She who slayed Mahishasura

Chamundi hill is one of Mysore's most famous landmarks.  Legend has it that the goddess Chamundeswari killed the demon-ruler of Mysore, Mahishasura, here.  There is a temple for her at the top of the hill in which she is apparently wearing a beautiful garland of skulls.  

A lot of people go to Chamundi hill to exercise.  There are 1000 steps to the top, which is like thirty minutes on the stair master plus street vendors and statues.  

About half way up you can get "sugar cane juice."  The stack of sticks to the left is a pile of sugar cane.  The guy in the blue shirt crams the sticks through the hand turned press to squeeze out the juice, then mixes it with water from the jugs behind the stand.  Paul and I didn't know about the jug part and drank a bunch of sugar cane juice.  It was delicious and no, we didn't die.  

Mysore in the background.  My house is north, to the right of my head, and JSS Hospital, where I work, is to the left.  

Mahishasura, me, and Paul.  

Instead of walking back down we took this bus.  Points for decorations, no points for prudence.  That thing careened down the hill; no brakes, just honking.  

Checklist Mania

The WHO just posted this article in their Media Centre:

Surgery Checklist

And this just showed up in the Seattle Times:

University of Washington Using Surgical Checklist

Of course, the NYT:

W.H.O. Issues a Checklist

Atul Gawande, the doctor who wrote the New Yorker article that inspired my checklist internship, is taking the checklist concept to operating rooms all over the world, including developing countries.  Cannot believe it.  Obsessed.  

Routine Maintenance

Even though you can't drink the water and there are cows everywhere and you have to do your laundry on a rock, you can't just let yourself go.  But it sure is hard to find a place to get your eyebrows done here.  It's easy to pantomime food and find a restaurant, but acting out "eyebrow waxing" to people on the street requires some serious dramatic talent.  

Eventually I was directed here: "ONLY LADIES & CHILDRENS."  Works for me.  

I asked them if they did eyebrows, and gestured to my forehead.  They nodded yes and asked if I wanted my "face" done too, and gestured to their cheeks.  Ouch.  

So I would highly recommend threading.  I've had it done in the US, and I find that there's a lot less screaming and weeping involved, compared to waxing.  I don't exactly understand the physics behind a twisted thread yanking hairs out, but I did find a video about threading on YouTube and successfully removed a hair on my leg with a piece of string.  

Bengaluru amie le Louis Vuitton

Nothing says "booming economy" like a 12-foot Louis Vuitton briefcase at the new Bangalore Int'l Airport.  

The Greatest Show on Earth

So today I was taking a break from the hospital, having some lunch, shopping for groceries (milk is nearly impossible to find, and it comes in a bag, unrefrigerated) and looking at saris when I turned the corner and ran into these cuties: 

They normally live at Mysore Palace and apparently need to be walked every day.  So they walk in the streets and go around eating everything.  In less than five minutes I watched the fruit vendor in the foreground shove two baskets of unpeeled bananas into one elephant.  The elephant coughed a little and like, twenty half eaten bananas fell out of his mouth.  

They wear the little bells around their necks so you know where they are.  

Marry Me

The women at the PHRI clinic, bless their hearts, generously and bravely took me and Paul along to an Indian wedding, knowing full well that despite our best efforts, we would probably embarrass them.  

Our house looks like a tropical paradise, complete with palm trees and exotic plants; so Maharaja.  Poor Vara and Seema went through all sorts of trouble getting that sari on me, but thanks to them (and six safety pins) I made it through all three hours of wedding confusion without any major wardrobe malfunctions.  

Indian weddings are less about the bride and groom and more about food (and family, but most of my pictures are of the food).  Here, instead of lining tables with white butcher paper, they use pink paper.  Love pink.  

There are no paper plates in India, only banana leaves.  Try that for easy cleanup.  

Once you've got your banana leaf, servers come around and spoon out food.  

