Sri Visveswarar Medical College Hospital, Trichy Bypass Road, Sriram Nagar, Kottaiyur

All my people know that I seldom have anything good to say about allopathy hospitals and doctors. But here I am complimenting straight from my heart the above hospital and its physician, Dr.Kaveri, M.D.

Let me start from the beginning. First let me remove the misconception - There is no medical college as the name suggests. To my knowledge, it has been so for more than 20 years now. It is easily the biggest hospital, say, in about 50 km radius, with many latest gadgets. Somehow from the beginning it did not attract many patients. Poor management? Honestly I don’t know. Now this hospital management has been taken over by ‘Mata Amirthanandamayi Trust’.

Now the highlights:

· It has a well-qualified and well-experienced physician, viz., Dr.Kaveri, M.D. This soft-spoken and kind lady attends on patients sympathetically. Her diagnosis is good. She does not unnecessarily prescribe unwanted laboratory tests. Whatever medicine she prescribes is generally minimal and cheap.
· The consultation fee is Rs.10/- for, hold your breath, for a month. You may have any number of consultations during this time and you don’t have to pay anything except the initial Rs.10/-.
· There is absolutely no crowd. So you don’t become tense. You relax yourself and get the treatment.
· All charges are nominal – ECG, Scan, X-ray, various lab tests etc are carried out on concessional fee.
· At two places, they have parked vehicles which you can use for going to the hospital, WITHOUT PAYING ANYTHING.

Now, to the painful thing, still there is no crowd. You never see more than two or three patients. I have seen patients thronging many private hospitals, restlessly waiting for hours for their turn. Why don’t they use this hospital? God alone knows! They publicize through local TV channels. On their vehicles, you see banners highlighting the benefits. Yet, painfully, the hospital is, to put it mildly, under-utilized.

Medicine is no longer a service or a profession. It has grown into big business these days. So when you see institutions like Sri Visveswarar Medical College Hospital, you are very much moved and your cynicism is checked a little bit.

I have always been an admirer of Mata Amirthanandamayi. There are many educational institutions, including some of the best institutions of higher-learning, hospitals and many other service facilities run under benevolent guidance.

I touch the Holy-Feet of ‘Mataji’ and pray that the innumerable service activities carried out under her benevolent guidance grow and continue to benefit humanity. My grateful thanks to the local ‘Mata Amirthanandamayi Trust’ who dedicatedly run this hospital.

6th Karaikudi Book Festival

The 6th Karaikudi Book Festival was inaugurated at Kamban Mani Mandapam, Karaikudi, on Saturday, the February 9, 2008 by renowned philanthropist and writer, Nalli Kuppusamy Chetty. Rotarian PHF Muthu.Palaniappan (President, Chamber of Commerce, Karaikudi) welcomed the audience. Writer and Chairman of Organizing Committee, Prof.Dr.Aykann delivered the presidential address. Dr.N.Palaniswamy, Deputy Director, CECRI, offered felicitations. I was honoured at this function as the person mainly responsible for the introducing State-Level Book Festival at Karaikudi and for organizing the first four Book Festivals. While thanking the Organizers and the Executive Committee of FASOHD, I recalled the problems faced in organizing the Book Festivals and the unstinted support received from the Presidents of FASOHD during this period viz., Dr.M.Raghavan, Dr.V.Sundaram, Mr.K.Nakkeeran and Rtn.Muthu.Palaniappan; and the Secretaries of FASOHD during this period, viz., Dr.Visalakshi Ravindran, Dr.R.Srinivasan, Dr.N.Kalaiselvi and Dr.S.Sathiyanarayanan. Dr.A.Muthukrishnan, Controller of Administration, CECRI, Karaikudi, offered the Vote of Thanks. Competitions for students at the college and school levels, Cultural programs, Quiz programs and various other activities are on the card during the Book Festival, which will be concluding on the night of Sunday, the February 17, 2008.

My best wishes for the success of this Book Festival.

A Thought for Today : February 13, 2008

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart - Blaise Pascal

A Thought for Today : February 12, 2008

Truthfulness is the main element of character - Brian Tracy

A Thought for Today : February 11, 2008

You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through - Rosalynn Carter

A Thought for Today : February 10, 2008

Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing ourselfves – David Wolpe

A Thought for Today : February 9, 2008

Luck is not chance, it is toil. Fortune’s expensive smile is earned – Emily Dickinson

A Thought for Today : February 8, 2008

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation – Kierkegaard

A Thought for Today : February 7, 2008

Let us not look bck in anger nor forward in fear, but around in awareness – James Thurber

A Thought for Today : February 6, 2008

No day in which you learn something is a complete loss – David Eddings

My Album-18: "Achu playing"

Achu playing in our Living Room. Clicked by Vinod using his Nokia N70m.

My Album-17: "Achu (after hair-offering and ear-borning ceremony) with Ammu"

Achu with Ammu, after hair-offering and ear-boring ceremony. Clicked by Vinod using his Nokia N70m.

My Album-16: "Achu again, before hair-offering(tonsure)"

Achu, a day or two before hair-offering. He is in a jolly mood with a bewitching smile.

My Album-15: "Achu dressed like a Girl!"

