Fighting fit: Piali in her office. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Namaste, this is Piali, may I help you?,” the 27-year-old said softly into the phone, peering into the computer screen through her thick glasses and simultaneously keying in some data. At first sight, Piali Mukherjee seems totally in control as she sits at her cosy workdesk in the administrative block of Apollo Gleneagles Hospital. She is smart, articulate and well-suited for the department of media and public relations of the hospital.

But all’s not well with her. Piali suffers from Brittle Asthma Type I and bronchiectasis, a progressive lung disease, Atrial Fibrillation, where several areas of atria or upper chambers of the heart start beating erratically causing rhythm disturbances, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and severe osteoporosis.

“I fell prey to asthma attacks as a result of frequent lung infections in my childhood. But it was during my graduation that I was diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia. All of a sudden, my heart rate would jump to 200-300 per minute,” said Piali, who lived in Krishnagar till she completed her graduation. In 1995, Piali’s elder sister died of cardiac problems. So, their only surviving child’s health condition came as a big shock for Piali’s parents.

Even when she went to Manipal Hospital in Bangalore for treatment she developed severe pulmonary distress. “I went into respiratory distress and had to be revived with assisted ventilation,” Piali recalled.

In 2000, Piali cleared B.Sc honours and decided to take up medical transcription. She took the tough step of moving out of home and shifting to a paying guest accommodation in Calcutta. “My asthma continued and I learnt to self-inject the life-saving medicines during an attack,” said Piali, who has been implanted with a permanent intravenous (IV) line in her chest for drug transfusions to the heart.

But while Piali’s health deteriorated, her career took flight. She climbed the ladder from a teacher at the institute where she was pursuing the medical transcription course to the centre manager. “I always dreamt of working with Devi Shetty. So despite my health condition I gladly took up the job of a part-time copywriter at Rabindranath Tagore International Institute for Cardiac Sciences, along with my full-time job in Millennium Campus. For eight months, I worked seven days a week, juggling the two. In 2003, I joined Apollo Gleneagles,” said the girl with a passion for writing poetry.

Apollo Gleneagles soon became her second home. Respiratory attacks forced her to get admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital almost every 15 days. “My oxygen level fell so low that I used to pass out while eating. By the end of 2005, I was confined to a wheelchair and dependent on artificial oxygen supply,” recounted Piali, leaning against the backrest of her chair.

It’s been exactly a year since then and Piali is up and about. Her desk is a busy one, with dime a dozen phone calls, colleagues dropping by with queries and office meetings. So what brought about the turnaround? “I had drowned in depression when I was suggested by Pranic healer Vidisha Bhattacharjee to undergo the no-drug no-touch complementary energy therapy. Initially, I was doubtful whether it would work. But it did,” she smiled.

Piali is still suffering from the ailments but her respiratory attacks, blackouts and bouts of erratic heart beat have reduced considerably. “In the past two-three months her condition has improved a lot. She needs to continue her medication and exercises,” said Ashok Sengupta, senior pulmonologist with Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals.

Piali even ventures outdoors for a while now. “With a spirit as resilient as Piali’s, destiny has had to bow to her optimism, hope and dreams that many others don’t put up a fight for,” said her colleague Ekta Bubna.

V. Shubha

happenings here ’n’ there

Siraaj, a film on child labour by CRY volunteers, being screened at Oxford Bookstore; (above) a panel discussion on the topic. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta

War of words

The Anglo Indian Schools Teachers’ Association, West Bengal chapter, organised the Douglas Memorial Challenge Shield debate on ‘Building industrial plants on agricultural land is beneficial’ at Pratt Memorial School on October 13. St James, Calcutta Girls, Calcutta Boys, Loreto Convent Entally, St Mary’s Orphanage and Day School, Don Bosco Liluah and Meghmala Roy Education Centre were some of the participants. The winners were St James School. Adityavikram Doshi of the same school was the best speaker. Calcutta Girls were the runner-up.

Debarati Mukherjee,
Mrinalini Datta College

Fun quest

nOur college hosted Quest 2006, the annual extravaganza comprising contests like debate, song, dance and fashion shows, in September. The debate on ‘Who is more versatile, Tagore or Shakespeare?’ was really interesting. The theme of the fashion show was bridal wear. The crowd-puller was the DJ nite with DJs from Bhawanipur College playing some rocking music.

Manish Kumar Soni,
Goenka College of Commerce and Business Administration

Only Connect

Abhijit Gupta

Caught on Net

I am irritated with my friends. Over the past one week, at least four of them have urged me to join an online community called Gazzag. Apart from the extreme ugliness of the name (does it have anything to do with former footballer and fatboy Paul Gascoigne?), we are already part of another online community, Orkut. As the whole world knows by now, Orkut is named after a Turkish software engineer called Orkut Büyükkökten. (Random thought: who is the more famous Turkish now, Orhan Pamuk or Orkut B.?)

Anyway, to return to the matter at hand, to wit, the plague of online communities all of which want a part of you. According to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, there are currently well over 300 such ‘social networking websites’, bearing names such as Bebo, Eons, imeem, Tribe and Xanga. Some of them have specific targets such as Bebo which is meant for school and college students and has a user base of over 22 lakh members. Joga Bonito is a community for football-lovers while OkCupid is obviously dedicated to dating. Communities such as CarDomain and LibraryThing are also self-explanatory.

But then come those communities cunningly described as ‘general’-Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Threadless, and of course, Orkut and Gazzag. Why would I want to belong to any of them? Well, it is a nice way of keeping in touch with people, you are told. It is also a nice way of reuniting with friends or enemies you thought you had seen the last of. Not a day goes by without someone leaping at you from cyberspace with cries of: ‘Aha, the oaf from class 4B who ate my tiffin every day!’, or ‘It was me who sent you the flowers and the clockwork crocodile on Valentine’s Day… what are you doing for dinner tonight?’

Ok, it’s not as bad as that. But after the initial novelty of being able to trawl through thousands of members’ profiles and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, two things are possible. You become a complete addict, check your account every quarter of an hour, and feel suitably gratified when congratulated on reaching the magic figure of 10,000 scraps on Orkut. You accede to friendship requests from absolute strangers so that your friends’ tally is higher than what it was yesterday. You are filled with ecstasy when told that you are connected to 90,907,405 people through 549 friends. Finally, you are almost fired by your boss (about whom you have been bitching on Orkut) and your company bans everyone from checking Orkut at work.

And the second thing that is possible is that you delete your account, cancel your broadband subscription, join madrigal-singing or kite-flying classes, and become an altogether better human being. But this is rarely known to happen.

I seem to have run out of space, so I will continue my rant next week. In the meantime, please refrain from inviting me to Gazzag.