15- Psychatrist in Delhi

15-Psychiatrist in Delhi

October ’84- Indira Gandhi was assassinated. This followed riots in Delhi in November. I put an ad. in the paper that ‘I would be available to see the victims of the aftermath of the riots’.

I set up my small ‘practice area’ in the basement of my sister Shashi and Mohan’s clinic in Greater Kailash and started seeing ‘ikka-dukka’ patients.

Soon, I got selected as Consultant and Psychiatrist at Batra Hospital to start the Department which was really good for me. I was back in a hospital setting with other medical fraternity which gave me the opportunity to work as a specialist from home base, so to say.

It was a full time assignment. Quickly, I discovered that to be part of the hospital, I had to go by certain ‘management dictated hierchical rules’ and not necessarily as ‘I’ felt ‘clinically best’ for the patients. I felt, perhaps, the Industrialists built the hospital more for ‘revenues’. The ‘primary intent’ was not necessarily medical service. I did not wish to fight the system and neither was I willing to accept ‘this’.

Also Karan would return to school by Lunch time and I wanted to be at home for him, instead of sitting in the hospital ‘without work’. I took the advice and consent of Dr. I.D. Bajaj who had been our warden at Maulana Azad and was 2nd in command to the MD Dr. Nagpal.

My life had changed its course from one of giving in and going along to one of steering my ship my way……. So I decided to convert to my position to ‘half time’.

I had already started ‘practice’ at Shashi’s Nursing home and was gradually, getting more patients. I had the advantage ‘of being a Woman Psychiatrist’ and also one who had returned from abroad with a foreign degree which was an attraction for people here.

The first problem I faced was that of ‘language’. Although I spoke in Hindi, I would automatically think in English. When my patients spoke, my reflex would be to answer them in English. It would take my mind a little time to translate. This felt ridiculous and I was very conscious of it. The other difference was that most patients here came with many family members, friends and even neighbors who were keener to see me than the patient himself. It was actually difficult for me to sometime make out who the patient was. In treatment therefore the whole family also had to be included, much in contrast to the method of working in America where everything was more individualistic and autonomous. Most patients over there went ‘on their own’ to the doctor.

I was energetic and started going to Lectures and Conferences, myself taking part and also presenting Papers. Dr. Sunil Kaul was a fresh graduate who came from Pune and was interested in Sports medicine and Physical Health. Both of us started Aerobic and Dance classes in my clinic for my Psychiatric patients as part of their treatment. (The concept of such Dancing/jazzercises caught on much later in Delhi-perhaps the 90s).

I remained active, academically, attending Psychiatric meetings here in India and the USA when possible.

Gradually, there was increasing sensitivity and awareness in the Media, lot of attention being paid to Psychiatry in the Magazines, newspapers, radio and television. I would put in ‘my bit’ as and when the opportunity came my way.

My friend, Shubhadarshini started her own Film Company with a regular Medical/Physician oriented educational program making me in- charge of the Psychiatric segment. And we did quite a few clips together.

I was getting more and more patients who needed acute Hospitalization. I didn’t find Batra a satisfactory place, due to it being an Open General hospital and Psychiatric patients actually needing a more confidential, intensive and inclusive set up.

Brother Vikram and I therefore looked around and my mother bought a place for me in G.K.2 itself.

I designed it gracefully for the needs of a small ‘psychiatric nursing home’. There were huge beurocratic hassles at every step during its establishment, but I coped and survived.

Then I shifted my Venue of practice to ‘SAMVEDNA PSYCHIATRIC KLINIC’, Ved being my father’s first name. This was my new professional project now.

Ila volunteered to be the Receptionist. She was really good with patients, active, understanding and encouraged my ‘Practice”. She and I got along famously and became Personal friends. Madhumati Singh joined as a fresh Psychologist and Rachna as an Aesthetic counselor. In the beginning, it was difficult to find good Nurses and the Domestic staff. However over time I was able to find suitable people and trained them for my patients’ needs and my style of working.

In the mean time I had reduced my work at Batra, some more, to twice a week, for two hours only. My ‘Practice’ now was becoming more and more ‘In patient’ requiring more time and energy. I enjoyed the work during the following years. I also then, added another Male Psychiatrist and Psychologist to help and share Patient care as a team. We were doing ‘group therapy’ programs including Yoga and meditation. ‘Alcoholic anonymous’ meetings were conducted at the premises with an in-house ‘Chemical dependency’ counselor.

I was by now, very much a part of the rest of the Psychiatric doctor community of India, who accepted and looked up to me as----‘Me’ as I was I guess!

