Dance.

"On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined."  - Lord Byron

Dance is, what can never be inked on a parchment, never come out as words, never be presented wrapped up on a table. Ask what dance is to the dancer's feet, forever steady. Ask what dance is to the dancer's face, forever happy. Ask what dance is to the dancer, forever ready. You can only feel dance dancing it, burning like a fire inside, growing brighter, cooling as it glows. It gives you the kicks, running in your veins, warming the heart. Learn spirit from dance. Learn what passion is from a dancer. Dance is what one comes to after a long  hard day. Dance is home. When you dance, the world ceases to exist, the whole concept of people and things just seems so distant, an tired hypothesis. If there is anything, anything that matters, it breathes with every turn you take, means with every pirouette, grins in every passé, and dreams with every jeté. It's only you and the music, sometimes the music leads you and sometimes it shadows you. You're rid of care, shame, inhibition and any grief that possibly could be. You're a star, shining up high with a watt too much, with a light too bright. The truth is you and you are the truth. Dance is sovereignty.

"Have feet, will dance." - Shiamak Davar

Tales of A Medical Student Nothing

First Week at Med School

In some ways, my life has completely changed over the last one week. Identifying nerves of an isolated dead hand kept in a try is not something you'd routinely do on your dining table. Not if you're normal anyway. But that wasn't the critical part of the change. The important fleck was the sense of direction the whole week at Maulana Azad Medical College- my center of activity for the next five and a half years gave me. The intuitive feeling that yes, I am in the right place heading in the right direction. The sense of pride at what I've chosen to do and the self-belief that had so far eluded me. I'm a long way to being useful to the world but still a step closer than last week. I'm changing and I'm going to change the world.

The five continuous hours of anatomy felt long only on the timetable. They say it's just the euphoria of college but I don't see it dying down too soon. Fresh out of school, we're all experiencing the kind of freedom and footloose that is so often romanticized. And yes, no uniforms! I see faces I didn't even know were in my class everyday. There is so much human variety, I'm just glad my new friend likes Coldplay. The respect and admiration for our teachers/ professors/ doctors is flaming even though they themselves expect it to simmer in just a few days time. We're all squabbling for the early benches and lining up for buying all our Ganongs and Grays. We’re geeky (or nerdy as some people prefer it) and proud.

It's a long and perilous way to the end. And the end is endless for there really is no end to curiosity. We're all in our own individual races for that fateful day when we'll be able to make our patient smile. Some of us will shine, some falter and some rise from the ashes- with tears that heal.

Why we're such suckers for Flauntbook

[Even though you may feel I'm directing my words of sadistic wisdom at you, i'm not. I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing me and you.]

Stop. Put that down. Take a deep breath. Think. What is it about Facebook that makes us stick our tongue out and lick it like we do? Why that tab with the blue f is still open on our window? Why does every teeny apocalyptic event end up on our Facebook pages? We're 800 million people on a parade. Whether it's a new book we read, a dinner with mom, a new dress, day out in Khan Market or even a little respiratory tract inflammation (ahem ahem) , we're quicker than light itself to type it up, preferably with a chic photo, and hit Post. It's become more of a reflex where the stimulus from the sensor neuron passes straight to the motor neuron without passing through our brains. Or have our brains become bananas? We're all in a such a shameless race running for likes, comments and the post of Head Wannabe. A race is still motion in one direction, Facebook is a battlefield. You need to be equipped with strategies, armor for self respect and of course a high megapixel camera. Don't tell me you don't scan every picture taken with an eagle eye to see if it's meritable enough for profiling. More often than not, ideas for the caption preceed the event itself. Us girls, selling all the little dignity that was left in showing our backs in deep backs. Boys, undoing all those buttons from the top. (Please, let me not see your chest hair). It's become customary to tag your 'best' friend in a status on his birthday or to proclaim your love for frozen yogurt to the world. We're 'confirming' random people, just so our friend list can touch the next hundred, like it's directly proportional to our popularity. Mark Zuckerberg isn't helping the cause either, coming up with a cover photo for a horizontal show off and a places option for a geographical show off. And there are fads in the text world too. I don't know how putting a space before every punctuation makes anyone cool but it definitely makes me judgemental . And so does a 'ma' and a 'lyf''.

We're hungry for fame. We're lame. We're to blame but we'll never tame. Shame Shame. 

Some places you find yourself and lose yourself in the way.

School happens to one one of them.