Pankaj Desai's Blogs

  Out of the blue flashed a tweet on the social medium Tweeter one day: “My dialysis is becoming very draining for me financially.   Oh, how I wish I die”. It stopped at that. One Obgyn doctor read it. She sensed the pain and helplessness of the person who had tweeted. The reader knew nothing about who had put out this stress call. For inexplicable reasons something made her send an immediate personal message “Can I have your mobile number, please”. The person who had tweeted this was a lady in the fourth decade of her life. She was from a town in MP and was diagnosed as a young primary hypertensive for many years. Then this tragedy struck. Theirs was a comfortably resourced family who was buying all treatment for hypertension with ease. But as they say when tragedy strikes, it strikes enmass. Her father a successful businessman faced a massive loss in business. Out of despair he committed a suicide. The shock took away the mother in less than a year. This left her behind ...

  We will call him Pravin. Pravin’s father was a farmer. They owned a piece of land in the village, a cow and two buffaloes. His parents’ lives taught him all good values and soft skills. He got his primary schooling in his village. His brilliance was obvious right from his early school days. His father encouraged him to study further. But that was going to be a challenge. The middle and high school was in the town about 5 km away and there was a river between the two villages. Getting admission to that school was not difficult. But commuting in monsoon was going to be a problem. In other months there was a very shallow strip. It was used for walking through the river. But in the monsoon season when the river would be flowing bank to bank, it would mean swimming through. Walking through, Swimming through and sometimes running through      So much was his enthusiasm to study further that walking through, swimming through and sometimes running through didn’t bother h...

Suddenly heavens opened up that evening. The Professor was totally unprepared. Rains were torrential and his consulting hours had just ended. He had just got ready to go home and the rains started to pour down in sheets. He waited for some time, his car-driver too was reluctant due to poor visibility and water-logging that was expected. Once the fury of the rains eased a bit the professor asked his car-driver “Shall we go?” Reluctantly the driver agreed. Hardly had they gone five minutes in the failing light that the old car went conk. Stranded in the middle of the road, without any umbrella to protect him from these unforeseen rains; he came out of the car briskly to take protection under the awning of a closed shop nearby. He was hoping to catch a taxi to be driven home. The fury of the rains intensified once again.  He tried to call some numbers through his mobile but nothing seemed to be working. He was obviously distraught. Distraught Always very upright, tr...