Motivation....

This is all true...I have changed names of course.

Existentialist Pedagogy: Every act we perform has a motivation/ incentive. Many a times it is basic id stuff..survival skills, gratification......the Sex and Violence thing. Other times it is more.More than is readily apparent.It might seem impulse/ spur of moment brainlessness at important moments decide the crucial decisions we make- the so called Gut feeling. But even these mirror an unconscious motivation of the psyche moulded by its aspirations and ideals.

When there is a hand to mouth fight to Just Exist, there are no aims and objectives or even methods. Its a plain oral-anal infratentorial stratum of life.
It is the story of a Bhimadevi, CSW , sometime abducted girl from Nepal, admitted with multiple hyperintense lesions scattered in the cerebral hemispheres which neither radiologist nor clinician nor neurologist could figure out the etiology of. And her paramour Ismail, laborer at Masjid Bunder, who has rescued her from some Grant Road brothel,and would agree to anygoddamnedthing I thought would work and wanted to try on her .All he would say is " Shaam ko laya to chalega na saab?" And by evening he would have money that he would thrust in my hand and say, "ye lo saab, jo dene ka hai usko de do, bas theek ho jayegi aisa karo." She died undiagnosed- speculative differentials included fungal vasculitis, nocardiosis, HSV encephalitis among others.I was unpreparedly naive to this situation - Dickens is dead, so what kept him going? Godammit she was a closed case I had told him- CD4 was 36,no diagnosis, septic, but he would still work his ass out to get the money by evening. That pestilence, a crudely simple, rustic affection could keep one going on vada paav and chai all day, pushing handcarts and carrying loads to pay for her medicines, carry her urine, stool and blood samples ungloved,pet her deliriousness into a calm like no calmpose could - I could not believe this.And all of this for someone who he knew had a DC already written for her when she entered, uncondomized Kamikaze, with puberty being her only qualification required for the job she chose to make a life of - GOD...deliver me.

I have known four people closely who chose to commit suicide at a time when Life had its curtains of opportunity still drawn. Only one succeeded thankfully. These were highly intelligent people, with families which were supportive and 'normal', in medical school and engineering college and youth pumpin the anabolism. I wonder why?I wonder why?What it takes to inject yourself with Propofol, Pavulon and potassium chloride while people outside are queuing at the bathroom to get ready for ward work, your spouse of 6 months is struggling with internship, your parents are making plans of when they could make that surprise visit- and you pull the biggest of surprises on life and its bustling regularity itself.

What goes on in your mind when you ask yourself to b intubated while being exsanguinated despite resuscitative efforts in the ER?

What is your motivation when you have 7 years of post doctoral research, have 7-8 publications in peer reviewed journals, work in one of the world's best cancer institutes, and are applying for residency for PGY1 positions competing with people 6-7 years your junior, attending stupid interviews suited and booted presenting a dumbed down version 'minus 2.0' of yourself? Why I ask....service, money, connection with people are the words I hear....but my inerudition causes me to stumble to make one complete phrase of it.

Your best friend of years suddenly goes out of radar for months. You ask people who know whats going on? "He's gonna do pure research, no practice for him" is what you hear.You wonder, a life out of 'N glycosylation?!' are you kidding? Is he feeling that he has fallen back because of the choices he made? Is he aiming to be a Susumu Tonegawa or Hargobind Khurana? Has he lost his nuts? Is he a true blue research junkie evangelist?

What led him into it?

What keeps you going when you are in hot and humid Kutch, have lost your baggage, passport, thousands of miles away from home; when you know the ground situation better than some random politician who chooses to make a helicopter visit, despite not knowing a word of the local language, have a bowel which reacts most violently to what food you have to bear with daily,don't know when you will be going back, don't care,are equally adept in lifting corpses and doing audit of supplies and writing reports- hell don't mind it really because you started as a jack of all of that? Thats a long and disparate summary of the guy...and I still don't know what kept Paul going.

Reading the wikipedia biographies is an extremely enriching experience. I do not have the energy or the resources to go through whole biographies. But it just gets you interested enough to wonder what the hell did this guy do on a day to day basis? Was he a MDP? Did he love, screw, watch movies, read newspapers with the same ennui as you or I do or was he in constant flux? What were the messages he took from random events of life like apples falling usw.Was he just an aggressive Machiavellian Robert Gallo or an underachiever Ramanujan? Ich kenne nicht.

These are random thoughts. I probably do not understand what their motivation is because I cannot possibly be intelligent a priori. ... have not had a refinement or evolution of thought enough to comprehend everything that life throws at one unexpectedly.Sometimes I do....sometimes I am clueless. Some time I shall sit on a wise rocking chair and know it all. But.. To be certain of everything is a frightening prospect.