This past week I worked from our Delhi office, which is always such a great pleasure. Run with great zest and enthusiasm by my colleague Dr Anjali Agrawal, who is among the most dedicated academic radiologists whom I have met, it is a small but vibrant place, which exemplifies quality and keen analytics. And to top it all, there is her amazing hospitality and fabulous home cooked food, which is of course the icing on the cake. I recall meeting Anjali at RSNA way back in 2002, when I had just presented an abstract on international teleradiology and she came up to me to say she and her husband, himself a prolific researcher/scientist were considering making the move back homeward. And I recall the excitement when they did return lock stock and barrel and after a period of orientation in Bangalore, moved to set up our Delhi office, and the rest is teleradiologic history. Most recently, Anjali’s remarkable lecturing skills were on display at the last RSNA at which she was on the refresher course faculty, and based on her stellar performance, she has been reinvited back to speak again this year, to her credit and our pride.
Being at the Delhi office is also nice as it allows me to reconnect with our team there, to understand their issues and to communicate newer protocols and policies something that is always far better done in person than over webconferencing (although the latter is a necessary substitute). And to bond with them over working lunches.
This time an added special experience for me was travelling to the office on the Delhi Metro. This was a truly rewarding and fulfilling experience. It is a high quality, clean and comfortable ride, and one could just as well be in Paris or London for the experience, except that the fare is a tiny fraction (would you believe 19 rupees!!). It is also a microcosm of India, with commuters ranging from young western-dressed professionals and students with the obligatory earphones plugged into their MP3 phones, to government officials, as well as to ammajis in saris bearing potlis with indeterminate contents. An up-close connect with India that no taxi ride can replace.
And what also made the week memorable was that my son won a tennis tournament that qualified him to play later this year on the grass courts at Wimbledon, truly a special honour… held at the spectacular DLTA complex.
Despite the flak that Delhi receives, the city where I spent the first 27 years of my life seems in many ways to get better with every passing year.