Why blog?

For over three decades - starting as a young medical intern working in an East Pakistan refugee camp in India in 1971, I have been exploring an alternate paradigm in medicine and health in which people and the community are at the centre of community/ public health and not the professional doctor or the market of medicine. This search for an alternative paradigm has taken me through several roles and challenges till 31st December 2006. These roles have included student, teacher, researcher, husband and father, health action initiator, health movement member and leader, policy advocate, health activist and community health resource person at local, regional, national and international level and above all a learning facilitator and peer supporter for 35 years.

From 1st January 2007 I begin a new phase of slowing down, to revisit and review all the papers, correspondence, diaries, photos, CDs and reflections that were part of these three decades of health activism and public health professionalism. I am initiating this blog today to revisit this personal journey highlighting the personal and the intimate, the funny and the frustrating, the high points and the low ebbs, the enlightenment and the confusions, the political and the farcical, the tumultuous, the disappointing, the sublime and the ridiculous events in this inspiring journey. I hope to share flashbacks and stories from the past; reflections and reviews from the present; predictions and prophecies for the future as a stimulus and support especially for all the young people who in their early twenties and thirties are beginning this journey of self discovery and self fulfillment. All these years in spite of the growing grey hairs, the creaking joints, the circulatory blocks and the stresses and strains of too much activism and too much professionalism I have remained at heart a young medico searching with passion, openness, eagerness and rigour for new perspectives and new paradigms - enjoying every bit of this long journey.

Since 1980, Thelma has been a cotraveller, wife, life partner, inspiration, mentor and coworker in this exciting journey. As an epidemiologist and public health policy consultant her path has been similar and sometimes different. We share perspectives and paradigms but also view things differently because of our different professional training at postgraduate level, life experiences and different types of involvement in public health and community health. We have our shared spaces and our separate spaces, our shared experiences and our separate experiences as well. This blog is one such shared space. It is a small personal offering to a new generation of activists, as age creeps up in belief that it will inform, inspire, support and facilitate more searching and more action. There are times in all our lives that we want to be MAD not in the psychiatric sense but in the sense of Making A Difference. This blog will recount some aspects ot this MAD personal journey even as we reflect on the present and the future.