betweenthelines-as a gynec I read the silent hidden stories that touch my soul

Bhagya Vidhata -The Makers of Destiny  I was watching a movie recently,Bharat Bhagya Vidhata ,about the exemplary role played by the nursing staff of Cama Hospital during the terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26/11/2008. It took me straight back to my own residency days, way back in 1994. N.Wadia Maternity Hospital was one such place — a saviour for countless women in Mumbai, with dedicated teachers and technology that was always a step ahead, whether it was fetal medicine, laparoscopy, assisted reproduction, colposcopy, or a state-of-the-art neonatal unit. But working there as a postgraduate student meant relentless hours, sleepless nights that stretched to two or sometimes three in a row, no fixed meal times, and an enormous amount of learning packed into every single day. And yet, we have no regrets. That was possible, of course, because of the resilience and perseverance the system built into us, and because we had teachers it was an honour to train under, and colleag...

  Har ek friend zaroori hota hai! Today is Friendship Day, and I found myself thinking about where the word itself comes from. *Friend* traces back to the Old English *freond* — quite literally, "one who loves." Not one who is merely liked, or tolerated, or convenient to have around. One who loves. That's a high bar, and it's the right one. Nietzsche, typically, refused to let it be a soft word. He said that in a friend, you should have your ‘best enemy’ — that you should be closest to them in your heart precisely when you're resisting them. I think about that a lot. The friends who matter most aren't the ones who only agree with us. They're the ones who love us enough to show us what we don't want to see, who criticise because they care about who we become, not just how we feel in the moment. Sanskrit gives us an even older, and to me more beautiful, way into this. The word for friend, *mitra*, comes from a root that originally meant oath, treaty, cov...