Alright, here I am again!! with the stories from the last fortnight. I went to IIIT to see old friends who still are there with their own attempts at glory and for a serious discussion concerning a possible PhD from CVIT (among other things.. that is). And for the Nth time vidit hosted me saving me good money that I would have otherwise spent on stay and food. These guys are simply so nice to me that I manage to throw a small party whenever I go. Alright, now for the news…
Two incredible guys : This bit is about work before the trip. Work has been getting more and more interesting over the past few weeks and as a part of my job I have been meeting some great guys. Bala S Manian is a hotshot (if you read that page, i dont need say why ) whom I happened to meet during one of the meetings. In 20 minutes flat, he explained his latest attempt at building cheaper diagnostic systems using reagents (see reametrix). Not many people have that kind of passion towards things they do.. truly inspirational. The second person is Kishore Arur. He is IIT-Bombay graduate who went on to establish several firms (proteck machinery being one of them) and all operating in India. His presence on the web is limited, so there are no links. But, in the 90 minutes that I talked to him he reminded me of Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged. Very rarely do we see IITians who stay here and try to revolutionize things this way.
Bad Show by DC: By the time I actually publish this Deccan Chargers might already be out of the race for semis. Somehow many of their matches seem closely contested and they have won none of such matches. Its too sad that Symmos, the second costliest buy in the entire league, repeatedly failed with the ball. That cost the initial matches which made lot of difference to the morale (I guess). Next time better luck 
. IPL itself seems to be taking too long and I dont understand the need for a knockout phase when each team has been pitted against every other one both at home and away. Guess the big bosses want some scope for gambling even at the very end.
Pathetic Healthcare in Interior AP : After the short stay at IIIT I went home to Varni (a remote village in Nizamabad). A family friend of us visited and he looked very downcast. Upon inquiry, he told me that over the last 6 months he had to shell to out over 2 lakhs to find out what mystic disease had struck his daughter. To go in to the details, he is a small businessman with five daughters and ever since I knew he had been fighting off one financial crisis after the other to give a good life to all of them. The smartest of them was struck with some unknown disease (vomitings and constipation being the syptoms) about 6 months back. Failures of doctors in the village were followed by similar results at the Taluq and District headquarters. Every week a new doctor would be consulted and everytime the little girl was to go through all the tests which made her feel increasingly miserable. ‘Nothing to worry’ the doctors would reply, prescribe some medicine, the symptoms would worsen and towards the end of the week the doctor would expresse his helplessness. More than four months passed this way and not even one doctor even suggested the parents of the girl to consult a hospital with more facilities somewhere else (say in Hyderabad). I was shocked to know this fact that these doctors, apart from being ill-qualified are also so apathetic to the condition of their patients in these areas. Forget professional ethics, basic human traits demand that you be honest under such circumstances. If this is how the district headquarters is, you can imagine the plight of the villages. As I thought about it, it slowly dawned on me why these sucka chose to practice in these remote places. Well, I dont mean to derogate the few good men who actually are doing good things but I feel most of these men seem to be there for money and they dont have to be exceptionally good to do that in these places. Finally, after some visting these docs for over 90 times (and the girl went through all standard medical tests for more than 100 times) some docs at Hyderabad have come to conclusion that it is Gastroenteritis and the girl is now on the path to recovery and is on a steady liquid diet. But the entire episode left me shell-shocked. The absymal healthcare in rural areas is something that needs immediate attention. While the urban citadels of this country are teeming with leeches who are bent on making most of the new rich India, the villages are dying for the minimum required attention. If only something could be done to accelerate efforts towards the realization of tele-medicine, tele-diagnostics.(Vidit, are you listening?)
My niece talks now and enjoys tormenting rabbits: News from home is never complete without the mention of my niece. She is 20 months old now and continues to amuse my folks with her ultra-steep learning curve. Of late, she started shouting back everything that she hears. The day I went, she picked up a book on STL (standard template library of C++) and forced me to read some words for her. Now she shrieks unusual words like ‘ectol‘ (vector), ‘agadheem‘ (algorithm)… they dont amuse my mom but they mightily amuse me. And talking of amusement, she took a liking for cute white rabbits and as result we have a small rabbit family at home now. And in the lush green garden beside my home my niece and I had loads of fun with them. She takes great joy in picking them by their ears and lifting above her head and dropping them. But such is the beauty of innocent children that the rabbits seem more comfortable with her than me : They invariably rush towards her whenever I let them go.
Alright, thats news for now. I am getting more lethargic than ever and its been long time since I hit the gym. Hoping to turn the tide this week.
