31 DECEMBER THE MOST LIMINAL OF THE DAYS OF 2023. WELCOME 2024

I have never been too fond of the transition from 31 December to 1 January. It is not looked forward to, nor have I any great memories of those days .

Where have spent this particular day, from memory, over the years 

Melbourne

London

Paris and other cities in France

Miami

Kingston

Havana and Baracoa, Cuba (Baracoan days were memorable)

Cochin

Mahabalipuram  Tamoul Nadou 

Siem Reap, Cambodia 

2023  Quiberon France and leaving for Djerba, Tunisia

2022. Nantes, France and leaving for Quiberon France

2021   Miami under quarantine..

2020 Cochin, Kerala India 

2019    Siem Reap, Cambodia 

Bad planning finds me in Miami this year, I would have preferred to be in Paris or Havana or Cochin or Kuala Lumpur or Siem Reap . In a few days I will leave for Colombia.

I will see you somewhere or other , my dear friend (s)

photos from 

2023. djerba

2022. nantes france 

2020. Cochin India

2019  Siem Reap Cambodia    New Year's days 

36 HOURS IN PARIS TO FALL IN LOVE WITH

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/22/travel/things-to-do-paris.html

PARIS  is a small city, you can walk from one end to the other ..

most importantly it is the city of love and light 

so come here, with someone you love !

WELCOME 2024

Good Bye 2023. Welcome 2024 

A nice bottle of wine from France

Extremely healthy meal prepared by a friend

A stimulating conversation with friends 

As the night began getting chilly , I left three hours after arriving 

There are two more days left and I am psychologically prepared to chill down and make the most of the remaining year.. I want to read 

Eat Less Love More 

I am not on any social media, then someone says, why are you on Hello Talk 

Easy to answer, I am here to learn more about Persian Literature 

Todays poem by Farokh Farokhzad

My bad deeds are not for the sake of doing bad deeds. It is because I feel strongly that good deeds are in vain. I want to reach the depths of the earth. My love is there, where seeds grow and roots meet, and creation continues in the midst of decay. As if my body is its temporary and ephemeral form. I want to get to the point, I want to hang my heart on all the branches of trees like a ripe fruit.

 Forough Farrokhzad 

8th December

 Forough Farrokhzad's birthday

Even in Hello Talk, a lot of time is wasted, as people seem to have an agenda (do I have one too ?) How can you love your oppressive government when you are ready to emigrate because of them ? Some preaching the word of God (does she really exist?) without realising this is a Language/Culture Exchange and not an Evangelical Spot. More disturbing are altered photos and also I noticed the same photograph used as profile photo, by two different persons, who refuse to send any further photos of themselves pleading some incomprehsible reason.

If you want a proper conversation, I am still available, for mutual enhancement of our knowledge 

If I suggest we meet, it is because I travel (two international trips per month), to assist those who cannot travel.

This year 2024, I have named it. Friends Food and Searching for Soul year..Every weekend in January I will be meeting with friends who live far away 

I will wait for you to get in touch with me for a genuine conversation.

THE NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON

A friend wrote to say that she was reading the book The Night train to Lisbon. Something inside my brain was touched and I checked out the information on this book. It is product of the Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri writing under the pseudonym of Pascal Mercier. 

I highly recommend this book and also the movie based on the book, with Jeremy Irons playing the school professor, two accidental encounters in the same day, finds answers to what has been troubling most of his adult life. This is a deeply philosophical book but the movie is like a thriller with us clinging on to every word .. excellent group of actors  including Tom Courtenay..

Wonderful Quotes of Amadeu de Prado:

“We live here and now, Everything before and in other places is past and mostly forgotten”.

“What could – what should be done, with all the time that lies ahead of us? Open and unshaped, feather light in its freedom and lead-heavy in its uncertainty? Is it a wish, dreamlike and nostalgic, to stand once again at that point in life, and be able to take a completely different direction to the one which has made us who we are?”

“We leave something of ourselves behind, only leave a place, we stay there even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. We travel to ourselves when we go to a place though we have covered a stretch of our life, no matter how brief it may have been. But by travelling to ourselves|we must confront our own loneliness. And isn’t it so everything we do is done out of fear of loneliness? Isn’t that why we renounce all the things we will regret at the end of our lives?”

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty”.

“Is it ultimately a question of self-image that determining idea one has made for oneselve of what has to be accomplished and experienced so that one can approve the life one has lived? If this is the case, the fear of death might be described as the fear of not been able to become whom one planned to be. If the certainty befalls us that it will never be achieved… this homeness, you suddenly don’t know how to live the time, that can no longer be part of a whole life”.

“The real director of life is accident, a director full of cruelty compassion and bewitching charm.”

