‘It’s all about
thinking inside the box rather than out of the box’ advocates Dr. BA Anantharam, a
renowned plastic reconstructive hand surgeon who is a president of Annasawmy
Mudaliar CIE’s Public Charities in Frazer Town Bengaluru. He was a former
president of Indian Society for Surgery of Hand.
Bottle with no wine, so
question arises ‘What do we do with the bottle, it’s still new?
We sat
across his cluttered work desk and found
his workspace teeming with stories of repurposed items. Dr. Anantharam said
excitedly ‘So here is a pen-stand made of out of wood from birch tree which I
had picked in Geneva’. He continues ‘you know there are tree surgeons whose job
is to focus on health and safety of individual plants and trees’.
When one
asks him what triggers this behavior of repurpose. He replies ‘It’s a question
of having access to very high quality material that’s considered unfit for use
by others.‘
So here goes
the story, one day the Doctor visited a certain shop seeking another piece of
that perfectly modeled pencase he used to have. The shopkeeper said that it was
one of its kinds. Dr. Anantharam was disappointed and decided to create one for
him and till date he continues to surprise himself with self-designed products intended
for his various needs.
For instance
once there was a problem of staining of his shirt with pen ink and lot of time
spent trying to use plastic or other materials. The solution was not consistent. Suddenly one
day he notices a leather pen pouch with a pen dealer and he cried ‘eureka!’ He realized
in leather stock for patients, there will be few scraps of high value leather. Hence,
decided to turn them into pen cases.’ He says, showing his custom made pen case
‘it’s made out of calf leather, the more you use it, the softer it becomes but
the nappa leather is finest of all’.
But there was
more on his table that continued to electrify us and one notices another brightly
coloured pouch made out of discarded jute ment for special knives for various
purposes of his trade. Even his Swiss
army knife has a leather holder which was custom made from locally available
material. He spins his self-made top made of empty refill and bottle cap on the
table while informing that the ‘top is one of the earliest toys invented by man’.
One notice
there is lot of cut pieces of tiles which were converted into coasters and card
holder. He was quick to add ‘all these come handy to be custom-made gift items
to people’
Organize for efficiency
Recently in
a super specialty hospital when Dr. Anantharam was in a surgery and also at a
post –op round he asked for scissors and was handed a blade instead. At AMGH (Annasawmy
Mudaliar General Hospital), bandage and scissors are kept ready in a holder out
of an empty drip bottle and consequently it take 10 min for a dressing which
would take twice the amount of time at other places because the staff are
running up and down looking for things the Doctor asked for.
‘Efficiency
is the key word, developing a methodology which is optimum in nature.
Implementation in hospital becomes an uphill task’, says Dr. Anantharam, but in
AMGH this is not the case, while taking a tour in the surgery room, the doctor shows
us how various tools are organized the way they should be. How neatly the
register is maintained and how the waste paper is being reused. It is impressive
to see that staff members understand this virtue of orderliness and follow it diligently.
Even a patient contributed by specially designing a surgery steel hand stand
meant for surgery of hand.
Age of instant
gratification
T-20 to T-1
will be the future of cricket where a match will be played in one over with 10 balls
in an over. People find test matches too long to endure. ‘Virtual’ cricket may eventually
happen say Dr.Anantharam. He mentions that people want consultation online;
they describe their pain on a phone-call. That is why there is mushrooming of
online portals. He muses ‘what people don’t realize is health is an “IN EXACT”
science. They want conversation, but not listening’. Now days an organ
transplant is being spoken about but one forgets that with transplant comes anti-rejection
medication for the rest of one’s life.
In the same
breath he adds, Why did Kodak fail ?-- because they did not capitalize the need
of conversion from Analog to Digital .Therefore two factors influence the big
picture, the access to it and the need for it.
These things keep me
busy and occupied
We want to thank
Dr. Anantharam for sharing his experiences of repurposing and how it’s closely
related to efficiency in life which gives us a new perspective on waste. He went on to instruct his colleague to get
him discarded pieces of mahogany, sal and teak wood from which he crafts
walking sticks, his current hobby.
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