Moses and the Maverick
Those days were very tiring. Career, family responsibilities, managing a hospital, repaying bank loans, managing employees and their unending issues, operating 8 to 10 cases every week, maintaining a CT, scan, operation theater equipment, all very stressful.
My father provided me with the greatest succor and comfort. He would appreciate, be succinct in his observations and suggestions, motivate my sagging morale, and of course be the pillar of support.
He was busy in his pursuit of knowledge, writing ( he wrote 2 books) keeping fit and reading. He was like the Sun, who provided us with an inexhaustible supply of 'Solar Energy'.
One day in the course of a casual conversation, with Dad. I was a bit upset about the innumerable obstacles and insecurities that I was dealing with. The discussion later veered towards having a mission in life. Dad always insisted on working towards a plan, and having a very clear, unambiguous, mission in life, that would serve as a vector to direct and channelise all our energies.
I asked Dad, what was his mission in life, now that he was well past 65.
His answer stunned me into a sombre silence. It was really very inspiring as well as one that moistened my eyes.
He said, I'm going to be your Moses, and do what he did for Lord Jesus.
I will be the beacon, the prophet who will proclaim your arrival to the masses.
Moses had said, "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as he raised me up. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul that does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people."
I really didn't know how to respond. Having great love and affection for one's own child is of course instinct, but harboring such bombastic ideas and impressions about one's son was almost a kind of megalomania. When I started being featured in the Speaking Tree, every word that I wrote was scrutinised by him and he was my greatest admirer as well as critic. He was a stickler for being perfect in every thing he did and would carefully place the punctuation marks, commas, and colons in my manuscript before I submitted the same. He would sit in the front row for any talk that I gave and would lock me in a tight embrace after it was over.
My dearest father left for his heavenly abode rather prematurely and suddenly. I've still not recovered from that bereavement and probably never will. The script of my life was most certainly not the conventional, or routine types. There were so many obstacles, problems, that I had to face, which became all the more torturous with the loss of my father.
The situations and circumstances had got me clean bowled. I lost most of everything that I had very painfully built. The silver lining was that I had got another chance to mark the crease all over again and restart a new innings.
A new beginning, with the earlier reputation, notoriety of being a maverick which totally obscured and eclipsed the virtues that were lurking within.
Then I meet another angel. A dear friend philosopher and mentor. A senior colleague in the same profession who possibly made a more wholesome and holistic appraisal of me, my virtues and my limitations. In the course of our interactions, he was emphatic in making me realize the importance of being steadfast, dedicated and committed to what ever I chose to do. He would remind me each time, that the most extra ordinary task was an integration of executing each small task to perfection. Intelligence was never a substitute for sincerity. They both complemented each other.He was a rare blend of creativity and rote sincerity. He came up with the most ingenious concepts, that didn't reek of being anti- establishment. He positioned these path breaking ideas very modestly as the next brick of knowledge that was laid on the edifice of established ideologies. He embodied the quantum principle of having both attributes at the same time. He never insisted on a rigid either-or paradigm. Creativity and rote sincerity. These terms in my mind are oxymorons. But he was the epitome of amalgamation of these paradoxically incompatible bedfellows. At one end, he was the archetypical conformist who was almost maniacal about protocols , procedures with an obsessive insistence on the fundamentals and details that were involved in Neurosurgery. At the other, he used these as building blocks to churn out novel and innovative approaches, that were revolutionary. To him, perfection was not virtue. It was a necessary mindset and on occasions, I would almost regard his approach as extreme fetishism. But he would always encourage me to have great regard and respect for conformism when required. The maverick in me put up a great resistance to his near psychotic attention to micro detail and insistence on objective outcomes, that totally eliminated all subjective considerations.
He jokingly remarked that I need to reinvent myself and to do that, I had to reformat my hard disc of attitude and approach and install an antivirus software to protect against the viruses of complacence, bias, contempt of conformism, and casualness. I gradually was getting baptized into what was a new religion of Protocols and Procedures. He went on one day to tell me, that you need to showcase your abilities, your skills to the skeptics, the critics and the ones who had tattooed my reputation as merely a fun loving maverick despite all my hard work, which had been possibly misdirected.
It was difficult. Reinventing oneself, kicking off a vice, sticking to a mundane routine, keeping a low profile, recreating a new personality, a new Me. No words can replace excellence and perfection to silence the detractors.
Days, became months, became years and then one day, my benefactor told me, it's time for me to proclaim to the people about your resurrection. The old Deepak is dead and the new one is resurrected. It reminded me of my dad. There was this opportunity, that was coming up. To organise a workshop, where a live surgery was to be demonstrated and relayed, under the glare of all the skeptics and critics. I took up the gauntlet. I was by now quite well rehearsed in the art and science of blending conformism and ideation.
The big day dawned and with great trepidation, i donned the surgeons gloves. As I took the incision, i was feeling like Jennifer Beals, the protagonist of the blockbuster movie Flashdance. It was a feeling that was a concoction of trepidation, anxiety, vindication, confidence, and a paradoxical arrogant fearlessness. The music started and off I was with my routine. It went off like a dream. There were some tense moments, but I did manage to keep cool and march on. By the time I was done, the pundits of neurosurgery were lauding my performance, which was for everyone to see and challenge if they wished. Their silence was eloquent appreciation.
I quietly walked to my friend trying hard to block the openings of my lacrimal ducts. I held him in a tight embrace. I was embracing my Moses.
