Cycle of Life

I was telling Garvesh yesterday night at dinner that I found it more difficult to have good conversations with a wide range of people. I remember being able to talk to more girls and guys in high school and middle school. Garvesh made a good point - our personalities stabilize over time, and we know what we want in others. So, once we talk to them for a few minutes, we can make a quick judgement and know whether we want the conversation to keep going or not. Social circles just become much tighter as we get older. Once things fully stabilize for us we have kids and live through them. And over and over again.

"Intern" by Sandeep Jauhar

Also recently finished the book “Intern”, by Sandeep Jauhar. It’s a memoir of his 3 years in residency, and how, though his first year was hell and he had doubts about the profession, he eventually comes to realize that there could be humanism in modern medicine.

He went to graduate school in physics at Berkeley; his decision was an understandable act of rebellion against his parents who wanted him to go to medical school for the prestige, money, and power. He then decided to go medical school partially because he had a girlfriend that had lupus, and he wanted to "do" something. As he write, "I wanted to become a man."

He then completed medical school at WashU, followed by his internship at New York Hospital. The memoir is centered around this time. He constantly mentions the points that I would argue make a lot of modern medicine seem like a big waste. 1.) Nearly all of the patients he treats could have prevented their condition by taking care of themselves better. 2.) Many of the patients are quite old (80+) or have intractable diseases that he can’t do anything about in the first place. 3.) He knows quite little about his patients. 4.) Medicine isn’t all that interesting or challenging. He gripes and bemoans his position for the first 180 pages and talks about the pain and doubt he is going through.

However, he does quite little overturn these views on medicien. For example, he devotes one (!) paragraph to his seeing the humanity in medicine by becoming a patient. Couldn’t we have learnt more about this?!

Also, I was expected some change that would cause him to change his perspective, but nothing happened to do so. He even writes: “In the end, I’m not sure what convinced me to stick with residency, just as I’m not sure exactly what propelled me into the medical profession in the first place.” This ambivalence about what caused him to turn the corner is extremely frustrating, given how much time he devotes to his ambivalence about medicine earlier in the book.

Ultimately, he stays in medicine and even chooses his specialty based on the wishes of his parents! His confusion and indecision and uncertainty about what to do in life is the main theme of the book, and each time he could elaborate he frustratingly does not. While I enjoyed the setup of the book, the follow through left me hanging.

I mention his indecision about life, and, unintentionally, this guy reveals himself to be ultimate ABCD. He rebels against his parents, then gives in. He marries another Gujarati-American girl who is in medical school, because he is pushed by the girl and his parents. Basically, it seems like all the decisions he makes are solely determined by others. Maybe Jhumpa was right in making Gogol an empty, forceless character.

291 pages.

More on Sideways

I rewatched Sideways (review on page 8) yesterday morning after getting it back from my friend Thomas, another movie-phile. He didn’t like it, mainly because he thought that the main character, Miles, was overly depressed and unsympathetic. I agree with him that Miles is a bit of a sadsack, but I think that all the characters openly recognize that Miles is down. And it seems as though there is good reason for this to be the case. He apparently took care of his dying father, his sister is a mental case, and he’s been through a divorce, where he was belittled and, to feel empowered, had an affair. He’s still a funny guy who sees through a lot of bull – I would want to know him. Ultimately, the way I feel about Miles at the end of the movie is the way Maya sounds when she leaves the message on his phone: sympathetic and willing to give him a chance. As she says, your book is “beautiful and painful…Did you really go through all that?” “Did the father finally commit suicide, or what?”

The movie is also about friendship. Though each of them gives good advice to the other, the other does what they will do, regardless. It’s amazing how loyal we are to our friends, though we know they often do things that we know are wrong. And yet sharing special moments is just too good – like when Jack meets Miles’ eyes as he’s getting married – that we keep our friendships going anyway. As Jack says before embarking on another : “Listen, man. You’re my friend, and I know you care about me. And I know you disapprove. And I respect that. But there are some things that I have to do that you don’t understand. I mean, you understand literature, movies, wine… But you don’t understand my plight.” It’s sad that they separate at the end. There’s a sense that they won’t be seeing each other much now that Jack is ensconced in his new family.

I think when Miles looks at Jack towards the end (after he gets caught with someone’s wife and starts crying) and after this trip when he is fawned over by his fiancee’s family and he finds out that his ex-wife is pregnant (she unnecessarily piles on), he realizes the ridiculousness of it all anyway. There’s no point in dwelling in his misery, when it’s all pretty arbitrary in the first place. When he loses this pretention, he drinks the bottle of ’61 Cheval Blanc (that was meant for his 10^th anniversary that wasn’t going to happen) and ultimately, realizes that he needs to live. And he knocks on the door of the opportunity. According to Alexander Payne, Maya wouldn’t have been there, but I’m glad he left it open-ended.

Lastly, if you get a copy of the DVD, check out the commentary by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. They’re hilarious and insightful.