Vyaar eye vaas till now...

A long time ago, kbpm had suggested that I should post on my blog any JIPMER-ian anecdotes I might have to narrate. Life in JIPMER was chock full of amusing incidents. I’d like to share them, but first, let me tell you why I was there in Pondicherry in the first place.

It’s common knowledge that today, there aren’t enough audiologists and speech language pathologists (ASLPs) to provide screening, diagnostic and therapeutic services to all those who need it. We need people to screen newborns, help identify communication disorders as early as possible, counsel, suggest methods of intervention, and such like, but there just aren’t enough people to do it. Also, it takes time (and money) to produce ASLPs. So, as a way to create greater manpower, 1-year diploma programs and short term courses were introduced. Those who completed these courses would aid ASLPs in their job, carry out the work that required only a basic knowledge in the field, and spread themselves out all over the country, thereby ‘reaching out to the nation’ (heh. That’s our Institute’s new motto).

It was with this very intention that the Diploma in Hearing, Language and Speech (DHLS) was started. The program is amazing in that all the classes are conducted through video conferencing. The parent institute, in Mysore, conducts classes that are relayed to DHLS classrooms in Imphal, Mumbai, Delhi and Pondicherry simultaneously. Students in all centres can see and hear each other, interact with each other as well as the lecturer, take down notes while the lecturer scribbles on an electronic whiteboard… The whole thing is quite well thought out and cool.

But something tells me the DHLS program isn’t going to be a big success. I was there in Pondicherry to help out with program coordination and practical classes for the DHLS students. I also got to set tests, correct papers, give assignments, so on and so forth. It was while correcting the answer scripts of the first test that I realized that in spite of all that cool technology and the good lecturers and clear, easily understandable text books, DHLS wasn’t working. S and I corrected the papers together, and we laughed so hard, we nearly fell off our chairs. Here are some of the most ridiculous answers we came across:

Q: Name the three bones in the middle ear.

A: Reflection, refraction, fraction

(Bones in the middle ear? Really? We’d told them if they can’t remember the words malleus, incus and stapes, they should go for hammer, anvil and stirrup. One girl had answered ‘hammer, nail and striup’. We gave her half the marks. But fraction?)

Q: How would you check for the presence of nasal air escape?

A: Put your finger inside the patient’s pharynx and say ‘mmmmm’

(Why do you have to put your finger inside the pharynx to check for nasal air escape? Just hold it in front of the nose! The patient might really not be comfortable if someone sticks a finger in their throat. And it’s even weirder if the someone goes ‘mmmmm’!)

Q: What complications, during the delivery of a child, could cause the child to develop language disorders later in life?

A: Parents marrying related people

(What kind of parents are these, I wonder, who run around ‘marrying related people’ during the delivery of their kid? The student meant consanguineous marriage, by the way. Ok, it might cause a language problem, but it doesn’t take place at the time of delivery, does it?)

Q: Write an essay on why hearing is important in daily life.

A: Hearing is important because it is an interpret. If hearing we can music TV, Sun TV, Jaya TV, Vijay TV, Sun Music, Poghigai and movie musics also, and many radios like Surya and Big.

(You can also hear Star Plus and HBO and Pogo and DD Bangla, but it so happens they don’t watch these in Pondicherry. Sigh.)

Q: The 12 pairs of nerves that originate within the skull are called _________.

A: Brainial nerves

(Impressive, really. The cranial nerves, after all, do originate somewhere in the brain. Why shouldn’t they be called the brainial nerves? This answer got half a mark too. We’re extremely generous)

There were two other coordinators… Mr. T, a very annoying, very stupid, very exasperating kaamchor, and Ms. T (they’re not related), whose life’s mission was to feed us as much kizhangu (tapioca) as she could, and who abhorred Mr. T. She was quite sweet, really. She, unlike Mr. T, was open to new ideas, was willing to accommodate any changes or corrections we made in the way therapy sessions were conducted, and never claimed to know everything. Which Mr. T did. Which irritated us no end.

But to his credit, Mr. T was funny. Of course, he didn’t intend to, but he was ridiculously funny. He always spoke English, albeit badly. One afternoon, G and I were sitting at a table in one corner of the DHLS classroom and reading. Suddenly, Mr. T burst into the room and, gesticulating energetically, spoke to G.

T: Vyaar are you!

G: (blink blink)

T: Vyaar? Vyaar are you?

G: Uhm… I’m here!

T: Yes, but vyaar are you? (poor guy sounds really distraught)

G: T? I’m right here!

T: Yes. No. In the ago.

G: Huh?

T: (flapping his arms) Ago! Ago!