“The decisive moments of life, when its direction changes forever, are not always marked by large and shown dramatics. In truth, the dramatic moments of a life determining experience, are often unbelieveable low key. When it unfolds its revolutionary effects and insures that a  life is revealed in a brand new light, it does that silently. And in this wonderful silence resides its special nobility.”

“In youth, we live as if we were immortal, Knowledge of mortality dances around us like a brittle paper ribbon that barely touches our skin. When, in life does that change? When does the ribbon tighten, until finally it strangles us?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPulA1i96dI  movie link

DOCTOR PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

 Seven behaviors should be implemented to improve the art of medicine, which can help improve relationships with patients, according to an article published in Family Practice Management.

Thomas R. Egnew, Ed.D., from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, reviewed the literature and delineated seven behaviors that promote more consistent practice of the interpersonal aspects of medicine.

Egnew describes seven behaviors that include focusing on the patient, ideally taking a moment to prepare before entering the office, and establishing a connection with the patient, preferably before opening the electronic medical record in the first few minutes of the consultation. Other tips include assessing the patient's response to illness and suffering, use of communication to foster healing, use of the power of touch, use of humor and laughter, and showing empathy.

"The behaviors recommended are based on empirical data," Egnew writes. "They incorporate a patient-centered approach to communicating with patients, which has been shown to improve health outcomes, increase patient satisfaction, and decrease malpractice liability."

Dr Abraham Verghese, an American physician of Kerala Christian ancestry, has been in the forefront of putting emphasis on the person, the patient rather than the computer when it comes to educating the future doctors. 

Dr. Verghese: “When you examine a patient after listening to them, you’re inevitably participating in a very important ritual. First, it’s a very unequal relationship. You’re a physician with your diplomas on the wall, and a stranger is coming to you.”

“Even though we might have the illusion that this is a simple business transaction—an exchange in fact (I think that many of the hospital administrators tend to view it as that)—it’s actually much more loaded and complex. You’re wearing a white, shamanistic outfit with special tools in your pocket. The patient is in a paper gown. They’re expecting something to happen.”

“In society we’re conditioned for rituals all the time. There’s a ritual when you go to church or the synagogue or mosque. A ritual when you graduate, when you marry, when you baptize. [The physical exam] has all the trappings of ritual, and I think to that degree that we shortchange it. We shortchange the product of a ritual. Rituals are about transformation. The result of the ritual of the exam, I think, is the sealing of the patient-physician bond.”

 

I highly recommend The Covenant of Water by Dr Abraham Verghese

I REMEMBER CACHAITO

Each time we coincided in Havana, i would trudge up the stairs to his flat not far from Hotel Nacional in Vedado. He was always pleasant and welcoming and would tell me stories about his uncle, the well known jazz bassist, Cachao.

I had done a small medical favour to Ibrahim Ferrer and he said, anytime you are in the same town where Buena Vista Social Club is playing, doctor, you are my guest .

So I saw Cachaito in both Austin and Houston.

You live in our hearts through your music, which i am listening this morning 

SAY GOOD BYE TO YOUR FAMILY DOCTOR IN THE USA

In most civilised countries in this planet, when it comes to health care, the gate keeper is the trusted Family Doctor or GPs as they are called in English speaking countries. In the  recent years in the USA, less and less medical graduates have sought to become Family Practitioners because of the long hours and less competitive pay , but about half the Americans had a family physician with whom he or she had some sort of relationship 

All that is about to change. A bill introduced by Bernie Sanders and another senator from the midwest, is set to overhaul the primary care in the United States in that Family Practice as a specialty is set to disappear. Instead, community health centres where advanced nurses would be able to practice on their own would be encouraged to grow. Virtual visits would be encouraged. Concierge medicine where patients pay extra cash to buy patient doctor relationship may flourish. Nurses providing primary care would lessen the burden of school physicals, annual examinations and some prevention measures to the general population but studies show that they increase the number of consultations to tertiary institutions. This is called an innovation by Senator Sanders but it is going in the opposite direction of the other rich countries where the medical care is offered free to the citizens. And most people have trustworthy relationships with their Family Physicians/GPs and by all reckonings have better health by the numbers.

The following countries are considered the healthiest countries In the world, in an ascending fashion

10.NORWAY

MONACO

AUSTRALIA

NEW ZEALAND

TAIWAN

FINLAND

HONGKONG

ICELAND

SINGAPORE

1.ITALY

USA IS RANKED NO 45. FRANCE 19 NETHERLANDS 24 UK 31

IRAN BURMA CUBA. AND I LOVE THEM

I PROBABLY LOVE THESE THREE FAVOURITE COUNTRIES FOR SIMILAR REASON

THEIR CITIZENS LACK FREEDOM 

I have lived in Cuba, have visited Burma/Birmanie/Birmania/Myanmar numerous times (I have even been given a Burmese name, U Aung Kant) and have been obsessively in love with Iran since I was 6 years old and the flame lit again in 2012

All three countries possess odible power-hungry men at the helm, one in the name of God (I am sure she would not like it ! Haha), another in the name of human enlightenment of Marx and Engels and the third one in the name of sheer hunger for power and domination .