Typically at a Conference of Psychiatrists, people behaved differently, some with respect to the psychiatrist in me, some with flirtatious teasing to the woman in me, some with a slight awe to the whole of me, some just friendly and some wondering about my status.

I remained strong, re-establishing professionally back home in a very competitive world, which was every day and every moment ready to pounce on a single woman. My vulnerability became my strength and I did WELL. Besides being able to work for the ‘woman’s’ cause’, by now I was also known for the ‘psychotherapy’ rather than the purely ‘medicinal approach’ that I used for patient care. More and more younger clients seeking better lives, wanting to make proper personal and career choices, marital couples, teens with adolescent issues with parents, added to the rest of the ‘seriously depressed and unwell population’.

After nearly 20 years of work here, some of the seniors asked me to form the ‘Delhi Chapter’ of the ‘Indian Association of private psychiatry’.

This I did and as its President, worked further towards the ‘Road to good mental Health’.

Veena

14- Father

14- FATHER- my father

Babuji was born in a small village in Haryana called Pehowa in March, 1919. His father died when he was about 10, from Tuberculosis as did his other siblings, which was ‘the Scourge’ those years. Dadi brought him up in a corner of a room shared with Taiji.
He would take tuitions and go to School when a little older. He went to do law and Commerce in Lahore which was the Mecca of education in the North at that time. All his cousins were younger and he began to be their guide and senior.

He married my mother of 16, at Ludhiana when he was 23. Then, earning about 100 Rs. per month at Ambala, he retired as Commissioner Income tax at Delhi after a full life at 58.

We went abroad and I toiled with my marriage, children, home, post graduation in Pathology, then Psychiatry and work from hospital to hospital and city to city. Father presumed I was happy, I presumed I was OK, but gradually was not OK.

Back there I kept getting sketchy information about his odd ‘withdrawn’ behaviors and the rounds of visits to the physicians/ psychiatrists. On one of my visits home, with some hesitation, a struggling teardrop rolling down his eye and shaky voice, he expressed his suicidal thoughts to me. I met Dr. Mohan at AIIMS and we agreed that Babuji had a bipolar mood disorder with Depressions. He was started on Lithium along with other things and
I encouraged Jhai Ji to be more tolerant of his moods and more supportive when he had side effects from medication that were irritating and difficult for her to handle.

When I finally returned with Karan, he lived in a ‘Kothi’ at Sundar Nagar with Jhai and Vikram. Youngest sister Sunita had been married some years ago to Sudhir.
The Cook Bahadur who could never clean to Karan’s standards, Driver Ishrat who drove the old Rickety Fiat too fast for safety and Sharmaji the Typist sitting on an antique noisy typewriter, mostly yawning in the verandah were around, as domestic help. The ‘Grand living’ for a govt. retired officer was according to him, to fetch a worthy bride for my kid brother, his and my mother’s pride and joy.
Although technically retired he still continued to address himself as ’Commissioner Income tax’ and refused to give up on paltry and not so paltry gains accorded to one in such a position.

Maji, my dadi who was no more, used to tell us of the days when they survived only on ‘Chana’. His friends and relations at one time called him ‘Badshah of Delhi’ when he actually was at the peak professionally. He was no more that now.
My mother said, as the years went, his prolonged ‘depressions’ and occasional ‘highs’ became more and more disruptive. After Calcutta he spent his last working years at Bhopal and Jabalpur which were not at all to his liking or preference.

He had a stroke of good luck with Bara Khamba Rd. house where he lived for some years. This area was declared ‘Greater Cannaught place’ in later years and to vacate, he got financial compensation in the form of a flat on Firoze Shah Rd. a prime locale, where my mother now lives.

My return as it was, was painful for him but it also gave him a new leash for life. I shared this exactly the same way. ‘I’ became his new goal to help me out of my crisis and ‘he’ for me to mend the broken-ness of the inner sufferings of his mind.

Returning home after prolonged difficult times, I felt childlike, vulnerable and looked to him for all the strength, emotional and physical. He gave all. He began to ‘anchor’ me to the new, New Delhi. Karan started DPS at Mathura Rd. and I was appointed department in charge of Psychiatry at Batra hospital.

Very soon I began to recognize that father was fragile now, although feigning ‘self made man’ strength. I could no more be the needy child. There followed a subtle role reversal and I tried to do ‘my little’ for the man who was responsible for ‘me, who or what, the me in me’.

When necessary, I began to rely more on my kid brother Vikram who I sensed was no more a kid. In fact he was multifarious, a kid in the overall family equation to tell stories to, an equal to joke and have fun with, an elder to guide and advise, and overall wise, mature, responsible and dependable to take over my care (struggling to settle as a single woman, parent and professional), for the remaining years and become the strong net that holds me in visible and invisible ways.

