Taksh is now 4 months into this world. He has been doing all things that babies of his age do, including waking up the parents at odd hours and making them fret and fuss over his every move.

One fine day we observed that Taksh had a slightly warmer-than-usual forehead. “Fever”, the Mrs announced with eyes that had already begun to sulk. “Uh-oh,” I whispered to myself. A digital thermometer was drawn out by the Mrs. (who doesn’t believe in the good old Mercury thermometers, the only ones that I had ever seen until this moment).

After sticking it into Taksh’s mouth, the digital thermometer began its painstaking measurement process. The digits raced from 90 to 97 degree Fahrenheit in a matter of seconds. I was impressed already. After 97 however, every decimal point took an era. Taksh was holding the thermometer in his mouth pretty well so far, not breaking into his customary agoo-goo-goo yet.

97.1 97.2 97.3 – time was ticking on.

It reached 99 in about 20 minutes. The Mrs and I were left aghast to see that the counter didn’t stop even at 99.3! Finally at 99.4 the digital thermometer sucked up all the energy from its tiny cell within and gave a tired beep sound. So, 99.4 was Taksh’s temperature. We had freaked out by now. This is not ‘normal’, you see.

So, the Mrs. drew out another digital thermometer (she has quite a few of them, as you can never change the cell in them anyway, so you need to keep a few handy, you know. Of course it is rational). We started yet again. The numbers raced forward, stopped, sputtered and finally settled at 99.4 yet again. I was impressed with the consistency of these gadgets before coming back to the issue on hand.

“Is it really too high?,” I asked.

“Not sure. Perhaps it isn’t?,” said the Mrs.

But then again, we are new parents and new parents in this new age don’t take chances do they? So we rush to the paediatric (I got that spelling right the first time!).

“Does he have fever?,” asks the doctor while he finishes writing some notes about the previous patient.

The Mrs. and I look at each other screaming in our thoughts “Isn’t HE supposed to check and let us know?”

“Yes,” replies the Mrs.

“Is it too high?,” queries the Doctor.

“We don’t know. His forehead is a little warm though. Perhaps you can check?” I, the man of the house, decide to take charge.

“Ok. Most likely it is nothing. But if the fever persists, perhaps you need to get his urine tested for infection,” the Doctor casually replies, scribbles with his blue pen on his white letterhead, tears the paper in a flourish and hands it out to me. He didn’t even touch his thermometer! What gall! Perhaps gall wasn’t the right term to use where matters of urine infection were being discussed.

So we go back home and we figure out how to get Taksh to contribute his watery excesses for a test. The Mrs and I both get on the internet (after all, even God comes after the internet) and go through a million web-pages, half of which were filled with Google advertisements. Finally we learn of a small bag that can be used to achieve the desired goal.

Leaving aside the details on what we did next, we manage to submit Taksh’s contributions for a test.

Two agonizing days later, the tests come and the report says that our 4 month old has a case of serious infection. Infection which left untreated can lead to a failure of kidneys! We run to Paediatrician number 1.

Paediatrician number 1: “Oh-oh. This is too much. We have to go for ultra-sound, 10 days antibiotics and perhaps even an operation”

So we rush along with Taksh and his bag of accessories (read diapers and many spare clothes) to Paeditrician number 2.

Paediatrician number 2: Takes a while staring at the report. Removes his spectacles and says “This is very unusual for a 4-month old. I cannot take a call. You need to consult a specialist. A paediatric urologist  infact. Here, this is his name, he is a friend of mine, take an appointment.” He mumbled has he wrote some doctor’s name on a white notepad, tore it with shaky hands and gave it to me.

By now the Mrs and I were scared out of our wits. However, we didn’t want to give up now did we. So off we again went running to Paeditrician number 3. All this while Taksh has been perfectly happy with the goings-on and urging us to smile and laugh at life. “What character my son has!,” I think to myself, visibly impressed.

