my voice and self to find his place under him. Why did I want to be under him, Vikram? Do we come from the same conditioning? Do we think everything can be compromised as long as we seem perfect to the world with having a relationship than working out a relationship?

How can it be your fault when even my mother, my Maa, my aunts, my conditioning of years and years has taught me to compromise. How can it be your fault when I see what you did and I found Amu’s response unreasonable too. How can it be your fault when I saw those one or two kisses or a hug you gave here and there to the efforts Amu made and thought it was enough too. How can it be your fault when in my family men decided what women wear, how they talk, how they behave, their pitch for years and my mothers never chose to protest; sometimes not even me. How can it be your fault when a family’s reputation is always greater than a woman’s needs. How can it be your fault for doing everything a middle class man has been taught to do?

Vikram tumhari galti toh bilkul bhi nahi thi. You went to office, you worked, you tried to best in your work – it was great, I cheered for you. I am a career minded woman – I know how difficult it is. The pressure of having to perform, the office politics, the deadlines, the meetings, the appraisals… you know. It’s perfectly reasonable to burst out – I do myself – on my Maa, my mother, my best friend, my sister – but I wonder why never on the guy in my life. I thought I was a feminist, I am the equal in the relationship – but I never make it hard on the literal “man” in the relationship. Maybe, a part of me has accepted the conditioning and compromised. Maybe a part of me feels, it has to bend to a man and massage his ego always. How can it be your fault when the woman never knew how she deserved to be treated? When Amu admits that “hum dono mein sab baraabar ka tha.. woh office sambhalega aur mein ghar”, it sounded so simple – hogayi hai emancipation – but home is not only about household work; it has relationships and emotions too; she never distributed that load with you – how is it your fault?

When you went to Amu’s house after she leaves your home after you hit her and offered her a hug, a simple apology and an ornament as a gift to ask her to come back – I was floored. If I was in her place I would’ve come back – why are my expectations so low, Vikram? My father always taught me how I should be ruthless in my career, i followed it; he taught me to be ruthless in the world and reign over it, I try to do it; but that night when he and I were discussing he said how Sita should have towed the Lakshman Rekha and she faced all she did as she didn’t listen to the advice of her elder. I asked him who is the elder – he said Ram – I asked innocently, “By age?” – he replied, “No, by being her husband.” “How being someone’s husband makes you their elder?”, I told this to my father and he said I will have a lot of problems in my marriage in future. Even my aunt tells me this every time I tell her a guy treated me poorly – she tells it’s something I have done. She never sees how the guy mistreated me in the first place for me to burst out on him. In the end you said you hit her because you thought you had a right on her; is this what my father and aunt meant too, Vikram? Is making a guy my husband or my partner allowing him to draw the lines for me? Is it letting him treat me whatever way he wants and me having to be the one that compromises and massages his ego each time? Don’t I need to be taken care of emotionally too?

Vikram tumhari galti thi aur meri bhi. You know I love fairy tales. I was even obsessed with Twilight. Now that I am 26, my best friend tries to convince me of even liking Christian Grey. But you see the pattern right? Emotionally unavailable men, with supernatural skills or unnatural wealth as their only saving grace. Unhealthy romances with the guy being so unsure of his feelings he decided to fuck up the girl’s brain too; the love is in the chase – not the man. The love is in the outer covering, not the insides – when millennial girls are raised on these, will they demand healthy guys who know how to treat a woman right ever? They won’t. I have seen the media of our parental generation – if it taught them unhealthy marriages; my generation media and movies has taught unhealthy romance. Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh is famous – psycho guys who control the woman of their life and are toxic to every other girl calling it love. I think just like Amu and you took a break from each other finally to understand how you both can grow as healthy individuals to begin again with or without each other in the future – our generation needs to revaluate what’s love and needs to grow too.

I hope you and Amu find each other again at a later point of your life when you have figured out your shortcomings. Yes, I don’t denounce you as bad – how can you bad when you were conditioned to behave that way. We can’t decide where we came from – but we can definitely decide where we to go. I hope you find your place, even if it’s not next to Amu as her husband again – I hope you both are great parents to your child.

Love,

A girl who will try to be Amu from now on.