To Babuji’s dismay, I had rented a small flat separately but I continued to spend all available time with him including the early morning bed tea when I would drop in by surprise after taking Karan to School, this having become his habit to miss the regular bus to hitch a ride with mummy in the Volkswagen Jetta that came from the US.
The door was always open, he would be absorbed in the editorial of Hindustan Times, I would say, “Babuji ?” and he would look up, throw the paper away, smile and ask me to sit near. He would be happy but he would be worried, so was I, happy to be at Sundar Nagar and worried. Tea was ordered and Jhai would wake up with the Hulla-gulla. Soon it was time for me to drive back, sadly he would walk out, to the car, hand on my shoulder, the same gentle pat again that he had given me when he left me at the Hostel gate at Patiala over 20 years ago.

He was maintained on fairly high dose of medications for Depression and Hypertension. He was never too bad but also never OK, OK. He tended to oscillate between passive blank inactive periods to Agitated, thoughtless activities bordering on overspending and disappearing from the house at odd times much to the chagrin of my mother. Lithium ‘shook’ his hands and in spite of reassurances he couldn’t stop fearing being in the same state as Pandit G.B.Pant who had Parkinsonism.

As a family, for Jhai, for all of us sisters and Vikram, for all his cousins who had shared their lives with this very dynamic and domineering man it was difficult to see him full of fears and go downhill thus, but nevertheless he maintained his sense of command and influence on all, as long as he could.

Sharmaji was kept at his task mostly for Babuji’s serious project of sorting out advertisements, letters, photographs and other sundry details of ‘prospectives’ for Vikram only to be filed away and piled up on the antique wooden desk in antique wooden trays while Vikram maintained a solidly WOODEN stance towards the whole deal till Mita came on the scene dressed in a Sky Blue skirt to entice him.

I had become the go-between and frankly quite enjoyed the ‘diversion from my real life’. By now Vikram also had a healthy respect for my opinions and finally agreed to be married.
Parents, Vikram and Mita moved from Sundar Nagar to Firozeshah Road flat.

It was now that his heart started to play up.

His mother had suffered serious Asthma and we kids had witnessed Doctors’ comings and goings frequently. Although the medical fraternity was familiar to him, when it came to his ‘heart’ he was gripped in fears and once again I took over and got him treated by the Cardiac team at Batra Hospital.

Jan.’87-
It was 7PM. I was visiting my parents. Babuji said he had pain in the chest. It had waxed and waned since the afternoon. He had been discharged from Batra 2 days ago.
In spite of the ‘blocks’ it had been decided to go conservative in view of his co-existing chronic recurrent ‘depressive condition’.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said “Does any thing need to be done?”
“Perhaps an ECG?” I said.
“OK yes it is a little late” --In his usual authoritarian style he said, ’Diwan Chand’ should be open !’
‘Diwan Chand’ it was who kept the place especially open for him till late. He put his hand on my shoulder and said to him, I was ‘his’ daughter.
I helped his shaky hands un-buttoning his shirt and getting the ECG done.
The doctor re-assured him. We drove back. He took the lift to go up, his one hand on my shoulder and ‘me’ feeling shaky within.

My father died 2 days later before I could even reach him on way to Willington hospital in the Ambulance while Vikram tried to pump his heart----

My father was ‘inside’ a pile of logs at Lodhi Crematorium. The son Vikram lit the pyre. I couldn’t let him go just like that. I was ‘his’ too.
So I also lit the pyre.

Many nights I would wake up ‘lighting’ Father’s body. Many days I hallucinated, seeing and hearing and feeling him.

The grief can never be over, though less painful now.

A pencil sketch of him that Divya made is on my study wall.
He sketched my life. He filled my life.
He is me now and I, ‘remains’ of him.

Veena

13- Back to Roots- Delhi

13-Back to Roots -New Delhi

Back in my parents home! We celebrated my 42nd birthday with them, Vikram, Shashi, Sunita and our 7 kids. It was wonderful. Towards the end of the day Martha called from America. We used to celebrate our birthday together on Ward 1st East. She sort of connected me to my life a month ago, just a month ago. It seemed so, so far away in the past- unbelievable that I actually was living in it. There was a strange amnesia about it and equally about the future. The present felt sheltered and cared for, warm, I needed now.

Karan was admitted at Delhi Public School, Mathura Rd, near Babuji’s home. Thanks to the ‘spade-work’ he had done and Karan’s good academic records from Mountain Brook. The adjustment was difficult for him to say the least. He did not speak Hindi, had not done a year of French or Sanskrit and spoke American and not the Queen’s English. Although he was an Ace Swimmer for the School team, he refused to join because of the ’Green’ pool and stinky toilets, for that matter lot of other stinky stuff around too.