Those days were very tiring. Career, family responsibilities, managing a hospital, repaying bank loans, managing employees and their unending issues, operating 8 to 10 cases every week, maintaining a CT, scan, operation theater equipment, all very stressful.
My father provided me with the greatest succor and comfort. He would appreciate, be succinct in his observations and suggestions, motivate my sagging morale, and of course be the pillar of support.
He was busy in his pursuit of knowledge, writing ( he wrote 2 books) keeping fit and reading. He was like the Sun, who provided us with an inexhaustible supply of 'Solar Energy'.
One day in the course of a casual conversation, with Dad. I was a bit upset about the innumerable obstacles and insecurities that I was dealing with. The discussion later veered towards having a mission in life. Dad always insisted on working towards a plan, and having a very clear, unambiguous, mission in life, that would serve as a vector to direct and channelise all our energies.
I asked Dad, what was his mission in life, now that he was well past 65.
His answer stunned me into a sombre silence. It was really very inspiring as well as one that moistened my eyes.
He said, I'm going to be your Moses, and do what he did for Lord Jesus.
I will be the beacon, the prophet who will proclaim your arrival to the masses.
Moses had said, "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as he raised me up. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul that does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people."
I really didn't know how to respond. Having great love and affection for one's own child is of course instinct, but harboring such bombastic ideas and impressions about one's son was almost a kind of megalomania. When I started being featured in the Speaking Tree, every word that I wrote was scrutinised by him and he was my greatest admirer as well as critic. He was a stickler for being perfect in every thing he did and would carefully place the punctuation marks, commas, and colons in my manuscript before I submitted the same. He would sit in the front row for any talk that I gave and would lock me in a tight embrace after it was over.
My dearest father left for his heavenly abode rather prematurely and suddenly. I've still not recovered from that bereavement and probably never will. The script of my life was most certainly not the conventional, or routine types. There were so many obstacles, problems, that I had to face, which became all the more torturous with the loss of my father.
The situations and circumstances had got me clean bowled. I lost most of everything that I had very painfully built. The silver lining was that I had got another chance to mark the crease all over again and restart a new innings.
A new beginning, with the earlier reputation, notoriety of being a maverick which totally obscured and eclipsed the virtues that were lurking within.
Then I meet another angel. A dear friend philosopher and mentor. A senior colleague in the same profession who possibly made a more wholesome and holistic appraisal of me, my virtues and my limitations. In the course of our interactions, he was emphatic in making me realize the importance of being steadfast, dedicated and committed to what ever I chose to do. He would remind me each time, that the most extra ordinary task was an integration of executing each small task to perfection. Intelligence was never a substitute for sincerity. They both complemented each other.He was a rare blend of creativity and rote sincerity. He came up with the most ingenious concepts, that didn't reek of being anti- establishment. He positioned these path breaking ideas very modestly as the next brick of knowledge that was laid on the edifice of established ideologies. He embodied the quantum principle of having both attributes at the same time. He never insisted on a rigid either-or paradigm. Creativity and rote sincerity. These terms in my mind are oxymorons. But he was the epitome of amalgamation of these paradoxically incompatible bedfellows. At one end, he was the archetypical conformist who was almost maniacal about protocols , procedures with an obsessive insistence on the fundamentals and details that were involved in Neurosurgery. At the other, he used these as building blocks to churn out novel and innovative approaches, that were revolutionary. To him, perfection was not virtue. It was a necessary mindset and on occasions, I would almost regard his approach as extreme fetishism. But he would always encourage me to have great regard and respect for conformism when required. The maverick in me put up a great resistance to his near psychotic attention to micro detail and insistence on objective outcomes, that totally eliminated all subjective considerations.
He jokingly remarked that I need to reinvent myself and to do that, I had to reformat my hard disc of attitude and approach and install an antivirus software to protect against the viruses of complacence, bias, contempt of conformism, and casualness. I gradually was getting baptized into what was a new religion of Protocols and Procedures. He went on one day to tell me, that you need to showcase your abilities, your skills to the skeptics, the critics and the ones who had tattooed my reputation as merely a fun loving maverick despite all my hard work, which had been possibly misdirected.
It was difficult. Reinventing oneself, kicking off a vice, sticking to a mundane routine, keeping a low profile, recreating a new personality, a new Me. No words can replace excellence and perfection to silence the detractors.
Days, became months, became years and then one day, my benefactor told me, it's time for me to proclaim to the people about your resurrection. The old Deepak is dead and the new one is resurrected. It reminded me of my dad. There was this opportunity, that was coming up. To organise a workshop, where a live surgery was to be demonstrated and relayed, under the glare of all the skeptics and critics. I took up the gauntlet. I was by now quite well rehearsed in the art and science of blending conformism and ideation.
The big day dawned and with great trepidation, i donned the surgeons gloves. As I took the incision, i was feeling like Jennifer Beals, the protagonist of the blockbuster movie Flashdance. It was a feeling that was a concoction of trepidation, anxiety, vindication, confidence, and a paradoxical arrogant fearlessness. The music started and off I was with my routine. It went off like a dream. There were some tense moments, but I did manage to keep cool and march on. By the time I was done, the pundits of neurosurgery were lauding my performance, which was for everyone to see and challenge if they wished. Their silence was eloquent appreciation.
I quietly walked to my friend trying hard to block the openings of my lacrimal ducts. I held him in a tight embrace. I was embracing my Moses.
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