Unwinding myself on the long synthetic track at the SMS stadium, the thick flourish of the fresh yellow Amaltas enters the corner of the field of my vision. The track is a beauty meandering like a rivulet of maroon red colour looping around the large stadium. The excited cries of the young girls practicing hockey on the vast stretch of blue turf, the sombre and focussed ambience of the archery segment and the crowded cadence of the Nikes and Adidas in a hot tackle around the hoop at the approaching basketball courts give me company as I lumber on the long stretch of my jog. This session of an evening jog is my idea of indulgence into the sweat-laden, almost meditative moments of refreshing exercise.
Until the trance is encroached by the whack of a cricketing shot. The passive white of cricket players is spread out across the vast green which I am passing by now. The bowler is treated contemptuously by the belligerent batsman, who sends the ball like an ballistic missile into the distant pavilion, forcing an awe from the fielders and the coach alike. I can see the nonchalance dripping from his visored face as the batsman taps his pads casually. Tap…tap ……tap…the sound recedes as the jog takes me well beyond the cricket field and my mind veers to the cardiac catheterisation lab.
1996. Melbourne is cold and grey today. The weekend has been painfully stretched as the slithering beads of heavy rains keep sluicing down the large French windows of my apartment since last night. The steady hiss of the falling water swells in my ears. Only the rapid ‘clickety clack’ of the metro trains reaching the adjacent Richmond station tear through the monotony with recurring regularity.
As also an occasional ping from my pager.
1:00 am. It sounds again and impatiently this time. Report Cath lab. The message blinks through my sleepy eyes.
It’s almost a month now into my interventional cardiology fellowship and the consultants at the Epworth Hospital have started calling me for emergency angioplasties. With only a limited exposure during my residency days at PGI, Chandigarh, I am a tentative help, a reluctant assistant at the best.
Jack Gutman, reads the blackboard outside the Cath lab. The tall and athletic frame of Jack, the consultant on call, strides swiftly across the car park. Time is muscle, he knows. A few minutes delay and the patient will be gone.
The lab is all set as Jack stands near the sink, with soap water dripping from his forearms held like an inverted V in front of his chest. I, along with Debra, the fair and petite nurse from Philippines, have been busy over last half hour to prepare the patient, who is writhing with pain.
I am trying my best to keep up with Jack’s pace. Now local anesthesia, then the puncture needle and then the catheter, the wire and the balloon-the instructions have been flying around fast. I struggle to line up the pieces of equipment required.
Draped and covered, Jack proceeds. Navigating through the access from the patient’s groin, his hands direct the catheter to hook the blood vessel to the heart. The right artery is blocked.
Jack is swift and precise. Skipping the steps mentioned in the learner’s manual, which I, as a beginner, am supposed to follow, his slender fingers command the thin angioplasty wire and the next minute, it has slid across the blocked artery. I am still trying to recapitulate the steps he has overlooked or ignored.
Soon the blood flow has been established, anyways. Pain having decreased, I can hear the noisy grunts as the tired patient goes off to sleep.
Jack moves out of the lab area, confidently. “Take care, mate,” he waves.
The same indifference, the same casualness is seen today on the cricket field today.
Replete with an utter disregard for the straight bat, the effort to keep the ball shooting from the bat on the ground, the finesse of the ball bisecting the fielders and the stately picture of the batsman bending down on the ball with his left foot forward and head held steady-are all missing. In its place is the flamboyance, which comes with the modern version of masala cricket.
Which is the right way of playing cricket? Which is the correct method to do the angioplasty? The stoic and the steady versus the reckless and the catchy- the debate could be endless.
Are the two styles not complimentary- the two faces of the same coin?
Though many of the cardiology fellows training in our department at SMS hospital today would follow, rather admire, a Jack Gutman for his devil-may-care approach, yet they are subject to my constant pestering, as their teacher, for sticking to the rules of aseptic methodology in the lab, the steps to ensure the safety of the procedures and the regimented approach to the patients and their problems alike.
Muck akin to the arrangement at the cricket grounds during my student days at St Xavier’s school under the watchful eyes of our coach, the great Mr ND Marshall- the doyen of traditional cricket.