The conversation went on in this vein for a few minutes before he asked, “Morning… in the ago… vyaar are you?” Then we got it. We could barely keep our faces straight as G answered, “Oh. We were in the OT in the morning. Fridays… Surgery…” and we quickly made our way out of the room, where we collapsed in a fit of laughter.

There’s more, but I’ll put them up sometime later. This should hold for now...

I'm back... post-internship!

Before the commencement of our internship year, we’d been told that each of us would be posted in three cities, for a total duration of five months. Alone. Of course, that didn’t go down too well with us. We were sure we’d end up like those despos who punch out a random mobile number and call or send annoying text messages like, “Hai. I don’t kno f ur guy or gal, but I m alone. Will u b ma fren?” So we decided to have a meeting with our Director and voice our protests.

Have a meeting, we did. We asked her to increase our monthly stipend. She agreed. We asked her to cancel postings in Sonitpur and Nalbari, Assam (because we were afraid our classmates posted there would be gunned down by the ULFA). She, being the very soul of generosity, said she couldn’t just cancel postings like that, but if we got shot, she’d let us come back without completing that term. How sweet.

Don’t make us go alone, we said. At least send the girls in pairs, the guys said. She just laughed. We said we’d have to spend so many hours sobbing on the phone (STD calls, mind you), that our monthly stipend wouldn’t cover even a part of our phone bills. We told her we’d end up having everything from depression to multiple personality disorder. We shouted. We pleaded. She just smiled and said that all that time alone would lead to self discovery and deep introspection, that it was all for our good. Discussion closed, have a good day. With that, she regally swept out of the room, leaving us either gaping like fish or sighing resignedly (some even wore sardonic I-told-you-so looks).

It was decided that for the first term (five months), half the batch would work here in the Institute, while the other half went on their ‘outside postings’. At the end of those five months (and a 15-day break), the two halves of the batch would switch places. I won’t even try to explain how they worked out the whole who-goes-where-when… It’s immensely complex.

It was only when the first batch went out on their ‘outside postings’ that things began to change. Nalbari got flooded, so postings there were cancelled. Sonitpur was going through a mildly violent phase of random stabbing and minor bomb blasts, so that was cancelled too. They couldn’t find the students any accommodation in Mehboobnagar or Narindernagar, so those were taken off the list. Postings in Gujarat were cancelled for no apparent reason, and those posted there were transferred to Vellore. In some place near Barabunki, the students were told to get out of there unless they wanted to be sent home in body bags. Apparently, it’s the kind of places where people carry revolvers in their hip pockets and use them when they can’t find the right words to make their point. So, surprise surprise, postings there were cancelled too!

With fewer places to cover, we could now be posted in twos and threes. Excellent! I was still going to be with my buddies, but in Vellore. It must’ve been a real headache for the internship coordinator, what with everyone giving him a list of their preferences, then changing their minds, then changing their minds again… Poor guy! But almost everyone got what they wanted (or so I think).

I thoroughly enjoyed my first few months of my internship. I learned to make paper rockets (that’s right… I hadn’t known how till recently!), I read novels between therapy sessions, I often sat and sang songs in the clinic with a bunch of friends, I downed two cups of disgusting coffee at the canteen everyday, I went around screening newborn babies for hearing loss, I made an ear mould (and a shiny transparent heart, using the same acrylic material) for myself… Then came Annual Day. I had a lot of fun then, too. I was in four of the cultural programs and had to spend so much time rehearsing that one lecturer asked me if I actually intended to kill myself. But I had a great time, and the dances came out beautifully too. And yeah, I survived. It was just brilliant!

A couple of months before my ‘inside postings’ would end, the internship coordinator said Pondicherry had been added to the list of postings, and he needed two volunteers to go there. He then gave us an outline of the kind of work we’d be doing. A teaching job at JIPMER for two months! Of course I’d go! I volunteered, as did my friend S, and we got to spend October and November in Pondicherry. I already told you all about the places we saw there…

After a vacation that lasted 15 days, I went back to Pondicherry, but this time, with D and G. A, R and S, all of whom I love very much, were in Vellore, so I didn’t miss them very much. In the last week of January, my postings in Pondicherry ended, and G and I came to Adukkamparai, Vellore. Tiny village, really. There’s the hospital where we worked, a bakery (that sells, in addition to what bakeries usually sell, everything from paper to shampoo to mosquito repellant. One can even send couriers from there), a ‘gents parlar’, a few gaadis vending fruit and a seedy looking wine shop a little way off. There must be houses somewhere, but I didn’t see them.

Now, after spending three months in Adukkam-boring-parai, I’m home. I look deep-fried and my rear end has gone numb after 9315km of bus-journeying (over the past 7 months). Sure, internship was great fun, but am I sorry it’s all over? Not at all! After all, east or west, home’s best!