Tanglung Pemula

Dialek-dialek beradu tenaga
Dalam satu rencah merah-
Panas dan bahang
Mata bertentang
Kau, dan kau
Boleh saja menjadi kata dua
Aku, dan aku
Boleh saja bikin cerita
Berbelah-belah dalam ruang rasa memecah
Terasa darah naik ke muka pintu.

17-1-2016
Little Penang Kafe, Suria KLCC

Kuntum-kuntum Yang Terbang

Apakah semesta dan bunga tahu akannya-
Kerinduan sebatang pohon
Pada kuntuman aneka warna, aneka citra
Saban musim kembang

Tiga musim dihitung-hitung
Musim hangat, semi, dan dingin menggigit
Semakin sempit terasa di hujung-hujung dahan yang gersang
Semakin hampir letusnya
Meski tiada warna di beku yang menderu

Akhirnya musim kembang pun tiba, bersama unggas dan cahaya-cahaya
Dan warna-warna bunga pun terus-terusan tumbuh bagai berdansa
Dan hijau-hijau luhur pepohon menguntaikan syukurnya
Terbukti kasih Tuhan masih bergema di kali kesekiannya

Namun, tak semua kekal, malahan rapuh
Lalu pohon pun akur pada bayu musim semi
Dan bunga-bunga kebanggaannya layu, dan diterbangkan pergi
Mengisi ruang tanah yang masih basah
Menangisi pemergian pemuda-pemudi penggerak kemanisan jiwa
Terbang-terbang karkasnya, hapus semua ingat dan seri

Pohon pun menangis dan berdendam di musim dingin, sedingin hatinya yang kini suram dan mati
Sedihnya berceracak di dedahan gelap
Kesayuan yang kadang-kadang kelihatan indah, di gelimpangan angin yang senantiasa marah
Meski mengandung letusan yang bakal membakar habis setiap seranahnya
Di setiap-setiap bunga yang jatuh,
dan kuntum yang pergi,
Bergenang lagi gerimis embun sepi si pohon menanti.

Battlefield

I'm ready for this one last cry
I'm ready for this one last heartache
I've seen it from here, the tides up high
Bracing from losing you, and washed out anew.

The Suite Life of A House Surgeon

"Hi, I'm Dr. Nisa, and I'll be treating you today. How you're feeling? Do tell me your problem."

Is how I imagine all doctors would say when they see a patient. Polite, all smiles, ready to face anything.

Unfortunately I learn my skills in India. Here, they don't exactly teach social skills or medical ethics. I'm sure the ethics is there somewhere in the curriculum syllabus but in the real life of an Indian MBBS student? Totally unheard of.

I've seen doctors treating patients, their manners vary depending on the patient's social status. If it's a poor patient, they'll shout like nothing in the heavens and the earth could hear, because "they're uneducated anyway. It's a waste to talk nicely to them. You should start shouting at them." If it's a high class patient I guess if the patient asks to wipe their ass after they went poo poo also they'll do it with their bare hands. The ass-kissing I witnessed here is totally unbelievable. Tsk tsk tsk.

I study in the not so urban part of India. It is common to see patients below the poverty line, coming barefooted, probably the last time they took bath was 3 days ago, clothes all filthy and dusty from the journey they took, coming from remote villages at late stages of the disease, hoping to get free medical attention from the town doctors. I understand that it won't be comfortable for us doctors to treat them because of their appearances, but we are doctors. We are here to treat, not to complain. But most doctors here release their frustration onto the patients by shouting and treating them not-so-nicely just because how they look like (or smell like. Whichever is more overpowering.)

The poors treat doctors like gods. So much for boosting the doctor's ego. At the outpatient clinic patients are asked to leave their footwear outside the clinic, while the doctors happily tramping around in theirs. I couldn't find the logic in this, cz my shoes really aren't dirt-repellant, as far as I know. Once, when I discharged a patient, the patient, a very old lady, came and kissed my shoes. I was really surprised and upset cz really in my culture, I'm the one who should kiss her hand while biding goodbye. Once a patient's relative followed me around the ward just to give me some money for breakfast, even though I refused again and again. It's so heartbreaking for me to see them worshipping doctors so much, while some doctors see them as merely work which need to be finished off as soon as possible. I think that's less than human.