You have freedom, I am repeatedly told. This freedom is not lightly interpreted, it is not the freedom to shop at different supermarkets nor the freedom to go to the airport and catch a flight nor the freedom to sleep with the woman you love, without obstruction from family or religious police.

All my friends who live in these three countries, understand the concept of FREEDOM. I can pursue the dream (s) in my head without the headache of Visa, financial aid, IELTS.. all I need is the staunch desire in my heart.

While at least one of the above countries, their leaders at least, is bent on destroying my people, my love and respect for the educated class and especially the women of that country is at an all-time high. I can only say I love You, a concept which is global and holistic in the context of my freedom and your lack of freedom

Winter [Is Here]

No “hello” is reciprocated, chins are upon the chests1

No one dares heading up to greet and meet friends

Hard to see where next steps fall

As the road is dark, slippery

Hands are buried deep down the pockets

Not happy to come out and shake

Your friendly hand stretched toward them

Frost bites so hard

 

Frost turns warm chest’s breath into a dark cloud

Walls the eyes

When the breath is so [treacherous]

What do you expect of friends and acquaintances?!!

O my gallant messiah, my soiled-cloth old clergy

So treacherous is the frost … Ah!

 

Be the one who replies my hello, open the door

It’s me, guest of each and every night, the sad-faced gypsy

The kicked-out, hurting rock

The cheap cuss of genesis, the misfit tune

Neither silver white, nor jet black, the very deeply void of color

Come on, open the door, My heart is so heavy

 

O feast buddy! O host! The visitor of many months and years shivers at your door!

It is neither hailstorm not death

Should you hear a sound, it is [my] teeth talking to the frost!

 

I'm here tonight, to pay my debt

Right next to the [wine’s] cup

Stop telling “too late, already dawn, sun rose!”

Sky lies! This is not the red sky after dawn!

O feast buddy! It's my frost-bitten ear,red from the winter's frosty slap

And the icicle of sky, dead or alive

Is hidden in the thick multi-ply casket of darkness

O feast buddy! Light up the party with wine! Day or night!

 

No “hello” is reciprocated,

Gloomy is the air, chins are upon chests, hands buried in pockets

Breathes become cloud, hearts are weary and heavy

Trees are skeletons cut by thousand daggers of ice crystals

Earth, dead in heart, heaven dome, lying low

Dust soils moon and sun

Winter is here!

 

• 1.
  This famous poem was written after 1953 Iranian coup d'état that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953. Many intellectual and rebels were prosecuted and executed after the coup.

BlueBird

𝑹𝑰𝑷 𝑨𝒓𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒂 𝑮𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝟏𝟔, 𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝑫𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝑶𝒄𝒕 𝟐𝟖, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑, 𝑭𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒈𝒆𝒅 𝑨𝒔𝒔𝒖𝒍𝒕 𝑩𝒚 𝑰𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝑷𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒆

IT IS WITH THE HEART ONE SEES , HOW DO CHILDREN THINK RUMI'S WORDS

CHILDREN ARE THE BEST POETS, IT IS WE WHO DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM 

Many years ago, along the wild coast of Brittany in France, I met a little poet who was only 3 years of age. I paid attention to what the little girl was saying and I could find strains of Pablo Neruda of Chile and Mirelleis of Brasil .The next encounter was a few years later and I was dumbfounded how in that very short period of time, the little poet had become more poetic and more philosophical. Around this time I was delving into Persian literature and I was stunned by the similarity of the 7 year of little poet of Wild coast and our beloved Molana.

I give you two instances.

After our meeting, I felt a little sad to leave France as I had to attend medical projects. Why are you sad, asked the little poet, I am sad because when I leave I will miss you. To my surprise, she answered, I will not miss you. I was disappointed at this answer, then she added, how can I miss you when you are always in my heart.

Later I came across this poem by our beloved Molana

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”

This rhymes well with the Buddhist concept of Structural defects of the mind, where attachment to someone, something or some place truly lights the fires of destruction in my minds and our hearts.

We were at the house of an older couple who were shouting at each other something very silly or simple, I do not remember. As we went out for a walk, the little poet said: Do they not know that shouting does not make you heart, you only loose your voice. I paid attention to her words and every one who is fond of Molana know this poem 

“Raise your words not your voice; It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”