***

PS : I am glad to be living in times when a movie like #Thappad is being made. It has taught me how to demand not only a financially secure future with a man but an emotionally secure future too. It has laid out roles for everyone in this. If you are a girl’s father you get to look at Amu’s dad who was rock solid support for Amu from start till end – and even didn’t hesitate chiding his son from misbehaving with his girlfriend trying to save him from being another Vikram. If you are a mother-in- law it teaches you to be like Amu’s mother-in-law in the end letting her go and be happy. If you are a neighbor it’s being like Dia Mirza in this movie refusing to give false witness to save Vikram’s ass and tell that she had a wonderful husband who respected her and treated her the right way – he shouldn’t try to obliterate the respect she has for men-kind. If you are stuck in a bad love marriage like Nethra looking for escape outside marriage, trying to find your lost lover in another guy, maybe you need an escape from the marriage itself; not try to honor lost love by sticking to an unhappy marriage and fuck up the guy’s life outside your marriage too. I thought the housemaid’s ignorance and acceptance of her poverty and living will always let her accept that her husband bashed her up to show that he is a man every night. If she could rise above that to stand up against her man – can’t we? We can. If you are the man who I build my future with reading this, I hope you know now what we both need to bring to the table. I won’t compromise and I won’t let you too. Let’s be equals, for real.

“Just a slap?”

“Just a slap par nahi maar sakta.”

Let them fly!

People close to me know that I own a parrot. Not many know it’s origins though. We never bought it. It came by itself – flying and got trapped in the loft on our terrace – there was an occupant present, a guy who lived there then – who took the bird, bought a cage and kept it in that. In the evening when he presented the parrot to us, we were on the verge of freeing it, but my little sister who had taken a fancy to it; and quite a small child at that time, couldn’t be shushed – so stay with us, it did. My sister grew up and over the years her fascination with the slowly aging bird diminished. I am quite fond of the bird as well, even though it has bitten me several times in trying to befriend it; but keeping a bird trapped in a cage hurt my conscience – so, after considerable thought, I decided to set the bird free. I have this evening ritual, where I go up to the terrace, sit on the ledge, watch the sunset and contemplate. What I did was take my parrot alongwith me, as well. I would rest the cage on a surface and open it’s door and walkaway, continuing with my business, hoping that it would fly out. To my disappointment, it didn’t. This went on for days. I tried calling it out; luring with mine and his favorite Marie gold biscuits, but it won’t budge. One fine day, it even came up to the gate, and slammed it shut on my extremely astonished face. I gave up! It had got used to it’s bondage. It deeply saddened me.

When I think of Indian women, the ones occupying the nitty gritty of the country – I see a woman who has got used to the bondage. The pattern of behavior and character mould set by years and years of patriarchy. These are not the women twisting the definitions of feminism to suit their demands for a twisted lifestyle. These are the ones deprived of equality. These are ones who do not question why the entire load of household falls on them. Why they are made to feel an outsider in the home they were married to, made their own but didn’t own them in return. These are the ones who are not allowed to enter kitchens and touch items during menstruation. These are the ones who are silently molested, raped, burnt, violated every single day in some or the other part of the country with no hopes of justice. These are the ones not allowed to love; flogged, tortured, killed or made to succumb to demands of family honour. These are the ones who bow their heads while someone decides how their life should be lived. These are the ones who are handed out a sentence of marriage; while their careers are considered unimportant. These are the ones struggling for basic human rights to live while their urban sisters ignore and raise a hue and cry over extramarital affairs, polygamy, ‘free the nipple’, and other shit. These are the ones who are trapped in a cage, and will soon forget how to fly.

Let’s free them, before it’s too late; before they forget how to fly. Let’s free them and watch them soar – equal with men, or even higher – they can decide the altitude of their flight; but first, let them fly!

Good girls don’t behave like this

My father told me, and told me, “Good girls don’t behave like this.”

They keep their morals high, and their hemlines low.

They don’t talk back, they don’t put up a show.

They don’t have an opinion, unless it’s carefully dipped in molten honey; trimmed and speckled, until it’s an acknowledgement.

They don’t have a life – “Do it after your marriage”, “Want it after your marriage”, and likewise.

They don’t go out without filling a requisition form for how many hours, places, people, yards of cloth on them.

They live within their limits – “Sita had her lakshman rekha, you have the boundary of our house”.

They aren’t friends with boys, they don’t talk to men – because her character is the neighbourhood gossip and the family’s honour is in the parts of her body.

They don’t fall in love, they fall in arrangement; where they are shipped off early as a sacrificial lamb with other offerings to be devoured by customs and customers of life.

They don’t demand, they accept; they don’t complain, they forget – how they had to put up with decades of inequality and how they have to put up with more.

How this is the only way they can be saved from being abused, molested, raped, burnt and filmed; by not wanting more than what their fore-‘fathers’ had decided was enough for them.

For my father told me, and told me, “Good girls don’t behave like this.” but he didn’t tell his son, “Good boys don’t behave like this”.