‘He’ became my first ‘goal’.

Our ’20 ft. Container’ from the US had reached the Shores of Bombay. This turned out the first horrendous task in India, ‘a trailer’ for every attempt to achieve any thing in future here. Thanks to Vikram and Rakesh’s family to assist with ‘Customs’ where we made regular trips for a whole month, dealing with the ‘Workers Hartals’, the ‘under and over the table’ handing of ‘number 1 and 2 monies’.

In spite of Fathers’ protests and assurance that there was always going to be ‘room’ for us with him, I signed the lease for a small flat in Greater Kailash 2, my home without Rakesh. A tear trickled slowly, that sense of separation, although I was looking forward to the move, to start life again……… to move into the future…………..to live again.

It was close to where Shashi lived, Shashi with whom I had shared a life bond of togetherness. I furnished it like an American Home and the car, Jetta Volkswagen stood in the Driveway. We joined ACSA, club for local US citizens where Karan could feast on a Burger or a can of Coke and we could Drive the Car on Shanti Path to breathe some clean air. At DPS he was with Indian kids, here he joined the Boy Scouts of America to be able to run and camp around with ‘the familiar’.
Understanding his intense craving for any thing American and accepting his sensitive criticism of India, I wanted the transition, gradual.

Nov. 4-84
Indira Gandhi was assassinated. The world was shocked. Hindus were killing the Sikhs. Delhi was under curfew. More news came from B.B.C. than AIR. World leaders stood up at Shanti Van to pay her ‘the greatest woman and statesman’ of this time, homage, as the pyre on which she lay was lit by her son Rajeev who became the Torch bearer to carry India on, on, to carry India on……. On…… where ………. How …….
“India so rampant with corruption, poverty, steeped with immorality … it had become a passive nation- each individual struggling to survive at the cost of others…….. At the cast of all others till that cost becomes unbearable ……. What is wrong? Why is it so?” I thought.

I was here. Having this experience was frightening. Clean shaven Sikhs on the streets with Machine guns to ‘get’ the Hindus……….. I felt part of this turmoil, a witness of this whole scene, and yet sort of at home, for ‘this’ is where I ‘belonged’.

A year got over, Karan went to class 8, did great and became the PREFECT (sort of Monitor).
I also felt good during the year- having an amazing inner strength and peace of mind. Never did I regret this Move or my decision to return. No one of course, understood this.

It was time for Divya to finish School and join College. I wanted to spend time with her and be part of her decision making. So Karan and I went, Eastwards via the Pacific, via Expo ’85 at Tokyo. After all Japan was the leader now. Little did I anticipate then, that he would take up his first assignment with Mitsubishi upon his own graduation.
We traveled via Tokyo, LA, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and then home to Birmingham.

It was difficult family time emotionally. Divya was negative and angry towards me- ‘this’ I tried to resolve constantly. My heart wanted to reach out to her- but as I tried she would reject. We did better later but I really felt sad leaving her. She felt close to Rakesh.
I was glad of that. He was mostly quiet and passive. It was difficult to put up with his almost ‘no communication’-

Well, she was going to pursue Art at Univ. of Alabama, Mobile and go there after summer.

Next summer we took a week off to go to Mussourie with Karan, Shashi and daughters Deepa and Ruchi. We stayed in a ‘time sharing apartment’ bought by Vikram where the management was poor but tolerable.

Across, at various levels were ‘the some what shoddy looking multistory buildings’ with clothes on washing lines, trash littered in heaps, smell of horse dung, poor hillside people in rags. A little away were neater looking, private homes with sloping Brick Red roof tops, and surrounding lush green, in and around them. There was the famous ‘Woodstock school’, its courts and an impressive circular structure in the middle. Beyond and away were the mountains, range after range, green, grey, shades merging into the sky. Thick fog creeping out was hovering, clouding, misting, curling and ‘softening the strength’ of the Mountains. And above, jutting, arose the bare steel structure, the TV tower.
It inspired me- it filled me with strength. The tower rising above the squalor, dirt, neat residences and the Mountain ranges.

I felt good emerging out of my ‘past’. It had been almost 2 years since the return back to Delhi. Some moments of loneliness, panic and mild lows but mostly, good.

Veena

12-West for us

12. The West for us

A wk-end at the Beach, Panama City Florida, I wrote,” As I walk on the wet sand, the foot marks keep getting washed away, lost and gone, leaving me lost and gone. The tides hit me and I fall. I am up but am hit again and fall further away. I dig my feet in, to stay firm, here it comes, a big one, the sand slips and I fall. I jump, swim and try to stay afloat. The Sea comes, keeps coming and almost drowns me.”

