Tagore was out here doing Nobel-level metaphysics. I’m just a sleep-deprived neuroanesthesia resident with too many markers and not enough serotonin. So, naturally, I decided to reframe his majestic “Religion of Man” into:
The Religion of Shivani: Coffee, Cortex, and Controlled Chaos
1. Man’s Universe → Resident’s Universe
Tagore:
“Light as the radiant energy of creation started the ring-dance of atoms…”
Me:
Light as the radiant phone alarm at 5:15 a.m. starts the ring-dance of neurons in one extremely confused DrNB brain.
The planets in his story emerged from baths of fire; my days emerge from:
- Bath of OT scrubs,
- Bath of ICU monitor alarms,
- Bath of “Madam, case add ho gaya.”
Tagore’s “gigantic Inert, dumb and desolate” universe?
That’s my brain when I open a DRNB viva book after night duty.
And then life appeared as a tiny cell, facing the enormity of existence.
Same, honestly.
Just replace “cell” with “final-year resident” and “enormity of existence” with “entire neuroanesthesia syllabus, thesis, and two pending manuscripts.”
2. The Divine Unity → The Holy Fellowship WhatsApp Group
Tagore:
“The divine principle of unity has ever been that of an inner inter-relationship.”
In my world, the “inner inter-relationship” is:
Residents + Fellows + Consultants + OT list + ICU census + the unspoken rule that no one is allowed to truly go home on time. ( just kidding )
Multicellular life forms “larger cooperative units” through complex inter-relationships that maintain coordination.
We do the same:
- One cell: the nurse/posting resident.
- Another cell: the fellow arguing about BP targets.
- Third cell: neurosurgeon saying “short case hai” (known falsehood).
- Fourth cell: Shivani trying to standardize anything with an Excel sheet and trauma.
Together, we form:
A larger cooperative unit called “NANCC,” whose primary function is to defy circadian rhythm and generate publishable chaos.
My “multi-personal humanity” is the sum total of:
- Neurointervention circus,
- Neuro OT drama,
- Neuro ICU existentialism,
- And the one quiet moment at 2 a.m. when I sip hot coffee and think, “I really love this.”
That’s my “divine principle of unity.” Plus, Wi‑Fi.
3. Immortality → Papers, Paintings, and Question Banks
Tagore:
“In this ideal of unity [man] realizes the eternal in his life… It inspires in us works that are the expressions of a Universal Spirit.”
Me:
Look, I’m not sure about eternity, but I know this:
- A half-broken laptop full of drafts,
- A terrifying Google Drive of data sheets,
- A sketchbook of brains and aneurysms,
- A folder called “DRNB FINAL – PLEASE GOD” on my desktop
…are the closest I currently get to immortality.
Tagore says we touch the eternal through:
- Art,
- Science,
- Philosophy,
- Service.
In NANCC life that becomes:
- Art → me painting neurons instead of reading ICP chapters.
- Science → me pretending my Excel sheets are “robust databases” and not emotional support files.
- Philosophy → the 3 a.m. corridor walk where I question why I exist, then go back and titrate norad.
- Service → the 40 little things we do every shift that never go in a paper but quietly keep someone alive.
If I ever leave something “immortal” behind, it’ll probably be:
- A meme-laced teaching PPT,
- A scoring system with too many variables,
- And stories of “that neuroanesthesia madam who kept asking for exact BP numbers and bullied people out of writing ‘stable only’.”
4. Truth, Tables, and ICU Monitors
Tagore:
“The table… appears as a table for man through his special organ of senses and his special organ of thoughts.”
Me in ICU:
The “table” is actually the monitor.
- To relatives: a scary screen with random numbers.
- To a tired resident: “Okay-ish, I think, HR not red, BP not red, SpO₂ not red, chal raha hai.”
- To an examiner: “Kindly enumerate all parameters, their significance, and management of derangements, in less than 15 seconds while I stare into your soul.”
Tagore says science gives us one version of reality, senses give us another, both reconciled in human personality.
In my life:
- Scientific truth: ICP 22, CPP borderline, sodium 131, something must be done.
- Emotional truth: “If one more thing goes wrong, I will lie down on this floor.”
Both are valid. Only one goes in the chart.
And his line about logic being “machinery of thinking created by man”?
In my world:
Logic is the anesthesia workstation.
The “machinery of coping” is chai.
5. Reason vs Heart → Viva vs Why-I-Started
Dostoyevsky:
“Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, and not through the reason.”
Tagore:
We have senses for the physical world and “luminous imagination” for wholeness and immortality.
Me, trying to revise for DRNB:
- Reason: “You must memorize 300 pages of neurophysiology or you will perish in the viva.”
- Heart: “You love this field because of that one moment when a patient wakes up, moves all limbs, and smiles at their family.”
Reason is my exam prep, my protocols, my references, my careful ICP/CPP calculations.
Heart is:
- Sitting by a recovering patient’s bed at 2 a.m.,
- A neurosurgeon quietly saying “Good call,”
- A junior asking, “Didi, how did you know what to do?”
- The absurd joy of a neat art line, a clean extubation, a well-managed SAH.
Reason fills the answer sheet.
Heart writes the blog.
Reason gets me through the exam.
Heart is why I haven’t run away to open a small art café in the hills. Yet.
6. Relationship as Fundamental Truth → Group Photo with Dark Circles
Tagore:
“Relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance.”
In my personal nonsense universe, that translates to:
- I am not just “DrNB candidate.”
- I am the sum of every senior who taught me, every colleague who covered a break, every nurse who saved me with one quiet, “Madam, dekho ye accha nahi lag raha,” every patient who trusted me without knowing my name.
My “truth” isn’t separate from them.
It’s:
- Sheen and Laila laughing about chaos.
- Penelope’s exam-topped calm eye of the storm.
- Neurointervention fellows calling my data sheets “side quests” and still filling them (badly, but love is imperfect).
- Neurosurgeons roasting my forms but turning up to help with the project anyway.
- The weird, immortal tradition of Artemis neuros and NANCC producing people who top exams while looking permanently half-dead.
If Tagore has “The Religion of Man,” I have:
The Religion of NANCC:
- Thou shalt not write “BP normal.”
- Thou shalt not plug EEG into defib.
- Thou shalt accept that “short case” is a lie.
- Thou shalt love thy coffee, thy patient, and occasionally thy colleagues.
- Thou shalt turn thy exhaustion into stories, thy data into papers, and thy burnout into questionable humor.
And somewhere in this mess — between the science and the silliness, the cerebral and the completely deranged — there is:
- A tiny sense of immortality,
- A feeling of unity,
- And the quiet knowledge:
This is my little corner of the universe.
Ridiculous. Exhausting. Beautiful.
A ring-dance of atoms, aneurysms, and absolutely unnecessary Excel columns.
Signed,
Shivani Fotedar
Neuroanesthesia, Neuro ICU, and Nonsense Theology.
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