Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Nairite's guide to rural posting

1. Attend your rural posting at Ganeshpuri. Take those twenty days off from your year of internship and whatever it is that you're doing with it, to attend this posting. It really won't make any difference in your entrance exams, but it will make a lot of difference in your lives.
2. Pray that you have great batchmates. You'll be living with them for twenty days, and not having a good batch sucks. That said, it is very easy to bond with almost anyone, including the weirdest alien in your class, during these 20 days of your rural post. So give it a shot. You may just acquire a brand new set of friends.
3. Don't run home on the weekends. Takes out all the fun from the posting!
4. Go for early morning walks, to make the most of the best weather in the day and the fog. Though I wasn't posted there in the summers, so I can't say how the weather will be in summer (from what I hear it's unbearably hot in the daytime during summers).
5. Every night, climb up to the terrace and watch the stars. If you're a girl, throw the guys out of their hostel so as to get access to the terrace.
6. Places to visit: Usgaon dam, river nearby, bridge in the market, Vajreshwari temple, hot water springs, Akloli kund, Gorad village for Warli painting, Great Escape water park near Parole, and Mount Mandagni if you have suicidal tendencies.The village is a great place to buy some Warli merchandise.
7. In the midst of all this, do not forget to attend your postings.
8. While at Ganeshpuri you will experience a new high in the quality of drugs available, at Parole you will experience a new low in the quality of drugs as well as medical care available. Experience both.
9. You will get a chance to sit in the ART OPD, I think this is the only time you get this opportunity in internship. You get to see follow-up cases of HIV patients, deal with their complaints, learn about the side-effect profiles if various anti-retroviral drugs. 
10. If a certain pan-chewing MO asks you to take off your apron (female interns) tell him to take a hike.
11. You will get many opportunities to learn a lot of new things, don't waste them.
12. Cook often, if you posses any culinary skills. Otherwise, eat at the local restaurants.
13. Go snake spotting. Also revise how to treat snake bites before you do the same.
14. Go with the mobile unit for medical camps to obscure, untouched villages.
15. Experience personally the Indian people's belief in black magic, till date, as a working cure to all disease.
16. Learn the way of life in a village. Wait for hours for ST buses, stuff yourself into share-e-rickshaws, have random conversations with old ladies you are very likely to meet, and do everything slowly and without a care in the world. Forget that you live in an instant age, for once.
17. Ride the bicycle everywhere, if, unlike me, you do know how to ride one. Easiest and best mode of transport you are likely to find.
18. Do not try to find cake or cheese or butter in the village. All attempts will be unsuccessful. Ice cream, though, you are likely to find.
19. Do not forget to look for fireflies. You will definitely find one. Or tons of them. Depending on your luck.
20. Go with old friends for this trip, or make new friends. Either ways, it will be a memorable affair, that, I promise you.


























5 comments:

  1. Our rural posting is only fifteen days long. I went to Khadavli and the MO allowed the two of us to do only a week each in our fortnight. It was lovely! The aanganwaadis in all these distant villages, climbing mountains, crossing dams, walking along railways tracks. And of course, identifying killed snakes and poring over the treatment of scorpion bites. And oh, the stars. If there's one thing that Bombay cannot offer, is that starry night sky. Lovely, lovely post, this one! Love the top photo, Aayushi! :)

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  2. Sounds like your rural post was as much fun as mine! :)

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  3. Haha it was a long time ago, the retrospection allows me to look at it kindly now. Back then, I was bitching about the summer heat and the insane load-shedding! :D

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  4. Undoubtedly an amazing time spent together. . .
    Bt i object over point 12 . . . .
    Culinary skills if not present can b developed n taken to great heights , u hav lots of hungry guinea pigs to feed there ; p

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  5. Can't do anything but SMILE at this post, Aayushiji!! :-)

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