My depression worsened.

Professionally I was doing well. I was also adding a different patient populace to our group, being a woman and with a bend towards psycho-therapy. I ran the inpatient group with the Pastoral counselor John Sims and other staff. The Medical chief would send all residents to me for a Psychiatric Orientation Program and any personal problem they needed to resolve. My Psychiatric partners began to call me ‘Gendi’, they meant Indira Gandhi.

I had become the President of the Indian Association of Birmingham. Each year the city hosted a festival where they saluted a chosen country. We educated school kids about India by doing fun projects. There was a cultural Bonanza for a Whole week inaugurated by none other than, the then Ambassador Dr. K R Narayanan. Performers included Mallika Sarabhai doing the Oddisi, Hari Prasad Chaurasia on the flute, Uday Shankar’s troup doing an dance act from the Maha Bharata. There was also of course, sumptuous food from North, South, East and Western parts of India.

Whilst earlier, at home there had been swimming parties with Booze and Barbequed Murga in the evenings, now I began to spend solitary hours floating in the pool in semi darkness.

Another crisis occurred which took Rakesh and me to India. Papaji, his father was in the hospital following a gastric bleed which was a result of serious Liver Cirrhosis. Following a Blood transfusion he developed further Jaundice and renal failure. He passed away at the early age of 58. All Hindus put Ganga jal in the mouth of the dying man. I don’t know if it could wash away the alcohol in his system now. Papaji had really loved me like a daughter as there was no girl in the family prior to me. This of course further saddened all of us.

I began to share ‘myself’ with friends in USA and family at home. There were frequent trips to India with and without the kids.
I needed to put things in order. What did I want and what could I save.
It was the beginning of my questions about the Marriage and stay in the West. What had been subtle and accepted began to be serious issues.

I had never felt that I wanted to settle abroad. I was always giving in to Rakesh because of his weak family ties. I had always ‘wished’ to return. As soon as we started making good money, Rakesh started mishandling it. Living there was comfortable physically but a vacuum in the West constantly haunted me. It was a place of plenty but never felt like ‘my home’.

I decided I wasn’t going to let Rakesh continue like this. He was going to help running the house now from his earnings. I had worked extremely hard all these years and I was going to save mine for going to India later. At least I needed to give it a try. I felt I had to save the children and myself.

Ironically, our American citizenship papers came through now. I did not feel American. I didn’t want to become American. I didn’t want to lose ‘my’ Indian identity but being unsure of the future, I accepted. I answered questions about American History at the interview although I felt no part of it. I could not let go of that to which I felt I belonged, centuries of my own ancestry and the soil of the Geography of my land.

The last year was very difficult. Divya chose to stay there as this was her final in High School and then she would go away from Birmingham to University. I worried about her, was frightened of leaving her, and yet could not go on there. I was trying handling Rakesh and the children and dealing with their feelings around this issue of Family split up and Country move to India, both at the same time.
Rakesh had finally accepted hoping it may be temporary.

There was a superficial calm. There was the question “Am I doing the right thing? I made a mistake when I married Rakesh. I rebelled against my family, my parents to whom I am so close now. Am I now rebelling against this present family?”

With opposition from all quarters, I decided to take the plunge. I felt frightened but stood my ground. While emotions and deep, deep pain devoured me inside, something else, a much stronger force continued to instill a sense of confidence at the same time.

I needed to prepare Divya who was to stay back. She was already ‘driving’ to School by now. At Christmas that year, she, Karan and I, drove 1500 miles to New York through Snowy roads, with her at the steering wheel. We were spending a week at my friend Kusum’s place with her family. We talked, they cried, they talked and we cried. Then we spent the 31st eve at Times Square where the Big Apple descended at midnight and the world went crazy with shouts of joy, heralding the New Year.

I needed to prepare myself too. I had been having problem ‘periods’ for some while. With the Gynecologist’s advice, I had a Hysterectomy.
I was in room 274 Brook wood hospital. Jim, Ed and Carol, my partners at work, all came to see me, also to say Good-bye. They were wonderful. We had good times working together.
I finished ‘Work’ at Princeton and bade remaining Good-byes. Emptying the office was sad. Tons of memories of my faithful patients, will always occupy the crevices of my brain.

Outside, it was dark. The Red lights in the Tower house and the Green of
‘the Vulcan, Steel God’ twinkled constantly, brightly, hopefully.
“All this will be behind me and I shall be starting a new life, new life, and new life”.

At home, the Shipping container arrived and 14 years of my life were packed and shipped to India.

As the plane took off with me and Karan, the Sun Set outside my window, it sort of Set on America for me.