Paediatrician number 3: Looks at the report in a calm manner, turns it around, looks at some other parameters. He then takes his pen and circles a few parameters and explains to us “While this report states that the bacteria count is so high, none of these other parameters confirm it. You see, if the bacteria count is so high, then Ssdfhsdfs, Tesdfoidsfs and Qerewrposd should also indicate some numbers. But they don’t. So what I suspect is that the bag in which you collected your sample was most likely contaminated.”

The Mrs. and I are all smiles now. Taksh is bawling as he hates being put flat on a doctor’s bed. Cutting the rest of the details short, we repeat the test and much to our liking the test comes negative.

But after all this, I wasn’t really happy. What would have happened if we had not gone to Paediatrician number 3? What if we weren’t able to afford consulting 3 doctors? Isn’t that the case with most people? How many people out there even have access to a second opinion? Third opinion? What about the ability to go to so many doctors? The ability to get information? Why is there such a vast asymmety of information and access to healthcare in our country? And aren’t doctors supposed to be a whole lot more responsible?

I shudder to think that if we hadn’t visited the third doctor, Taksh would have undergone a 10-day antibiotics course, perhaps even an ultra sound. And later a new test would have affirmed that the bacteria was gone. Then we would’ve heaved a sigh of relief and thanked the antibiotics and the doctors, whose status would’ve now elevated further in our eyes. And we would spread good word about such doctors and they would become famous.

Scary, isn’t it?

Time was slowly slipping by on this blog while things were becoming too fast paced in the offline world. Finally, a balance seems to be on the horizon as we resume interacting here once again.

First news first, Dhi Junior aka Taksh has well and truly arrived. Taksh is named after the founder of the Takshila University. For those with a mythological interest, Taksh was the name of Bharat’s son (Bharat being Ram’s younger brother of course). For those who think this is a wonderful name, we should let you know how the name got selected. Those who think this is quite a bad name, we should still let you know how the name got selected.

Rewind a few months back and the Mrs. and I are thinking whether we should start thinking about names. The Mrs. thinks perhaps and I say perhaps and then we go about doing other important things like solving crosswords and drinking tea. Rewind a few weeks before Taksh is due and we are thinking whether we should start thinking about a name. But then again, we don’t know the gender so why bother right now? More crosswords and more tea follow and we nod in unison at our decision.

Taksh arrives, known and recognized more as the son of the Mrs. and Dhi. We are still thinking whether to start thinking of names. I get online (what more could be expected of someone who blogs) and search for names. That becomes a tiring exercise so we break for a crossword and tea. Then we get possession of a book of baby names and believe that this was the best thing to happen to us (after the baby of course). We are told by the powers that be that the baby’s name should start with an R or a T. We run through the Rs and don’t find anything interesting, anything remotely difficult to pronounce or explain. We then browse through the Ts and immediately stumble upon Taksh. It’s got a slight tongue-twisting feel to it and the dude is going to have to spend some time explaining the word and the spelling.

“So much like my name,” I beamed to myself. That was sufficient for us as far as naming him was concerned. And thus arrived Taksh. We are back to our crosswords but are briefly and rightly so interrupted by him every few hours of our sleeping time. He is one of the reasons why I have groggy eyes and sleepy afternoon meetings. He is also one of the reasons why blogging, apart from other essential activities, has taken a back seat.

Moving on to other things now. During one of the nights that I spent at the hospital, I am walking on the corridors at around 11:00 pm. A couple of nurses with worried faces are running behind a sort of matronly looking nurse.

“Sister, sister, we don’t know what are the exact procedures to be put up in the list sister”, one of the younger ones complains with a hassled face.

“Yes sister, how can we know the procedure?” adds her companion meekly.

The matronly sister turns around and says “Eh, what ya! Take it from the net no! It is there on the net, just take it from there.”

I smiled and felt glad that even hospitals were referring to pieces of information on the internet to know procedures of some kinds. Hoping it wasn’t exactly some life-saving procedure, I walked along as the nurses turned around and trotted away with immense happiness.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to give Taksh his due attention lest he decides to bawl through the night.

More later. Enjoy.

“Are you ok?”

