About Journals, 'cutting edge' (?) doctors and other 'bakwas'...... Vol 1

Hi,

I know it is really loooooong loooooong time since I wrote a blog entry. What can I do? I had nothing to say all these days. I spent such uninteresting days in the recent past.

This post is to let you know of a milestone. I got my first publication in an indexed journal. [Applause…Itz OK, sit down, I didn’t ask for a standing ovation :) ]. Though it is an insignificant trifle for lakhs of people around hanging out in Science, it is indeed special for me.

The word ‘Scientific Journal’ takes me back to my UG days. I remember hearing to that word in one of those introductory lectures in my medical school. I was all ears and gleaming eyes. If I look back now, introductory lectures are the few lectures in my whole med school life where I was really concerned about what was being said. Well, that Prof was saying something like this “… By just reading textbooks, notes you may pass… But to get the feel of Medicine you should go (Of course, to Library) & read Journal articles. Then you will come to know the cutting edge research… blah, blah…and Medicine will become your life…. blah, blah…”. Promptly the next hour I was in the journal section of our Library building. I picked something like PNAS (Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences) and tried to go through. To my horror, it was Greek & Latin for me. I didn’t get the Head & Tail of that journal. I curiously observed, that pages started somewhere from 6000+. I was little bemused coz till that day all my books or the regular monthly had pages starting from 1,2,3…. After that I stayed out of the Library building itself. No, not because of the scary journals, but because of the ragging scare. Library was serving as fishing net to catch unsuspecting juniors and I was fed up with all that singing, dancing & stripping.

After some 5-6 months, when the ragging problems settled down, I found myself again in that ‘Journal section’. This time the Journal I picked was comparatively readable (I think it was BMJ). Within minutes few ‘cool’ seniors entered grinning and stood next to me. “Kyon bacchhu, pagal ho gaya kya? Pass hone ka iraada nahin hain?….. jaake Chaurasia pado.. aagaya saala scientist ban ne”.. [For the uninitiated, Chaurasia is a book on anatomy, which is an unimaginably simplified book for a very complex subject]. I still remember… one of the senior ‘S’ asked me to read up “The Breast” chapter in one hour and to explain him later.[ Incedently that chap became closer in the later years and turned out to be a big screw ball fellow. He never grew beyond that chapter…. :) ].

Hmm, that was the end to my journal reading and becoming a ‘cutting edge’ doctor. I never entered that place again except for few quick naps coz that was relatively silent & less crowded area (If you can call one or two as crowd). Sooner I joined the league of ‘cool’ seniors promptly sending away the ‘interested juniors’ from that section.

[To be continued….]