IMA musings

As I sit down to write this I haven’t the faintest idea what to write about. Hari had requested me for an article many weeks ago and the first one I sent him was sent to the editorial waste basket. He asked me to sent him another one (“brief and witty” were his exact words). Since then, I have struggled to put pen to paper, and have ended up being neither witty nor brief.

What does one write about with the dead line looming up a couple of hours ahead of you? Try it!! The cogs of your brain seize up!!!!

Trying valiantly again... no topic in mind, not even a germ of a witty line. Another factor causing this writers block is the fact that it is for the IMA news letter. Does the article have to be about medicine or related things? And how can one be witty about such a serious thing as medicine?? Sacrilege!

Also the fact that I am not a Doctor and therefore not a member of the IMA as such, but a member of its sister organization, The Ladies Wing (which reminds me, I better check whether my membership dues are current). That fact alone mandates that I look at medicine and its practice from the sidelines, as it were. Of course from the side lines, one sees many hilarious things, but whether it can be the topic of an article to the News letter is another thing all together.

So I sit here in front of my computer, wondering what to write about. When I very foolishly said OK to Hari, let me confess I had in my mind, visions of a column in the newsletter something like Art Buchwald or perhaps even Erma Bombeck. Visions of dashing off small vignettes of medical life and life in its periphery... humorous and yet profound and touching. From the news letter I would progress naturally to the local newspapers and then further afield. Start one of those syndicated columns. I would be famous. Earn a lot of money. Those dreams are rapidly going the way of Bertie Wooster and his masterpiece “What the well dressed man is wearing” for his aunt Dahlia’s rag Milady’s Boudoir.

I shall try for some more time and then tell Hari I can’t do it. Perhaps I shall have to avoid him each time I see him at the IMA meetings. Maybe I should just ring him up and tell him right now. Maybe I should move to the Middle East some where…?