Veena

11- Birmingham

11- Birmingham, Alabama USA

We moved deeper South. It was Spring and the Azaleas, the Gardenias and Dogwoods were in full bloom.
The house looking like a ranch stood on a hillock facing a Catholic Church in the best part of Birmingham, Alabama. At the end of the steep driveway, was a Deck holding a Kidney shaped pool over which hung a lush willow. Bedrooms faced the water, its sunny reflections playing games on the walls inside.

We started our respective practices. Rakesh joined a large private Hospital and a Dialysis unit individually. I joined ‘Birmingham Psychiatry’ as part of a ‘group of Psychiatrists and Psychologists’ connected to 2 hospitals. Patients were of mixed ethnicity, largely Caucasian, with openness and readiness to get better.

Children began at Mountain brook Elementary in a good School system adjusting well.

There was a fair sized Indian/Punjabi community, as is, in most cities in US and we were welcomed to the ‘wk-end dos’ with emphasis on Desi Food, Desi music, Scottish Brew and more than just a dash of ‘material opulence’ thrown in.
We could now afford a live-in help and things seemed to look good.

After Spring, was Summer, Autumn and then Winter. I don’t know when things began to ‘not look’ so good.

At Cincinnati, Rakesh’s alcohol use had increased. Back home in Bombay, his father drank heavily to the chagrin of his mother and younger brothers who were also bearing the brunt. It began to bother me. We would get into arguments to no avail. It was after one such ‘scuffle’ I made an appointment with a Psychiatrist for us. He did come initially but as we began to address issues, he withdrew, labeling it as ‘my problem’ which indeed it had become.

It was then that I decided to continue in therapy along with my Residency training. I did it, also to sort out my own questions and self ‘perceived vulnerabilities’.

This proved to be a ‘significant chapter’ in my conscious life.

“The eldest girl who grew with father’s domination and mothers passivity, choices dictated by him- leading me to rebel, following his first long depression, inducing a guilt, perpetuating further need to conform to the now man i.e. husband. The marriage was an impulsive decision, once taken; I took the ‘role’ seriously as was my nature. While I was equally versed intellectually and emotionally, I accepted a position of ‘submission’ and played the martyr, as I thought was or ‘should be’ the norm for the ‘wife’. I was the passive, obedient sexual partner and conceived a child and then another, thus having to change the direction of my life prematurely and immersed in half hearted motherhood and half hearted medical jobs and education. There was little sharing between husband and wife. In fact now, his Alcohol intake was more regular, a cause of concern to me. It felt as if this was a price I had to pay.”

It was in therapy that I began to ‘grow again’ internally, subtly. It was in therapy that I began to take ‘responsibility’ for my future choices with deliberation and careful thinking.

Having worked and trained hard as Professionals, parents, home makers, we together had taken the decision to move for Private Practice to Birmingham.

Now, the house that we had, had our living-room at one end with the TV, which was Rakesh’s den, with his newspaper and Whiskey. On the other side was the ‘kitchen and Dining area’ where I would be and the kids’ rooms were in between. This physical distance at home between Rakesh and me became symbolic of our growing emotional distance. We were under one roof but really under different roofs.
I began to sense sadness within me but continued to devote my self to Divya, Karan and my patients. Rakesh and my Philosophy and ideas were completely different from beginning of marriage. He lived to eat and I ate to live.

As we settled more, once again, it began to seem that the last 13 years of my Marriage, children, home and Profession were not my own. I had constantly ‘conformed’. I began to feel a stranger in my own ‘self’. I kept trying to make adjustment.
Our conflicts, my growing unrest, had taken me to an ‘Analyst’ in Cincinnati.
I called him and resumed sessions on phone.

Another year dawned. Divya began rebelling like any teenager, partly because of the silent rift at home and partly the need to conform to School where she and Karan were the only Indian kids. Her rebellion surfaced further dormant feelings in me.

One day, a call came from the School. They said she had some ‘Valiums’ with her. Some time ago we had given her a pain pill and a valium for monthly period stress .The School board was tough. Rakesh and I felt they were being discriminatory. They were totally closed to hearing us as parents and as two senior medical professionals. No matter what we said, mattered.
Besides Divya’s problem, for the first time we felt alienated as Indians in this Caucasian culture.

We were directed to have family counseling which I thought then, was a blessing in disguise. Whilst Divya opened up, when Rakesh’s drinking came up, he once again refused further therapy.

Another crisis occurred.
Suddenly one day ‘The IRS’ called home. We were in big losses and no tax had been paid since the beginning of our move. To my horror, I discovered that Rakesh had been losing money in ‘speculative stocks’ not once but consistently. He would spend all his earnings in it, whilst telling me, his practice wasn’t still good and all house expense went from mine.

