I continued working on my thesis today. One of my tasks for the day was screening the 8000 entries in the labor room register of births for 2004 to pick the newborns with a low APGAR score – by no means a simple task. I pulled out 6 LAAARGE registers from the inner room and kept it out to do the job in the night. Luckily Zothan, an intern, is posted with us and I had no problems getting him to help me. So at 7PM we started off – each laaarge page of the register has seven entries and we had to scan the column which said APGAR. It takes only a couple of seconds per page, another couple to turn the page…. till you reach an entry with a low APGAR when you have to pause and enter some stuff in a tabular column I had printed. It was actually easier than we thought and by 8 PM we had finished two-and-a-half registers! I took Zothan out for dinner to the Dhaaba and we feasted on Naan, panneer and talked about everything unser the sun! By 9 PM we were back and at 10 PM we had just one register left. I sent off Zothan and lugged the last register and by 10.30 I was through! Felt relieved! I put the sheets back and grabbed a coffee on my way back, bumped into Sushil and we chatted for a few minutes over coffee (at 11 PM!!) and then I went back to my room, received a phonecall from Appa and spoke to S and J as well. You know what?! God can make very arduous tasks much simpler. I feel grateful!