The Dark Years...

Hi! seems like a generation has passed by since i last logged in to this blog...

As i touched upon in my July'09 post...I had really gone through bad times few years back.

Things are beginning to settle down slowly ...or so it seems.

Those two years - 2006-2008 , was the toughest for me...and it practically stopped everything in my life. It was just hospitals, medicines and a constant fear of death that would hover around me.

My parents had come to Chennai for doing a thorough check-up of my father who had a complaint of a pain in the left side of his torso. The pain would come suddenly without warning and as per my father's description it was very severe, no medicine was able to subdue the pain and then... after few hours it would disappear....only to appear again after few days or weeks later.

Doctors in Assam are notorious of terming these kind of pains which are in fact, warning signals of a fatal disease, as gastric or some kind of water borne bacterial attack. And so the innocent victims would be prescribed cheap drugs for temporary relief. Little did i expect that my father had fallen prey to this.

After a failure to diagnose for a minimum of 1 year, a doctor finally recommended my father to go to Chennai for a complete check up.

We decided to meet a doctor of gastroenterology first. He recommended a series of blood tests and Scans.

Everything was normal, except two results:

1) The blood test showed that he was very low in hemoglobin ( or the Red Blood cells) , it was around 7 whereas the normal range for a male is 13 -16

2) The CT scans had a comment that there was some irregular lining in the colon ( the large intestine) and the cecum ( the point where the large intestine and the small intestine meets)

and there were two lesions in his liver.

We knew that the blood tests results seems to indicate something bad, but then there can be a host of other factors that could lead to a deficiency. Cancer was not there even in the remotest corner of our minds. My mother was always positive.

We took the reports to the doctor and to our surprise, he looked very, very worried. Nevertheless he told that my father had to undergo one more tests a test where they would insert a stem with an attached camera through the anus to see what actually is the situation up there. The procedure is know as colonoscopy which is fairly unknown to most people, but is a recommended procedure by surgeon general in the USA for everyone, once in every 2 years for individuals above the age of 50.

The procedure is an uncomfortable one for the patient, and the doctor found out that there was indeed some nasty growth in his intestine .He took a sample of the growth and sent it for biopsy. He spoke to me later and he sounded not too optimistic, i remember the words clearly - " i suspect this is indeed cancer , and i would be happy if i am proved wrong"

The results were supposed to come in the next 4 days and it was the longest 4 days for all of us.

On the forth day I went to collect the results and to our worst nightmare the report had one sentence in bold Adenocarcinoma grade 3. Well, for a moment I felt my whole world is coming down. I hated to believe what i was reading.

I took the reports to the doctor, who already knew the results...he wanted me to admit my father immediately to try to remove the cancerous growth. And that was not all the CT scan has mentioned some lesions in my fathers liver too and he suspected them to be secondaries and thats a very very bad thing to happen.

I came home and broke the news - that was the worst thing i had ever told anyone. No one would like to hear anything like this.

The night was all crying and anxious anticipation of whats in store for us in the days to come...

And those were days i would like to erase off from my memories completely...but it is impossible to do that. And i still get that creepy feeling which seems so very familiar even today. The constant fear of death lurking just near by. I did some searches on the net and that made my fears even more powerful. Almost all the articles related to my fathers condition gave a 1 year survivability statistics to less than 10%. That is , out of 100 people in the stage that my father was, only less than 10 people lived more than 1 year.

5 year survivability was less than 4 %.

I knew right then ... we have really bad times ahead of us.

And it was worse than my fears could fathom. We faced days that as my mother would put it - We dont want even our enemies to go through.

I can't go any longer on this today... The scenes are coming to me vividly as i write and i dont want to end up dreaming about the whole thing tonight all over again. May be some other day some other post...may be after a long time i would write the rest of this sad story...

Cheers to life and to all the goodness it has to offer.

The Diabolique Soulz Blog

Finally we made it possible. The diabolique soulz blog is finally out with contributions from most of the members of the band. The blog is intended more as the forum for the ex-members to discuss topics concerning their lives, the main theme being music.

This has also made me pause and appreciate the power of the web in our present day. A thing like this ( the illusive bond of the ex-members) would have been impossible few years back. Now we are sharing our views, music and video in one common portal which makes life all the more interesting, especially for us who could relate so much with each other.

