I was going to go to school to become a neurological surgeon.
I get described as 'interesting' a lot. People often call me odd, too. Maybe they mean ugly. Given the services of a plastic surgeon, I would get a pair of cheekbones.
You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it's your child, if it's your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I've wanted to explore for some time.
I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.
Both my parents are well educated; my father worked for the CBI before becoming a businessman, and my mother was a civil surgeon. But I did not want to be a doctor.
If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my patients will not even be postponed. Another surgeon would step in and take over. The reason to do research and writing is that it at least makes me feel not entirely replaceable. If I didn't write, I don't know if I would do surgery.
No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.
You don't have to be a brain surgeon to be a valuable person. You become valuable because of the knowledge that you have. And that doesn't mean you won't fail sometimes. The important thing is to keep trying.
There is a tendency of people to try to make you believe only a few people are smart. As a brain surgeon, I know better than that.
It wasn't the 'miracle of engineering' that is the human body that was filling me with a mad desire to live my days and nights in a pair of scrubs. The hard truth was I did not remotely want to be a surgeon. I actually just wanted to be on 'Grey's Anatomy.'
