A strange stillness reverberates in the air. This is the defining moment. The table is laid and the entire paraphernalia is in order. Few comforting, reassuring glances are exchanged, and everyone gets busy in giving shape to that one defining moment, save for one person who doesn't have much to contribute. All is well that ends well.

And before leaving the action packed room, that one 'non-contributing' member slips a paper to the person smiling at him. Scribbled on the paper are two lines that dilute the grimness — Dil Khol Lo Yaaran Nal, Nahin Ta Dr Jaswal Kholangey Auzaara Naal. The whole team bursts into laughter, as it is common to find patients who summon gods from the heaven on their surgery.

On Doctors Day, we share light surgical notes on the strange, funny, frightening incidents that they came across before, during and after the surgery. All this and more, but not before they zero-in on that one tip that they carry to the operation theatre!

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Dr Raj Badahur,Director-Principal, GMCH-32

A successful operation takes him to a state of ecstasy. Without mincing words, he says, "I remain in a state of ecstasy after a decent operation. I don't feel like talking to anyone after an operation because I am in such a euphoric and satisfied state that I cannot say much."

Stress no bar: "Surgical skills come into play during any operation. I have performed surgeries numerous times and I don't see any place for stress," he says. 

Dr Anju Huriya,Professor and Head gynaecology, GMCH-32

No thoughts are allowed entry during the operation. And this comes naturally to Dr Anju with years of experience behind her. "Even if it is a small caesarean, my attention doesn't move even for a flick of a second till the time the baby comes out," she says. A small prayer before every operation boosts up Dr Anju's confidence. She shares that there is no harm in relying on the intuition of the patient on the operating table, which only makes a doctor put in more than extra effort.

Strange ways: "Some patients have interesting advice to give to the doctors. They would ask you to cut some thread tied around their arm, neck or hand. And there are patients that evoke heavens. They howl, they wail and make sure the world knows this is their last journey. But I have started taking into consideration the intuitions of patients. Once before the operation, this lady who had had absorption told me that she was definitely going to die. Trust me, she faced a near-death experience; she bled profusely something I had never seen before. I was anyways cautious, but her words kept ringing in my mind till she came out safely," she shares.

Dr Swami Das Mehta, skin specialist, Multi-Speciality Hospital, Sector-16, and State Leprosy Officer

Almost every patient walks in with numerous queries about his or her state of health and is in a lot of stress. A warm hello and a smile can make things better. "An assuring smile strengthens the doctor-patient relationship," he says.

Talk it out: "I do small surgeries wherein patients don't panic much. All the same, the name 'operation theatre' scares everyone. Patients are generally tense and sometimes they are unable to explain their problem. In such a scenario talking to them about other things like family or profession lightens up everything. Some patients are too eager to get well soon and they bombard me with funny questions, 'will this scar go overnight, are scars contagious, can I see the sun with my naked eye etc' I guess telling them about the problem and the preventive measures solves half of the problem," he says.

There’s an advantage and an equally big disadvantage of culling out facts from history books and projecting them on screen. The advantage: You get a readymade story to make a film. The disadvantage: There is no scope for errors and one has to be really responsible.

“And the responsibility increases manifold when the history concerns the religious sentiments of people; when the storyline is based on the life of a great personality like Baba Banda Singh Bahadar and when a religious committee has for the first time allowed such a project,” says Harjit Singh Ricky, director of the film Baba Banda Singh Bahadar.

Harjit’s priority was on extensive research before selection of the cast or shooting of the film. “For the one-hour film that was shot in one-and-a-half month, we researched for almost two years,” he says. The film is about the war heroics of Banda Bahadar and his belief in Guru Gobind Singh. It depicts how with only 25 soldiers he began his journey from Nanded in Maharashtra to Sirhind in Punjab. “In between the journey, he fought three wars at Bhiwani, Chappar Chirri and Sirhind, and helped people get rid of the atrocities of Muslim tyrant Wazir Khan.”

The project assumes more importance because it’s for the first time that Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, which is also the producer, has allowed a film to be made on the glorious exploits of Sikh Gurus. “That makes the aim bigger. It’s not just limited to the story of Banda Bahadar, it also projects the greatness of the Gurus through other characters,” says the director. Thus, Harjit had to follow some guidelines of the SGPC while choosing the main characters. “The directions were that those playing the three main characters of Baba Banda Bahadar Singh, Baba Baj Singh and Baba Vinod Singh were Gursikhs. They should also be knowing horse-riding and how to wield a sword.” The film was shot with the help of 800 people at Dharak village in Mohali district.

The character of Banda Bahadar has been played by Gurpreet Singh, who was earlier seen in the role of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia in Maharaja Ranjit Singh. For Gurpreet, who is working as an assistant producer in a television channel, playing the role of the Sikh warrior was a challenge. “Besides delivering dialogues, it was important for me to know the body language of Banda Bahadar. I had to behave like the Sikh General, who doesn’t have many documentaries made on him.”

He doesn’t mind the constraint put on him by the SGPC. “The film is not made from a commercial angle. The director and other crew members only wanted to tell people how great a warrior Baba Banda Singh Bahadar was.” A cause worth it!

