Now that the
Universe – and the F* Board – has agreed the project on Ojas is worth funding,
I have a budding inner girl jumping up and down, pigtails and wide grin,
bursting with an excitement that a mature physician-scientist must never
show.
Those of us who manage to keep our minds young know we hold great secrets. One secret is that we are just children trapped in bigger bodies. We have learned how to position the 43 muscles in our faces to get our way (known as authority) by moving them subtly.
I suspect I
will finally get to mother the little girl that was pushed to achieve because I
could do the work of American 7-year olds when I was four. She wants time to tell me all the things she
learned while I was tied to books and backpacks.
India rips
our veils and exposes our soul: it shatters some, and is heart-opening for
others. I know it will smash many walls of my adult self and expose parts of me
I suppressed in order to survive the life of a self-reliant physician.
That little
girl is the ever-curious, benevolent sweet one that guides the research. She
teaches students from a space of knowing what it means to not know. She is the
winner of the Fulbright. My adult body will write the reports, monitor what good
work is, and make it all come together, not just for my discipline, and several
fields interested in immunity, public health and medicine, but also for my
patients. But the little girl is really the one who will do the work of
unearthing knowledge from the deep corners of Ayurveda; she is ready to show me
what I can do when I finally spend some time with her.
^ Parinama is a Sanskrit term. In
Ayurveda, it means the changes with time and season.