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Showing posts from March, 2012

Tata Cancer

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The local taxi drivers know Tata Medical Centre as Tata Cancer. I had to explain to the drivers why they should call it Tata Medical Centre and not Tata Cancer. It is sad why patients should not be made aware or reminded of what is making them sick. The Bollywood movies have exhibited how the word cancer hits a person who is sick with it. The word cancer echoes and the viewers spin with the camera as it focuses on the character that receives the news from the doctor.  I felt moviemakers portrayed an exaggerated affect in a dramatic scene but now I think that is the closest anyone can get to if one is to show how one is affected when discovering they have cancer. New places bring new acquaintances and I have made few. Most patients are not well off  they are commoners. Tata Medical Centre was established for the lower classes and though the treatment is given at a subsidized rate, it still hits most of the patients hard. I met a schoolteacher from Jharkhand whose ten year old

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the second time.

I got acquainted with Bronte back in the year 2002. I read the book because I had to write a paper on it and did not have the mind or the heart to savor the richness of expressions that the words brought to me then. It was just a novel like any other and I did not take time to relish the words that drew feelings of intense emotional spontaneity that are now overwhelming me. Now, reading it again I see what I had missed. I am grateful that I hold Bronte once more, I am reading it in a completely new purpose, letting the words form enchanting images of abstract and the known. The feeling that swells within my chest is immense with admirations for the word play that Bronte has so intricately unfurled in writing this simple and humane novel. I am amazed with her mastery of disposing words at such ease and grace in describing the deep emotional touches of a child who faces the worst tyrannies of the world and grows up fighting. I was reading Socialism is Great by Lijia Zhang