10- Shift to ' Psyche'

10. Shift to Psychiatry

It was now time for me to take a break and get my daughter Divya back.
Saji and Papaji, Rakesh’s parents visited and she came with them. London was difficult for her. I was still a half baked mother and that too a second after Saji, her Dadi. We also decided now to plan for a 2nd child and Karan came along.

Life was now home and family in my three bed room centrally heated, semidetached, beautiful, comfortable house. There were many ‘girlie’ things I could do besides. The trips to Oxford Street, learning designing clothes with lovely fabrics from John Lewis for Divya, shopping at Marks and Spencer, doing a journalism course writing about a ‘Women’s magazine’, entertaining old friends from Med. school at home--- tending the Garden and basking in the rare London Sun under the Blossom of our Apple tree in the back yard.

It seemed leisure for a while but the routine became routine. I started part time ‘family planning clinics’ after doing a short course. Divya started School and Karan could be left with our friendly Gujrati neighbor Ba, an affectionate family who had migrated from Kenya in the Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda.

There were senior nurses and health workers helping us the doctors. It was a pleasant change to deal with ‘people’ rather than ‘specimens in the Path lab and peering down microscopes’. This was my first exposure to ‘counseling’, dealing with teen age girls, boyfriends, young and old mothers, and different situations, issues around planning life, relationships, sex and abortion. Prescribing the ‘pill’ or inserting IUDs was only a part of the exercise. I came in close contact with personal ‘lives’ and liked it.

Rakesh became a senior Registrar and finished ‘Membership of the Royal College of Physicians’ of London.

We had all left India ‘supposedly’ for post-education abroad which seemed attained now.
There was recognition that whilst the British needed us for their ’National Health service’, there was a professional ceiling and we could never become Consultants. Considering future options, the choice was to move back to India or further West. Those in USA were still in the magical throes of the Dollar. Rakesh felt England had been comfortable but not to give us a Bank balance enough for settling home – so we continued and moved further West to the ‘Wonder land of the Disney’.
Cincinnati, Ohio was our next home where Rakesh accepted a fellow-ship in Nephrology.
Destiny opened its doors and a vacancy in Psychiatry happened for me. That seemed fascinating. Rollman’s Institute was under Univ. of Cincinnati, historically basically Freudian but becoming eclectic now. I had a round of interviews with the Professors and was told that instead of the Microscope, I would here, have to look at the deeper mind telescopically and shift my focus away from the ‘body’. I had always been a thinker, feeler and life was more ‘philosophic’ rather than just tangible. I considered this and Instead of repeating Pathology and dealing with specimens, with some excitement, took the ‘decision to accept’, which turned out to be the best for me.
England had already put us in a groove, a ‘logical reason and method’ to ‘do’ in life and not to ‘pretend to do’. USA was the playground – it was open, it welcomed freedom and autonomy of thought and action.
The ‘Whites’ here seemed friendlier, not ruling, but still felt the native owners of the ‘Land’ and we ‘the additional foreigners’.
From an initially, rented townhouse in Hawaiian Village, soon, we bought a pretty big home with Swim pool in the big Back yard and all else to Finney town. Kids were good in School. Rakesh was good in Nephrology.

So started the training to become a Mind healer, a Mood healer and all else pertinent and not pertinent to human body alone and learning ways of dealing with the whole person. It stimulated me and filled me with life and energy. Every thing needed to be explored and understood in the language of thought and emotion. Every action was designed and had layers of intricate threads woven in years. It was a Freudian School with heavy emphasis on ‘his method’. Psychotherapy was the backbone of learning. While it was not mandatory, it was recommended to undergo ‘self analyses’ as part of the making of a good therapist.

At the end of three years, I finished the program as the ‘Chief resident’ and was offered a ‘faculty position’. As a Nephrologist, Rakesh now needed to be associated with a ‘Dialysis centre’. An ex-colleague from Med. School offered a position at Birmingham, Alabama.

We decided that, this was where both of us would start ‘private practice’ in our respective fields of specialization. The lure of that Dollar should now be fulfilled and one day perhaps, we would be able to head ‘Home’ to India. At least I wished so and vaguely Rakesh did too.

Veena