Chapter 10: Beyond the Stethoscope

For most of my working life, the stethoscope sat around my neck like a second skin. It listened to murmurs, wheezes, and silences; it also listened to my own tiredness. Medicine gave me purpose, routine, and an identity that was hard to separate from the man who wore the white coat. Yet, somewhere along the way—almost quietly—I began collecting a few lives outside the hospital: small adventures, odd detours, and hobbies that had nothing to do with ward rounds or academic meetings, but everything to do with staying human.

This chapter is a scrapbook of those escapes. It begins with a family trek to the Himalayas—full of enthusiasm, thin air, and the kind of foolish optimism that only first-timers carry. It moves to a travel mishap in a Chinese airport where time disappeared, Google refused to cooperate, and a stranger’s kindness saved our itinerary.

Then comes the unlikely story of late-onset cycling—brevets, punctures, headwinds, minor humiliations, and the quiet thrill of discovering that the body, even after sixty, can still surprise you. Along the way, I return to old comforts: books that have kept me company for decades, cricket that has shaped my imagination, and a personal project of documenting my GMC Nagpur batch of 1973—because memory fades, but stories, once written down, stay.