Many people have asked me that since yesterday. As I open my mouth to answer that once again, the next line slips in:
“Are you ok Annie?” and Michael Jackson croons with some great music in the background.

What happened was this: I was walking on the footpath of a road. A path that is meant for pedestrians to walk on.
However, someone had kept a long wooden platform on that footpath, merely to deter bikers from parking their bikes on that section of the footpath.

I was oblivious of this fact of course, and keeping my head high, I trotted along the footpath, looking around for some missing clue about our life and this universe.


Suddenly, I notice that my right foot was no longer keeping up with the rest of my body. My brain wakes up and gets instantly into first gear, detecting a pending calamity. Electric signals from my brain’s few million neurons fire relentlessly trying to get the word to my right leg as soon as possible.
The right leg, in the meanwhile, has shut off incoming communication. My brain is still frantically trying to establish organic contact. No luck though.

In the meanwhile, my body’s upper half has lost the plot and starts yielding to the by now strong strains of gravity.


My right leg finally realises its mistake, wedges itself out of the platform and signals back to the brain, “All is Ok. Move on now.”
“A little too late,” signals my brain back as it now gets into the tried-and-tested damage saving mode. Both my hands, which were until now waiting for orders from the higher ups, spring into action. With the palms hoping to cut off gravity’s intense strength, my hands move faster than my falling body, past my upper torso and prevent the ground from taking my full impact. A slight jerk in the shoulder and my brain disengages from “panic mode” and switches to the “realization mode”.


However, all is still not well. The right leg, in its attempt to get out from underneath the wooden plank, and under immense pressure from the brain to react, had put in a little extra effort which had to be passed on to the upper parts of the body. All this meant that my face now came crashing down on the stony pavement, my hands looking sideways at each other not quite knowing where this face landed from.


I now have a couple of bruises on the right side of my face, quite close to the eye. And my shoulder aches occasionally. Yet, here I am, writing this blog post and still keeping an eye out for that missing clue about our life and this universe.


Bouquets and get-well soon cards accepted for free. Just leave a comment here indicating so and you will get a reply with delivery instructions.

There has been a bit of a blog-negligence happening in the past few weeks. I have been busy with my work, figuring out how to get more readership on thebetterindia.com (which by the way appears to be on a good growth rate in terms of visitors!), weeding out issues on wikyl.com(this one needs some serious help from designers willing to work on it!), trying to start 3 novels and abandoning them 3 times each and so on. You get the drift.

Yesterday, the by-now-once-a-year shocking news made its customary appearance. Jaipur was rocked by a series of blasts and the official death toll as of now is somewhere upwards of 80 (according to many news sources).

I heard the news, opened up a couple of news websites, read about it, shook my head in disgust, and then moved on with my day to day activities. The event did not create a rage inside me. What creates a rage now is this question – Why I did not get affected about this news as much as I should have?

Why? Is it that we as a nation have become immune to this trend? Is it that we have forgotten to demand basic security within our country premises? Or are we just too caught up on the growing super-power epiphany that we have adopted for our selves?

The IPL happens, and the entire country has an opinion or two to share on everything related to the game. Including on the cheerleaders. But where is this country when the need is to decide on how we should secure our citizens? Why is this job left to the government, which makes a shoddy job of it in the first place and then engages in a blame game just to ensure that their electorate does not get too unhappy? The news papers will be back to showcasing cricket and bimbos on the first page from tomorrow onwards. This particular news item will now move to the narrow columns on the left or the right and then a few days later will be pushed to the inner pages, where you might stumble upon it to be immediately attracted by an advertisement on the next cool property to buy.

What about those who lost their lives in Jaipur for no fault of theirs? What happens to those million dreams which reached an inconclusive end, an unfair death? Who takes responsibility for all this? We? Our government? Our intelligence agencies?
Why is nobody held accountable for the safety and security of our fellow countrymen?

This post has nothing to do with preaching about civic responsibilities. Its more of a personal angst on my inability or, rather, lack of willingness, to form an opinion on an event of this tragic a scale.