In our family, it is customary to have the first hair-offering ceremony at one of the various tremples of Lord Muruga, preferably the nearest one, after the child is one year old. Achu's hair-offering got delayed by nearly 5 months. His ear-boring and hair-offering function were held at the Lord Shanmuganathan (another name for Lord Muruga) Temple, Kundrakkudi recently. The day before this photograph was taken at a studio. His mother dressed him like a girl and had this photo taken. Does he not look charming?

A Thought for Today : February 5, 2008

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching - Thomas Jefferson

Three Stages in Life

There are three stages in life: you have to take a nap and you don’t want to do; you want to take a nap but don’t have the time; and you want to take a nap, and you do have the time, but you can’t fall asleep. - Sarah Raymond

Courtesy: Reader’s Digest, September 1997

The Long and Short of Life

Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can’t help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.

I become very amused by my colleagues – particularly in the study of literature – the tragic view is the only key to life. This is self-indulgent nonsense. They simply feel rotten about everything, and that is terribly easy. But if you try to see things a little more evenly, it is surprising what complexities of comedy and ambiguity and irony appear. And that, I think, is what is vital to a novelist. Just writing tragic novels is easy. – Robertson Davies

Quoted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Creativity (Harper Collins)

Courtesy: Reader’s Digest, September 1997 (Points to Ponder)

A Thought for Today : February 4, 2008

Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them – Madeleine L’Engle

Three Obstacles to Success

Most people would like more out of life than they already have. Some of them even define it. Yet, most of them will never achieve it, and it is because they are so easily stopped.

Just think of all the things you have ever wanted to accomplish in your life, and then think why you did not accomplish them. You would probably say you did not try hard enough or you never planned it out properly. But it is because you were stopped by three things that stops many people from being successful than anything else. In no particular order they are:

1. FEAR : Fear of failure is the single, biggest obstacle to our success. Fear is a negative motivator. It paralyzes us. Most people don’t succeed because they are afraid to fail. They are so afraid to fail; they don’t even try; which creates a vicious cycle since the only time we really fail is when we stop trying! Do you really believe that if you keep going out there day after day that you are not at least giving yourself the opportunity to be successful, to be great, to be the best? It is only when we STOP that we take away any opportunity we ever had to be great.

2. OTHER PEOPLE: This is a huge obstacle to success. Other people are always so ready, willing and able to tell us “It can’t be done,” and stop us from doing all the things we want to do in our lives and careers. They would like you to think they are acting in your best interests, but they are not. In fact, too often they are acting in their own best interests. There are too many people who want to stop you so that you don’t become more successful than they are. They feel it is easier to keep you down with them, than to get up off their rear ends and join you in achieving success. The next time one of these “other people”, tells us it cannot be done, say to them, “you are right, you can’t do it, but I can.”

3. HABITS: Bad habits constantly stop us. The habit of procrastination; laziness; call reluctance; not writing things down and many others. The problem with bad habits is not that we have them; it is how we try to break them. Habits are not addictions (drinking, drugs, gambling). Addictions have to be stopped immediately. Habits only be changed gradually. After all, you did not acquire that bad habit overnight. What makes you think you can change it overnight? Bad habits must be changed a little bit at a time. Mark out one day a week that you would not procrastinate; make one more sales call a week than you normally would; wake up five minutes earlier every day. Do it for a month, the next month do it a little more. Don’t try to break out of your comfort zone, just expand it.

There are no overnight successes. Success is a long journey over a road that has many roadblocks (fear, other people, bad bits). It is the people that go over, around and through those roadblocks who become successful.

Courtesy: Yuva Bharati, Feb.2008

Letters-6: Farmers' Suicide

1. The editorial, “The unending farm tragedy (The Hindu, Feb.2, 2008) was a timely reminder of the grave crisis facing our nation. We have a polity and a governance mechanism that have chosen not to act decisively to tackle the crisis. It is a matter of irony that the same political class which witnessed the onset of the crisis still calls the shots. Why don’t our politicians launch a national movement to address the woes of the farmers? Has a single hour of Parliament been disrupted for the hapless farmer? Has a politician ever sat on a hunger strike for him? It is a disgrace that the Maharashtra CM sought to draw media attention to Davos and Germany than to the crisis being faced by the farmers of Vidharbha. Discontent among farmers is a sure recipe for social unrest. If we do not take corrective action now, it will perhaps be a case of too little, too late. (Sekhar Rayaprolu, San Jose, California – Letter to the Editor, The Hindu, Feb.4, 2008)

2. That our farmers are resorting to suicide is not at all surprising. What can they do with a CM, who is inclined to “believe only local journalists,” at the helm? We are ready to sympathize with our entrepreneurs who will take home a few lakhs less every month because of the rupee appreciation. But we could not care less about what happens to the man who is responsible for cultivating food for us. We need to realize that our national security will be in danger if we lack food security. (S.Srinivas, Viakhapatnam – Letter to the Editor, The Hindu, Feb.4, 2008)

3. The agrarian crisis is a national tragedy. Evidently, the relief packages announced by Central and State governments have failed to mitigate the crisis. A multi-pronged approach including speedy relief to the affected farmers, low-cost operations with emphasis on food crops, and a radical change of mindset is the need of the hour. (S.Janakiraman, Coimbatore – Letter to the Editor, The Hindu, Feb.4, 2008)

Thanks to the Individuals and The Hindu.