His teachings had the elements of a ‘good’ batting- the basic footwork, the instructions to play within the V and the intricacy of an exquisite filigree. It was the predominant use of left hand and the left foot which prevailed at the cricket pitch of the school. Any variations thereof were snuffed out disdainfully. The boys ate the pungent insults rained by Sir sportingly.
Until the day arrived when I was opening the batting for SMS Medical College, Jaipur. There was no Marshall Sir around watching me. I took the leg guard and began digging the bat…now.
The sparrows and the mynas flew over the cut grass each time I tapped my bat. My eyes turned to sun over the resident doctors’ hostel; the majestic Albert hall stood in adjacent Ram Niwas garden. My forearms tensed, nostrils dilated as the bowler turned back from his bowling mark for his decisive attempt to skittle my bails off their stumps. The umpire’s face darkened in degrees, the fielders crouched.
The crowd of medical freshers lined up around the boundary ramped up its clamour urging me to go for the kill. “Sixer… we want six..Six!”
The bowler was on his last leg of his run up, nearing the non-striker bowling crease. “Sixer..!” The cries faded as the ball left the bowler’s fingers.
Reflexively my left foot came forward as the ball landed near my half- volley area in line of the middle stump.
“Crack,” the ball had been bludgeoned by the slice of pure willow in my possession. And the next second it had flown, in one of the most narcotising trajectories, silhouetting against the pleasant sun of a cold winter forenoon, across the ropes and into the square leg area.
The crowds went into raptures.
I had graduated. In fact liberated on that day, in that moment. The shot had been played across the line of the ball having the heft of the right hand hoisting the ball across. The “bad” as called by Mr Marshall had become “good.” I had lofted the ball.
The day saw me drive elegantly through the covers sending the ball kissing the ground, reverse sweep the ball, flash my bat outside the off stump…I was switching between the good and the bad. The day saw two cricketing personalities, the traditional and the maverick, fuse into something new and flawless.
And yet could I claim to disregard the intense training which had ingrained in me the basics of cricket? Can a strong right hand be effective, in producing a cracking shot, without the help of left foot being taken out? Can a Jack claim to clear the patient’s arteries , as recklessly as he did that night, without learning the ropes of interventions traditionally by some ‘Marshall’ of angioplasty training ?
The expertise ingrained into our subconscious self through the repeated application of the rules of the game of cricket, the treatment strategies of heart patients or the lessons of life provide us with a roadmap to pursue. The recurring exposure and exercise of these ‘traditional’ tenets help us in treading the familiar trail to build up on our talents and finally branch out, flamboyantly sometimes , to achieve the acme of our professional or sporting glory.
Till a ‘Krish’ Srikanth or a Pollard unleash their ferocity in the IPL to vanquish their opponents most ungentlemanly or a Jack polishes off a life-saving procedure swiftly and ‘untraditionally’ and yet reminds one of the svelte of an accomplished artist.
It’s best left to the discerning amongst us to pick up the pearls of good training and teaching, hone our skills and then select a style which best suits our temperament and our way of life. While we ascend the ladder to perfection in our performance, a sense of restrained recklessness creeps in laterally and tends to offset the essentials of our training. However slippery this road may be, the achievers remain grounded, stick to their fundamentals and take off on a curve which launches them into the elitist world of accomplished performers.
In a determined push, my body lunges forward into the last lap of the jog. The rhythmic slapping of my feet on the track gets faster and resonates with my breath sounds in an undeclared competition between the two. I can see the finishing tape in the distance. The glint of the fading light from the setting sun bounces off the peach, orange, red, yellow, pink and white Bougainville climbers making them sparkle like colourful electrical bulbs hanging in a marriage garden.
As I complete the run, I pant and fret for breath. Perched on the kerb, I gulp down the energy drink from my bottle in a flourish. The maroon stretch of the track laid out in front of my eyes is thrown into a pattern of modern baatik painting with the dried leaves of the surrounding trees, crushed and sprinkled haphazardly on it…..in a flashy display of the colours of the Mother Nature! A spontaneous splash of art- in the most disorganised and untraditional style. And yet again my eyes can’t miss out the regularity of the motif displayed by the series of rectangles and squares in the net hanging across the breadth of the tennis courts a few yards away. The organised and the disorganised lay together just as the flamboyant and the steady compliment each other to produce a perfect cricket batting exhibit or a life-saving angioplasty exposition
In medical field standard operating procedures should be followed. They have impact on life of patient