Do drop by :http://diaboliquesoulz.blogspot.com/ and leave your comments.

We would be happy if you become a member of the blog and follow it.

I hope all these finally lead to something.

To the spirit of Music.

I am Back!

Well... I am back to writing the junk that nobody reads... Well infact its not made for anybody... its meant for me...Thats why i call it "My World"

Well the last couple of years has been quite tough on me...Thats the reason why i dont even want to talk about it....So lets talk about whats ahead of us:

My tryst with chennai came to an end when i took a transfer to bangalore in july 2008. And though its nice to be with family again... I dearly miss chennai. Chennai is actually the real india where people cling onto their traditions no matter what. Chennai is a place where The Naidu Halls and Pothys and the Sarvana Stores still keep their head above amongst the the LifeStyles , Pantaloons and the Big Baazars.

That said bangalore has its own charm too ... Its a city ahead of India when we look at its BMTC buses and suave cosmo people.

And the closest it made me realise that i was in India's silicon was when i broke a traffic rule at the manipal signal and was hurled up by the traffic police. I came out of the car and this seemingly boring face politely tells me - "License please". Then he takes out his blackberry punches in my details and pop goes a reciept from his other wireless device which was like a card swiping machine. "That would be Rs 100 sir". Phew , i didn't have the anything to say. "Am i in India"

Thats the way to go...I thought . India should use technology to root out the corruption. Make all the finer details transperant and visible.Make every transaction visible online and not in the those dirty files. So that going to a government office no longer feels like a big ordeal!

I am still thinking...

Ma's Favourite Hangout

My Favourite Mistake

I dont know why i fell for her. I dont know whats going to happen next. But i do know she is my favourite mistake.

Visions...

Visions of you in shades of blue
Smoking, shifting, lazily drifting
My darling, i miss you so
Time goes by, no wonder my sense go reeling
Your eyes so appealing
I see the whole night through
When will we meet again, when when when
When will we meet again, when when when
I remember the days, beautiful days,
Tenderly gleaming
My whole life seeming to start, and end
With you lyrics by Sir Cliff Richards

Heaven ?

Had a memorable trip of the Franconian Swiss ( Germany) ... thought its worth sharing. Through Pictures.
We had a trek though the beautiful landscape for a distance of 16km...phew but the pain was worth it as it threw before me some of the most breathtaking sights i would ever come across.

I also had a chance of drinking the local beer ( or bier as it is called there) straight out from the barrel ... it was like heaven ;-)

Wherez the Mojo

Remember the days when we were young and restless? Well , we still are ...but have lost some steam out of life.

Now a days i just come to office fix a few bugs and head back home ...drop in some restaurant on the way and lay down head down flat on the bed.

Guitar... Too lazy to even bring that out of its box.
TV... well the same things buzzing around.
Hanging out...with whom? everyone is too busy with his or her own life ( or probably lost the steam just like me).

Am i getting old ?? Well , i dont think so... but then need some more time to answer that.
Maybe i should get married and settle down? ... hmm to lose rest of the steam.

No... I seriously need some Zing ... some Mojo... thats suddenly disappeared.

Maybe a ticket for a rock concert will change my life again...
Or join a local band??
Or a trip to the Andamans ???

Lets see where my search ends ( the next Buddha in the making??)
see...even my jokes are boring ;-)
Will be Back!!!

Chennai Sucks?

Hey! Don't tell me you are going to Chennai...Thats the first reaction i got from most people when i landed up with the job with Flextronics , Chennai ( The erstwhile FutureSoft)

"You know what, its a tandoor, you wont be able live there "
"The people, they are very rude ...they wont help you"...and "oh yes you wont be able to see any hindi movies over there"
"yaar there are no hang outs"..."how can you imagine a weekend without going to a pub?"

So now that i am here and been here for over a year ...here is what i have to say.

Chennai is a wonderful city.
Yeah ! its hot but people dont die because of the heat.
Did you come across a "Heat wave in Chennai?"So next time some one tells you about the heat in chennai ask him to pay a visit to the Indian capital!
The people are much more helpful than most cities in India.
It has great hangouts ...most of all the beach.
It has exotic getaways like pondy and mahabalipuram
And yes Hindi movies do get released here...and for the record i saw Rang de Basanti in Chennai
first day first show!

Will let you know more about the City in my next post