This woke me up. I felt cheated.

It was not just the loss of money in stocks but the realization that this was part of the syndrome of gambling. He always had a ‘streak’ but never like this. From Soccer-betting in UK to Horses, to ‘Grey hounds’ to Casinos to speculative ---- to now the impending take over of our ‘every thing’, perhaps everything that we owned----

There was complete denial of the magnitude and enormity of the problem by him.
He assured me, every thing will be ‘OK’!
I was not so sure---

Veena

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

9- Marriage/ Family /Pathology

Marriage/family /Pathology
College ended and time came for the daughters to get settled and parents sent for them for the next task before them.
Father brought me up as a son but when it came to marriage he wanted to select the right ‘master’ by advertising ‘me ‘in the matrimonial market of the newspaper.
Life took a turn, a sharp one. I felt crushed – I lost my own control and felt a slavery of thoughts and actions. Things started losing meaning with an upsurge of emotions. Whilst mother had been conservative, father had always encouraged liberal views, but here he was not going to compromise.

Looking back I really cannot tell if we knew what ‘love’ was. Of course there had been what one thought then, some matching of chemistries and pairing up. For me, as for many like me, there were triads and confusions. Rakesh had followed me and had wowed to get me in the end.

So I rebelled and in my confusion and helplessness got married to him secretly.
To our good fortune, when disclosed, both sides of Parents acted graciously and accepted our ‘act’ announcing it formally by a ‘reception’ at the Oberoi, the then, only 5 star of Delhi. After all I had been the ‘star’ of Babuji’s life.
Rakesh was the eldest of 4 brothers so; I was welcomed as the first daughter of their house.

My Marriage however threw my father into his first serious ’Depression’, which effected me for years to come.

We went for our Honey-moon to Bombay and Goa.
The Sea was green – it was deep – it was vast. It was stormy, the waves relentless. The pearls scattered in river Mondovi got mixed in the waters with the lights of Panjim. And so lay life before us.

Not knowing how fertile I was, I conceived ‘Divya to be’ immediately.
Jobs were scarce, doctors not well paid. It was the year of the mid-60s, the ‘Brain drain’ had begun and at least 80% of our batch mates flew away, mostly to UK others to USA. It was a wave that swept us too to leave home and country. Ironically, we had pushed the British out of India and yet followed them back.
We were given ‘job vouchers’ as entry tickets and jobs were allotted in small city hospitals. Rakesh started his Medical House-man ship on the Isle of Wight at the southern tip of England. I followed as a wife carrying my 6 month old Divya dressed in a Pink knitted suit, on my shoulder.
The change was sudden, landing at huge Heathrow. In the bathrooms, Indian ladies clad in Salwar kameez smiled, cleaning the floors. It was strangely not a welcome ‘Welcome’. Well at least there were no Coolies at Charring Cross railway station. The train ride to Southampton was comfortable followed by hovercraft to the island. The hovercraft did hover on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, carrying about 30 of us reaching the other shore.
St. Mary’s hospital provided us with reasonably furnished 2 room apartments with a cleaning lady for the kitchen shared by 2 married doctors, the other from UK. We the wives made sure the kitchen was not too dirty and the dishes too greasy ‘before’ she came. The initial graduation was from the Indian to the Western toilet, the washing to wiping with paper, the bucket bath to the tub bath and the learning to clean the pot and the tub. Dealing with the meals with sparse vegetables, Uncle Brown’s rice and British or New Zealand lamb to begin with and then ‘tinned foods’ for us as well Divya. “Yes Mama! I should have learnt how to cook”, here I was……. No doctor status, ‘no many things’ that go with it in India, but pretending to be happy with ‘my handsome husband’ and ‘big black eyed beautiful daughter’.
Doctors were needed; I would do locum casualty/emergency clinics to fill in. It was amazing how much the nurses knew and how good they were, totally disciplined, dedicated and helpful. The English knew when to work and when to play. Work was work, serious, intended for a purpose. One learnt because one wished to learn, one wished to learn because it came from within and needed to be understood. It was after going ‘West’ that I started to learn, not to finish the course or pass the exam or become a doctor as ‘had been planned’.
During a wk-end trip to London to see Kusum, my friend from MAMC, I forgot my ‘pill’ and lo and behold got ‘fertile’ again. An angry me but had to pay the price for the mini /maxi carelessness. Became a ‘mother to be’ again. I reconciled to my homely life and the Winter Snow of the Island till one ‘antenatal check’.
It had been a bright, rare, Sunny day in the month of November. I wore a special flowery dress I had made. The midwife, who had complained that I was getting rather too plump last time, put me on the machine and adjusted her scales. “Well the baby is taking some of your fat – you are the same, my dear”. Inside I went for the ‘Check’ “Kicking about?” the doc asked; patting me and then ‘it’ he inquired.
“Think it is taking a bit of rest” I said- “been a little quiet this weekend”.
He was feeling it up and down, side to side; he was putting his ear to it. He was listening with another instrument, another machine. I had been lying still – and all of a sudden the news had come. There was no fetal heart beat.
“But why? Why doctor, has it happened” I had gone on repeating, feeling numb inside. The doctor could not say!
Rakesh came looking cheerful; Boss had been pleased with him that day.
“Rakesh our baby is dead – it is dead, do you know?”

