It used to be a sleepy little town – Virudhachalam. We stayed there for 1 year in 1980 where I started my schooling. My grandparents had stayed there most of their life and I have lots of childhood memories from that town. And finally after about 27 years I finally got to visit Virudhachalam again. The opportunity dawned since we had to visit a closeby place (Neyveli) for a wedding. It was a 4 hour drive from Trichy to Neyveli. On our way back we stopped at Virudhachalam and finally managed to locate the old house – I couldn’t even recognise it as it had been renovated in the front and a lot of shops had been built near the…

Sangeetha’s baby was a extremely preterm baby with respiratory distress syndrome.Within 2 hours of age it was clear she was going to worsen and hence we decided to ventilate her and give her survanta – a special medicine given directly to her lungs. The survanta is 8 milliliters, is given in 5 minutes and costs a whopping 10000 indian rupees. Thankfully she did well after that and within a few days was off the ventilator. After carefully nursing her and letting her feed, today finally she was fit enough to go home. Her total bill including the ICU stay and the ventilation came to about Rs. 20000. Add the survanta charges and what was spent was about 750 US $……

On my website Addicted2Jesus, I have a section called Meditate-a-Minute. Its a series of short articles and some stories that I have written over the years.It’s been pretty dormant for some time and i decided to finally re-awaken it.For starters, i first installed a script so that surfers can submit articles and even comment on the articles. So that makes it more interactive!And now to get down to adding more content and newer articles.You can read the articles at addicted2jesus – meditate a minute and let me know what you think!

I saw clips from this movie a few months ago in church (yes.. in church!)Its a modern day Noahs Ark comedy remake with a message. You can read the review for Evan Almighty here.My favorite part of the movie is this:There is a great scene, just past the mid-point of the movie, where Evan’s wife (Joan) who has just left Evan, speaks with God posing as a waiter in a restaurant.Joan: What is the story about, then? The ark?God: Well, I think it’s a love story about believing in each other. You know, the animals showed up in pairs. They stood by each other, side by side, just like Noah and his family. Everybody entered the ark side by side.Joan:…

Part of the profession is to deal with a situation when the unexpected happens. A lot of times I’m left wondering if I could rewind those few minutes that made the difference between a well child and a sick one.I’ll briefly tell you about children who came to the hospital with injuries.This blog post is not for the faint-hearted.1. A 4 year old girl was playing on the balcony of the first floor at home when she tripped over the low parapet wall and went plunging head first to the ground. She was brought with no heart rate or breathing to the ER. Inspite of attempted resuscitation she did not survive.2. A 6 year old girl was sitting behind her…

One of the biggest blessings in my pediatric OPD are the cartoons, puppets and colorful pictures in it.I’d blogged about the transformation of the Pediatric OPD about a year ago.Everyday its amazing how children grab the toys, stare around in awe and squeal with joy. Of course there are still those who bawl and bawl and shed a liter of tears!This short mobile video clip shows a child with a chest infection having fun in the OPD. Apologies for the poor quality of the video and the glaring window in the background – you can still see the childs glowing face!

Saw this note on a car in Trichy (Click the image for a larger pic)It shows an advocate/lawyer symbole (which means that the driver was a lawyer), below which is a bold logo that states “DICTATOR”. My interpretation?I always thought that for a lawyer the Law was his word.This lawyer tipped it around – His WORD is now the LAW!Howzzat @ Trichy!

I finally got my Permanent 4-wheeler driving license today. Getting the license was not difficult – a couple of months ago I got my learners license after enrolling at a driving school and signing a few forms. Today, along with a few others from the driving school I drove down to the RTO office 10 km away and managed to finish off the formalities and the driving test.This was another day that God showed in subtle ways how much he cared.For one, a person who had come last week told me that the crowd the previous week was a lot and the queues were much longer.Also, the tests are conducted in the open – and in the even of rain…

We’d given in the car to do the repair work and spent the week using the Kinetic Honda. Unfortunately the work couldn’t be finished by the weekend and that meant the weekend without the car – and a wedding to attend 10 miles away! The service center promised to send a car for our use for the weekend and saturday saw us with a UVA – their test car.Pretty cool eh?Even cooler if you realised that the car had a huge gorilla painted on the sides (as a part of their ‘Incredibly Spacious’ ad!).It was fun – and funny. Everywhere we stopped kids jumped in glee while others gave us a wide grin. No harm done. We attended the wedding…

It all started at midnight when a shower of guests landed up for a midnight weekend party and we were all showered with fried chicken, coke, french fries, banana milk shake and cake.At lunch it showered prawn curry and fried rice.The afternoon saw the first showers of rain that I had seen in Trichy in a few months!The evening saw an incredible shower of blessings – at church when we had a special prayer and then we met the pastor – an incredibly personal experience that is hard to put in words!It was an awesome way to end the day – few days have been as exotic as today was.yp – and today was my birthday!