I always thought of justifying this 'The Middle Way' .....Buddha pioneered the Middle way long back, the path to enlightenment (what's that) by avoiding the extremes of sensory self-indulgence and self-mortification. The whole idea revolves around the theme of 'moderation'....sounds kind of antagonistic in the fast paced NY life. NY is all about taller sky scrapers, higher ambitions, bigger paychecks, lofty apartments and so on..all things material, all things capital. Moderation is an unknown word in the vocab of the people in and around NY, whether they are struggling actors or established bankers or successful doctors and lawyers.
Life is so hurried here that people don't have actual time to communicate with their near and dear ones....most stuff gets done in phone calls, SMS, chats, blogs, emails....what happened to the habit of just sitting down together for a quiet lunch or a plain walk or just playing a simple board game? We still do all such stuff to provide 'face' time to our 'clients', why cannot we do it in personal life? Why such simple stuff has to always wait for the weekends and not happen suddenly (prize factor) out of a whim? The answers to those questions are obvious; lack of time from work and all. Well adapt the middle path....nothing is more important than doing things (including your work) in moderation specially when you strive for an enlightened personal life. Professional life and work are as much of a calling as the personal goals...and the correct work-life balance can be achieved through some degrees of moderation (the middle way)...what do you think?
inspired by the pace of life in NY
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Indian doctors in USA
The other day a Turkish cab driver in NYC asked me "What is w/ Indians? Are all of you Doctors or something?" and then I realized how true is he..with most of the other white collar jobs being outsourced to India, most NRI families have been getting their kids to focus more and more in medicine related professions.
In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).
I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.
Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?
In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).
I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.
Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?
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