The baby was dead. “There is no need to be panicky it is best to wait; soon there would follow labor and I would deliver.’’ The Doc pronounced.
From that day on, every morning when I lay in the bath there it was, before me, the sight of the dead thing inside. I writhed with the thought. At night I got the worst night mares. I felt like my body was a graveyard wherein was buried a precious thing of my life. Days passed by – nothing seemed to happen.

Now it was the eve of Christmas. Every house was gay inside. Every room had decorations as if to welcome the holy baby. Outside the window were soft snowy flakes that came noiselessly and majestically layer upon layer. Suddenly I felt a twist in my tummy, it was only a moment – it happened again and again and again.
“Oh God not tonight”, – tears poured, another wave of the terrible pain.

It was morning, still snowing softly. I did not have it inside me anymore.

Instead was, a strange emptiness, a pain deep within. The agony so unbearable I wished I would drift from this world. A mist covering the eyes dried by it self. All the time was that nagging, quivering continuous pain – pain not expressed, not seen, just felt----.
It consumed me, my thoughts, my very being.

Rakesh traveled to Bombay and left Divya, a year and a half old, with his mother who took care of her for some time.

I decided to do Pathology as had been earlier decided by my father, to go with ‘husband’s medical practice’ in possible future settlement in Delhi.

The first was a house job in Hematology followed by Bacteriology at Mile-end Hospital in East London. Needless to say, it felt good. I was a student again, commuting to meet Rakesh on wk-ends, who also had shifted to the vicinity.

Then I did a years’ stint at Hosp. for Sick Children Gt. Ormond Street, doing Virology under Proff. Dudgen.
He was the giant researcher of Rubella. This would take me to the central parts of London like the Soho square with its cobbled stone lanes, so familiar in a way after having read Dickens, Bernard Shaw’s ‘My fair lady’ and other English fiction growing up.

Finally, took Histo-pathology & Morbid Anatomy at Edgware Gen. Hosp.in the North which I liked the most. By now Rakesh and I were both Registrars at Edgware, ‘he a Chest Physician’, never mind how much he smoked.

Our old friends, Sabharwals enthused us to buy a Home which we did, although we had to borrow the ‘down payment’ from Shashi’s husband Mohan. Shashi’s marriage had followed mine within the year as my Father wished, of his choice and I felt ever grateful to her for acceding.
The discipline of living, of thinking, of doing, of planning, of succeeding began to take a deeper meaning. What ever one did at home or in the hospital was not to please father, husband, or the ‘other’ but to perform a better task for the sake of the task itself. No supervisor was watching how much time and how I was spending it, but how well I actually did in the end.
Whilst in the ‘Hospital for Sick children’ at Great Ormond street, an infant got diarrhea, not only his stools but the diapers he used, the mattress he lay on, the nurses station, the kitchen gadgets, the cooks had to be swabbed and tested for the source of infection. Hilarious as it may sound, it was after all the best children’s hosp. on the globe.
I remember a second year med. student came to see a slide of histology in the lab. to me. He had originally seen the patient with ‘pain abdomen’ in Casualty, admitted him for investigations, attended his surgery in the Operation theatre, followed up the specimen of appendix as we had sliced, paraffin embedded and stained it. He now came to see the acute inflammatory cells in the Appendix. (In Delhi, we would identify the slide from the small circles in the middle and guess the diagnosis for the exam).
My Consultant, Dr Patterson would sit on the double Microscope with me and showed the transition from a regular cell to one with enlarging nucleus, to one now getting more vicious, ready to swallow the one next to it and thus becoming more and more malignant in the process. Even Bert, the Mortuary attendant was so much help with post-mortems; I looked forward to do them.
There was certain dynamism in teaching and learning.
Shree who was also doing Pathology and I, would trudge to the Academic world at Hammersmith Institute to hear the ‘Authorities’. I finally finished with the learning of ‘what caused and happened in disease’ and obtained the ‘Diploma in Clinical Pathology’ from the University of London.

Veena