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Monday, September 17, 2007

Ramadan has started

... And so has my fasting. Every year, I turn over the proverbial "new leaf" in Ramadan. All through the year, I am a non-conformist, who, despite abiding belief in Allah and Islam, hardly ever pray the Namaaz or read the Qur'an. Come the holy month of Ramadan, and I get transformed from being an irreligious person into an Allah-fearing, Namaaz-praying, Qur'an reading individual. I fast too. In short, I change into a new person!

So far, there have been six fasts, and I have done them all. I have no doubt that if my resolve does not waver, I should be able to finish all fasts.My elder daughter Inas is also doing all the fasts.

My first income from my net activities

Although I have earned money earlier too because of my net presence, I was pleasantly surprised last week when I received my first ever cheque for contributing an article to http://www.merinews.com.

I joined this interesting site a few months ago on prompting by a person called Shilpadeep on the net. She sent me a link to the site and interested me enough to visit that link and become a "Citizen Journalist" or "CJ". I wrote a string of four articles on the medical "industry". These articles were well received but did not garner the kind of attention that I was looking for. Then, sometime in August, I wrote an article based on my real life encounters with Orkut. This artocle became a rage, so much that I received both fan-mail and hate-mail for it. In the end, the Merinews editorial team elevated it to a "Merinews Pick" and sent me the payment as a recognition-cum-reward for doing what I had already done.

Do visit the site mentioned above, and use the search option to see my articles. Search for "Dr. Taher" without the quote marks and the next box selected to "by Contributor".

Thursday, September 06, 2007

News on my new clinic

I am returning to the blog after almost twenty days ... eventful days with most of my spare time spent in supervising how my new clinic premises are getting renovated/refurbished. Before I go any further, let me say that my present clinic was becoming too small to take the input of patients and other visitors; this is hardly surprising as it measures just 100 sq. ft. in size! Out of this, almost 5 sq.ft. is lost in a structural beam, 10 are lost in a staircase that connects to the loft inside my clinic, and of the remaining 85, 40 sq. ft. is the size of the waiting area and 45, the size of the inner cabin where I consult. LOL.

Now, with a sizeable contribution from my better half, I have purchased a new "pagdi" premises near J.J. Hospital. The new shop is on the ground floor, and is almost 250 sq. ft. in size, a major increase over the older place where I presently sit. The renovation work is in progress and is expected to complete in less than a month. Inshallah, I should then shift my normal practice to this place, while the Late Zubedabai Y. Kagalwala Memorial Child Welfare Center will continue to operate from my present premises.

A little more about the charitable venture: it has started since July 27, 2007. In the nearly one and a half months, I have seen about 20 new cases and about 15 old ones. As against my normal fees (of around Rs. 400/- for the first consultation, I charge just Rs. 100/- for this in the charitable version. With this, I hope to earn the good wishes and prayers of my poorer patients and blessings from my late mother's benevolent soul.

That's all for now.