Vastraharan

This incident happened some years ago. I work in a private medical college and on that particular day we had routine surgeries posted. On reaching the hospital, I went straight to the operation theatre. When I reached the operation theatre, I was surprised to find the theatre in-charge nurse tear stained and stripped to her blouse and petticoat, sitting with the female anaesthetist in their room. Her right hand appeared to be scalded which she was dipping in a bowl of ice water.

On enquiry about what had transpired and the reason for her unusual attire, I was told this story.
A case of trauma with fractures had come early morning to the casualty and the Orthopedic Surgeons had posted it for emergency surgery. They had informed the theatre in-charge regarding the instruments they would require and to prepare an emergency tray. Normally except for the routine instruments not all instruments are kept autoclave or sterilized. If a surgery is posted as a routine then the instruments are autoclaved a day before and kept ready. In case of an emergency when the instruments are required at a short notice, the operation theatre nurses resort to ‘flaming’ or flame sterilization for the metallic non sharp instruments.

Flame sterilization is placing the instruments on a stainless steel tray and pouring 100% ethanol or alcohol on them. The ethanol is spread evenly over the tray and then is set alight. The flame is a blue flame, which means complete combustion. But the nurse was not satisfied with the evenness of the conflagration. So to turn up the heat, she poured more ethanol, straight from the bottle onto the burning tray. In a blink of an eye, the flame climbed up the stream of ethanol and set the contents of the bottle alight. The bottle exploded like a molotov cocktail, splattering the burning liquid on her hand and saree. She was wearing a white synthetic saree which immediately caught fire. In her panic she forgot all protocol and began to ran amok down the corridor, towards the exit.
Ideally if your clothes catch fire you should roll on the ground to douse the flame. Running causes fanning of the flames result in a greater conflagration.

Lucky for her some senior female anaesthetist were there and spotted her running aflame. They immediately tackled and caught her. They pulled off her burning saree, stripping her down to her blouse and petticoat. The other people present were mute spectators, not sure what was happening and what to do.

What reaction would you expect from her for the prompt actions of the anaesthetist, who braved the flames and saved her from serious burn injury or even death.
Gratitude! Right? But it was the opposite. Rage against her saviours for having stripped her of her dignity, outraged her modesty in front of male doctors. Drawing parallels to the famous Vastraharan of Draupadi by Dushasan, under instructions of Duryodhan in the Mahabharat. Luckily no males were involved in this Vastraharan.

Later better sense prevailed when she was in a calmer state of mind. She apologized for her outburst and thanked them for saving her life.

Sexy Podimas

Men’s Hostel had a very dull menu in those days (I don’t know what the situation is now). You go to the table you could be assured that there would be three vessels full of Sambar, Rasam and Rice. We had to stand in line and were dished out a plate with vegetables and beef or just vegetables. The only variations in the week were some days when we got Bhaturas other days Barotas and on other days Chappatis. The Barotas (I suspect this is a corruption of Parothas) were unique in the sense they seem to have been made by pulling the Maida into a string then laying it in a spiral fashion and rolling it into a circle and then roasting it on a Tawa with oil. When you tore the Barota it would unravel in a corkscrew pattern. Surprisingly my son who is studying Architecture in Mumbai was taken by his Malayalee friends to a typical Kerala eating joint and he was describing the Barotas and how he enjoyed it (I suspect that it is his Malayalee blood). I told him “I have eaten enough of those in Men’s Hostel”. What really surprised me was that during our reunion in 2003, Priyo Sada wanted to eat Barotas and we had them ordered in Darling Manor.

The Chappatis were as someone rightly described ‘bullet-proof’ because the cooks did not know how to place them on the fire and inflate them (phulkas). In order to make them chewable a generous dose of oil was added to it.

One day when we were returning from the dissection to the mess for lunch along with B. Venkatesh, he said “De let go fast da, sexy grub today”, to which we asked “what?” he replied “mor da”. To this all of us said “what shit Venky whats so great about mor”. But I guess that was another treat to some ‘mor’. (Reminds me of the Dicksonian character Oliver Twist who went up with his plate and said “please sir may I have some mor-e”. Kai thook!)

However sundays was a treat for the carnivores, chicken with the mandatory ‘chip’ (or should I say ‘sips’). The resident used to line up to get the best pieces, the most popular where the leg and the breast. Some of the residents were more graphic when they requested for breast piece, “Thambi nalla breast piece” and they would squeeze their own breast to emphasize the point.

In our routine dull cuisine there was a single silver lining of a ‘muttai’ which we could order as and extra by paying with coupon of course. The muttais available were:-

1. Kanadi muttai=Plain old fried egg because of it glass like quality was called Kanadi.
2. Omlette
3. Podimas=Scrambled egg
   The variety in Podimas was legendary and had names:-
   Some were named after famous personalities like ‘Ninan Chacko Podima’ (Who the Eff is Ninan Chacko?)
   Others were patriotic like ‘All India Podima’ (This sometimes was corrupted to sound like ‘Olinda Podima’, again I wonder who is she?)
   Then there was the name which call a spade a spade, ‘The All Shit Podima’ (apt description of the cooking in Men’s Hostel).
   The there was the graphic name of ‘Sexy Podima” (perhaps the original name may have been ‘Check-sy Podima’ but got corrupted to sexy!)
   These Podimas had one thing in common all of them contained thakkali, kotmali, vengaayam and pachai milagaai in varying proportions. Which one contained how much of what was known to no one! Sometimes as David Srinivasagam described if someone was served what he thought was a Ninan Chacko Podima rather then the Sexy Podima that he had ordered, it could land on the face of the Thambi. Some residents tried to win immortality by attempting to devise and popularize a podima named after themselves. However after Ninan Chacko no other personality managed to garner that amount of fame and no two podimas were ever the same.