Eating is done exclusively with the right hand.  No utensils, no baby wipes.  Now that I'm looking at the picture I'm realizing that the food doesn't look so appetizing, but really, it was amazing.  

  

Every guest gets a coconut.  Paul took his out back to the "wash rock" where we do laundry (that's right, all laundry is done by hand and scrubbed on a rock) and broke it open.  I think he was expecting the kind of coconut that comes in Almond Joys or something, because he was really not excited about the tepid coconut water that came out.  

Some things are universal....

I've been talking about pink saris almost as long as I've been talking about my study.  After two weeks of thorough sari-situation evaluation on the streets of Mysore, I decided it was time for me to get one of my own.  My good friend Shoaib patiently showed me literally dozens of saris.  Choosing one is much more difficult than shopping in the US, largely because every sari, being essentially a giant, gorgeous sheet, will fit you no matter what.  

I can't quite tell, but it seems that the pink sari is India's answer to the LBD.  I tried this one on, although I had to wear it over my clothes because it took three salesmen to help me get it on.  

"Dress shabbily and they remember the dress;

Dress impeccably and they remember the woman."

-Coco Chanel

The Project

So aside from seeing elephants and riding around in autos, I've been slowly but steadily moving my research project forward.  

This man is photocopying my IRB protocol for approval at the JSS hospital.  The photocopy machines are outside, on the street, next to the cows and auto rickshaws.  Everything was covered in dust and kind of falling apart (you can see the rag they use for wiping the machines down), but the copies came out pretty nicely.  So the next time you're frustrated with your office appliances, remember: there are office workers in India who would LOVE to have your copy machine!   

My connections at the JSS hospital have been largely through the clinical pharmacy department.  These two girls are Masters in Pharmacy students.  The pharmacy girls have been incredibly nice to me, taking me out to lunch, helping me get a cell phone, and showing me where I can get copies made.  

Here is the article that began this whole internship fiasco:

The Checklist

I figured the system didn't require anything too expensive, so I'm hoping to apply these principles to the intensive care units here at the JSS Medical College Hospital.  

Welcome to the Jungle: Bandipur

Aside from the study, seeing elephants was pretty much the point of this trip as far as I'm concerned.   On my second day I saw an elephant walking down the street in the city, but I was in an auto and, as per usual, we were going at a breakneck speed so I didn't have time to grab my camera.  

Than man in the orange shirt was kind of "in charge" of the elephant, but for all of his yelling I'm pretty sure the elephant just wandered wherever he wanted.  


A display at the visitors' center featuring various kinds of animal poop.  I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but the samples are real feces covered in some kind of shellac.  Paul got a huge kick out of the "dropping-a ball" sign.  

These guys were wandering around everywhere.  I kind of thought we were supposed to be really afraid of them, but they didn't really do much.  

Holy Cow

This photo was taken several yards from the house I'm living in, in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Mysore.  The giant cement dishes are placed throughout the city.  You put your garbage in (I had just put some mango peels in) and the cows graze at their leisure.  A few days later, for some reason, the garbage in the bowl was on fire.  I smelled the burning from the house and ran outside, but I guess fire doesn't elicit the same panic here as it does in the US.....

Right after I took this photo the cow actually nudged me with his head.  I think it was more of a head butt; a man standing nearby became extremely concerned.  I think that will be the first and only physical contact I will have with the cows here.  

Its very common not only to see free cows wandering in the street, but also cow-pulled carts in traffic.  I'm not sure where the line between worship and farm animal labor is drawn....I like to think all my years of table setting and dishwasher unloading might have been a masked form of holiness.   

The Auto Rickshaw

Super cheap, super scary, super fun.  If you sit on the right side you can face oncoming traffic, and if your driver is crazy enough you can let your hair hang out the side and it will almost, almost touch the oncoming traffic.  

View from inside an auto.  All the drivers are men, but they do a good job decorating their cabs with flowers, stickers, and paintings of animals.