The nurses shout even louder. I wonder how the heart disease patients survived in their vicinity, cz really, their shouts are like thunders. Once I told my co-intern that I won't ever shout cz if I do the same in my own country, I might be sent straight to jail. She laughed and said yeah well we're lucky the patients here are quite immune to loud noises.

One of the most annoying thing is when patients mistook the doctor as a nurse. Here nurses are called 'sisters' or 'brothers'. I guess the blame is upon ourselves when we don't tell them who we are and jump straight to "Amma raktha pariksha marsbeku ha" (maam, i'm doing blood test now okay) or "batte bichi amma! Kelagade nodbeku nannu" (open your clothes! I wanna see your downtown.) Most annoying to me is when the doctors themselves suddenly lose all professionalism and refuses to treat/see the patients before they said sorry and shout at them that they're doctors, not a lowly nurse, so childishly as if nurses are not professionals too; without the sense at all to explain how the nurses are in an all-white uniform and doctors wear white coats over their work attire.

Oh well. It's my last 2 weeks of working here and I wish all will go well, inshaAllah. And hope all the ill-mannerism I see here won't rub off on me, and the minority of nice, ethical, truly kind-hearted doctors will prosper and never be tainted by the majority of them.

I do hope the situation will be better as the years comes.

Gelita

Pernahkah kau melihat kegelapan yang terlalu terang?
Ibarat siang di rembang petang
Meminarkan mata yang suram

Bahkan aku menjadi sedikit nanar
Atas paradoks tiada hala

Betapa bingit
Betapa bahang
Betapa terang

Pada sisi pandang yang lain, kelam
Malah pada aku semakin terang

Malam
Tak mahukah engkau terus menjadi malam
Di mana semua remeh dan aneh
Tenggelam dalam buaian mimpi mimpi tertatang?

Mengapa, dalam kepekatan warnamu
Aku yang terpilih melihatkan hangatmu?

Tidurkan aku.
Gelap,
Selimuti aku.

The Land of Areca Nut

Well, I'm in Channagiri. The Land of Areca Nut. Where Areca Nut seems important when you say it like that. Along the road before you reach the measly hospital, you'll see people drying areca nuts on wide sheets on the ground in front of their houses. The husks of the nuts are kept in a pile near some random (random to me, maybe not so random to the locals) plantation, just by the roadside.

Why am I here.

Well that's an irony isn't it, seeing there is definitely a place more rural than Davanagere (which I already thought already considered rural) and they decided to send some of us here to serve the people. Haha. I'll take it as a joke anytime. Patients vary from nil to 5 to as many as 22.

I live for the scenery and the journey.

We passed through housing colonies, farms, paddy fields, rural schools, water channels, lakes, old, unused bridges.

Everytime I see a house or some schools I tried to imagine what they're doing, is it important for them to have bath everyday, or is it more important to milk the goats before letting them off to feed on some grassy fields. What are the plays of those schoolgirls in pink, and is their teacher a localite, or some town lady who had been forced to work in the rural part because she had an argument with her boss early in life. What are those uncles who sit around the rooster doing, betting for some meager money? So many questions, so many feelings, even my array of songs in my Walkman can't shut my mind from thinking of the possibilities. I am wide awake, and somehow I feel jealous of the sleeping people around me, heads lulling about along the bumps of the road the bus took.

Everytime, I look high to the fort and wonder, what do they need to protect here in this peaceful part of the country once upon a time.

Oh well. 8 more days to go.

Most people hate the journey, but I don't.

I feel like the Land of Areca Nut had my mind buzzing more than I ever felt throughout the year, and I'm glad.

I'm glad I have these 15 days.

How Do I Tell You

How do I tell you
I like your awkward smile?
The one that crinkles around your eyes
Flashing teeth across a mile?

How do I tell you
Your restlessness is so adorbs?
The way you question about yourself
I want to answer it
I want it solved

How do I tell you
I like it when you're around?
Your sarcastic jokes that's supposed to hurt
Becomes my playing ground

How do I tell you
I'm not sure what this is?
But the world seems so glum and doomed
When nothing came from you?

Now I'm just rambling
All my disfigured thoughts
And to the hell cares about rhymes went
I like you and I don't
I don't know how to tell

How do I tell you.

This is so disorganized and unattractive and probably would make a sappy song too.

How do I tell you.