Reflections on Medicine and Life by Dr. S.P. Kalantri
From the Classroom We Shared A talk about dying is supposed to end when the microphone goes off. Mine didn’t. I wrote last week about what it took to get in front of a camera in the first place — the failing light, the dog, the whole clumsy business of learning new tools at seventy. … Read the essay
Four minutes into a talk about how to die well, the light went out. A physician’s account of scripting, filming, and uploading a talk on ageing and end-of-life conversations for family physicians across India — and what the gadgetry, at seventy, turned out to teach him.
I have given hundreds of talks in my life. Lectures to medical students, presentations at conferences, seminars on diagnostics and evidence-based medicine. For all of them I prepared slides. Dozens of them, sometimes. When Dr Pankaj Harkut, cardiologist from Nagpur, invited me to speak on dying with dignity at a physicians and cardiologists conference in … Read the essay
My mother was born in 1926, when most births and deaths took place at home. I grew up listening to stories of labour that began in the family room, with midwives, aunts, and neighbours gathering around the expectant mother. Death, too, belonged to the household. Many people spent their final days in familiar surroundings and … Read the essay