However, every so often this liberty is misused by people where instead of leaving a genuine comment that presents their experience or opinion, they spam the blog.

Recently, I have had the displeasure of dealing with one (or maybe more) such individuals. I received over 50 comments on 2-3 articles from the same individual using different names and email addresses. I am not going to go into detail about these comments at this point, but I want to make it clear that I will not tolerate such attempts on this blog.

To whoever was putting these comments in place, please understand that you are not as smart as you think you are. It is very simple to see what you are trying to achieve and who you are trying to promote. Please stop doing this on my blog, else I will be forced to present detail evidence of what it is that you have been doing, and who you have been promoting. These are people with tremendous reputations, and you don’t want to spoil these reputations by using these stupid tactics.

For now, all of these comments have been marked as spam.

So, I visited an orthopedic expert who has a clinic in DLF Phase I (I do not want to name him here). This person is supposed to be a very experience doctor (he probably is, and I don’t doubt it). He examined my wrist, moved it around, pressed it a couple of times, and asked me when it hurt. He immediately gave me a suspect diagnosis and asked me get an MRI done.

I don’t have a problem with getting an MRI done because that makes it easy to detect any problems that you may have. However, it was the suspect diagnosis that this doctor made that caused a lot of concern. This doctor told me that he suspects “Kienbock’s disease”. If you don’t know what that is, I recommend you to quickly go through that link. It is basically, an untreatable disease in the wrist which leads to disfigurement and complete loss of mobility of the wrist.

I was very disturbed and depressed with this. For a couple of months, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even get an MRI done. Well, I eventually got my MRI done, and decided to take the results to another doctor (this was Dr. Rajesh Bawari, a senior consultant at Max hospital in Gurgaon). When I got to the appointment, I had the MRI report with me. The doctor didn’t look at the MRI report, but asked me what the problem was. I told him about the pain in my wrist. He did the same thing (press my wrist at various points) and gave a conclusive diagnosis. He said that I have a very small Ganglion Cyst in my wrist. Now, if you look that link, you will see that this is a fairly common problem with a known treatment.

So, which doctor was better? Well, the MRI report should tell us. The MRI report mentioned that the scans are indicative of a Ganglion cyst, and the bone structure is completely normal (which it wouldn’t have been if I had Kienbock’s disease).

Furthermore, the doctor said, that the cyst is so small, that neither of the two prescribed procedures make sense, and I should try to endure the pain a little longer, since sometimes these Cysts disappear on their own.

I am psychologically very relieved. I just can’t imagine why the first doctor thought that I had a very rare and serious disease. But the lesson learnt was that one should always take a second opinion when it comes to doctors.

Lately I had to cross the plaza a number of times in a short period. Every single time I approached the tag lane a few cars in front of me were paying cash to the toll collector – IN THE TAG LANE. Yesterday, it was too much. There were 4 cars in front of me, and each one paid toll in cash.

I couldn’t help but stop a second and ask the guy collecting the money as to why they were accepting cash in the tag lane. He said: sir, ab hum kya kar sakte hain. That really got me mad, if you can’t enforce this, than who can? With all due respects to those who don’t carry tags, but such an attitude is SO UNFAIR to those who went through the trouble of getting tags installed in their cars.

There are many things that can be done to enforce this. Here’s one possibility: Impose a fine. Make it very clear through signs that anyone who crosses a tag lane without a tag will have to pay Rs. 100 fine. How hard is that? And, then go ahead and enforce it. Don’t bring the barrier up, till the fine is paid. Simple. And if someone gets stuck, the people behind will automatically make life hard for him.

There is always a PCR van standing next to the toll road. Coordinate with them ahead of the time for assistance in case there is someone making undue trouble.

I request everyone who uses the tag lane and notices that the teller at the window is collecting cash to stop and give him a mouthful (maybe that will prompt them to take action). And if you have any contacts who can cause action to be taken on this, then please go ahead and use them.

I left office around 6:30 pm. Usually it takes me between 20-25 minutes to reach home (from Sec 18, Electronic city to Sohna Road). As soon as I was out of the office and on the road – BAM! I was stuck in traffic. This was no slowly creeping-moving traffic. This was makes-you-feel-like-you-are-in-a-parking-lot traffic. And what is infuriating is this: here you are standing in your lane, waiting for the cars in front of you to move. While some guy comes from behind and overtakes you using the opposite lane where oncoming traffic would pass. Well, you have just effectively created a deadlock. And we descended into chaos.

So, how long was I stuck in traffic? Let me put it this way, it took me 2.5 hours (150 minutes) to travel a distance I normally cover in 5 minutes. So, I got home in nearly 3 hours. I guess I should have stayed in office, or never left home in the morning.

What’s irritating is that most of this traffic is caused by inconsiderate driving. The only way we got out is when some policemen came carrying big lathis, and started regulating traffic on that stretch.

Well, while I was fretting away, I took some pictures of all the action (or non-action):

You see that zero on the dashboard? Well, that was my speed most of the way.

And it became dark pretty soon. This picture was taken about 20 meters from the one above. That’s all I had moved in such a long time.

This one was taken about 30 minutes before I finally broke free of the traffic and raced home.

Some days, it’s better to stay in bed.

I have always felt that those of us who live in gated communities with water and power backups do not realize the gravity of the situation for these basic amenities (water, power, sanitation, etc.). The only time I didn’t have water in my home in the last 5 years is when I was getting my overhead tank cleaned. And so, whenever I hear about how bad the water situation is in Gurgaon, I think it’s not that bad. I don’t have a power backup facility where I live, and so yes I do feel the impact of whenever the power goes out. There have been summer nights when even our Inverter gives out and me an my wife had to go and sleep in the car.

The point is that if you don’t feel it, then you seem not to do too much about it. A lot of us don’t live a life of conservation. The reports for water levels in Gurgaon are frightening; yet there is no large scale coordinated effort to install water harvesting units. A lot of people aren’t even aware of what water harvesting is, and a lot of use plain don’t care because we are not affected by the scarcity of water.

If all of us started putting together a lot of effort towards conserving water and electricity, I bet we could overcome a large amount of deficit that is faced by our city. Of course the problem doesn’t stop here; there are a lot of little issues that need to be tackled and it really does seem like an impossible task. Healthcare for the poor; there are not nearly enough facilities that people can go to. I can drive up to Max Healthcare whenever I am in need of medical services, but there is so little for the people dwelling in the poorer sections. Education: there are GD Goenkas for those who can afford it, but there are not enough schools where the economically challenged can send their children.

The point is that since we do not experience these problems ourselves, we seem to forget that they exist.