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Actress Genelia D'Souza has been crowned as the Brand Ambassador of the Year by CNBC AWAAZ Consumer Awards. Last year Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan had won the title.

The actress currently endorses nine brands including Cadbury's Perk, Fanta, Spinz, Dabur Vatika, LG Cookie, Virgin, Margo, Garnier and Fasttrack. "It is an honour that CNBC AWAAZ and the Indian consumers have chosen to bestow upon me and I couldn't be happier. Stalwarts like Shah Rukh and Akshay Kumar have been awarded this prestigious title in the past and I'm only glad that people think I'm worthy of the same," Genelia said.

"This award symbolises a bridge between the consumer and the brand and I consider it a huge responsibility. I hope I continue to do even better in the future and I'm sure I will as I have a very strong team with me that helps me build, grow and sustain. My success is as much theirs as it is mine," she added. The award was announced late Monday evening. — IANS

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt is not making a movie on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, says his representative. 

Gallons of oil have been spilling into the sea off the coast of Louisiana since the rig ruptured, with officials of British oil company BP desperately trying to find a solution to stem the leak.

The Ocean's Eleven actor was reportedly planning to make a film on the crisis. However, Pitt's representative insisted they "have heard nothing about this." — ANS

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's TV production company Red Chillies Idiot Box is set to produce romantic movies for the youth that will be aired on MTV.

After non-stop music and adventure-based reality shows, MTV is venturing into romantic movies that will appeal to the Indian youth.

The channel has collaborated with two production houses - Red Chillies Idiot Box and Milestone Movies Pvt Ltd - to produce three romantic movies as part of their new series Luv Reels. "I feel that it is very important to encourage young talent in an industry where there is such fierce competition. Keeping that emotion in mind, we are very happy to associate with MTV to launch careers of fresh talent," Shah Rukh said.

With this series, MTV is giving a platform to young aspiring actors, singers and music composers. The makers, actors and content of these movies were short-listed online and the cast for all three movies was selected after gruelling online auditions. The movies have been shot in London and Mumbai and are ready for release. "Young people are always looking for fresh forms of entertainment and who knows the pulse of this audience better than the audience itself. Luv Reels is India's first user generated film series and it could potentially be the start of something very powerful," Aditya Swamy, senior vice president (Sales and Marketing), MTV India, said in a press release.

The movies will be on air every Saturday starting July 3.— IANS

Oscar winning actress Renee Zellweger has gained 10 lbs over the past few months by unstraining her strict fitness regime. The 41-year-old actress is a fitness freak who loves to don skinny figure and thus usually sticks to fish and vegetable diet. But now she has put her stringent diet and fitness regime on hold and is happy with her new hour glass figure.

"Renee's still committed to being in top shape, but she's realised that being too thin isn't attractive. She's been obsessed with being skinny for so long, being able to relax is a relief," a source said. Her friends are of the belief that the actress- who jogs up to five miles six times a week - has changed her attitude towards her look due to her boyfriend Bradley Cooper, as he told her he likes women with "a little more meat on their bones".

"She banned dairy a long time ago but Bradley loves ice cream and cheese and Renee's started to join in. Potatoes are back on the menu, too. Bradley's convinced her to loosen up and she's loving it. Bradley's been very vocal in telling her he's more attracted to women with a little meat on their bones and Renee's doing her best to oblige him," the source said.

The actress' weight issues have been in news since she first gained 28lbs and won an Oscar for her title role of Bridget Jones in the movie Bridget Jones's Diary.

"She was so skinny that her face looked hollow, but now that it has some fullness back she looks so much younger," the source added. — PTI 

Pop star Lady Gaga has a creepy recurring dream in which a phantom urges her to slash her wrists to save her family. The Poker Face singer, who has learned from her mother that the bizarre nightmare is perhaps a secret society ritual, admits she uses the imagery from this and other dreams in her songs and videos, a publication reported.

"This phantom... takes me into a room, and there's a blonde girl with ropes tied to all four of her limbs and she's got my shoes on from the Grammys... and the ropes are pulling her apart," Gaga said.

"I never see her get pulled apart but I just watch her whimper, and then the phantom says to me, 'If you want me to stop hurting her and if you want your family to be ok, you will cut your wrist.' And I think he has his own, like, crazy wrist-cutting device," she added. "And he has this honey... and he wants me to pour the honey into the wound, and then put cream over it and a gauze.

I looked up the dream, and I couldn't find anything about it anywhere. And my mother goes, 'isn't that an Illuminati ritual?" Gaga said. And when the 24-year-old star gets really stuck over the meaning of a dream, she turns to her pal, Indian spiritual advisor Deepak Chopra.

The singer asked him to help her interpret a dream in which she's eating a human heart.

"I was freaking out... I was like, 'The devil's trying to take me, Deepak. I'm a good girl!' And Deepak goes, 'You are so very creative, my Gaga. You should make this into a video.' And I guess, in his own way, he spoke to me about learning to respect and honour my insanity. It's part of who I am," she added.— PTI 

Pop princess Britney Spears is all set to join the league of singer-designers with her high-end prêt collection. Spears says that her new clothing line is a reflection of her personality adding that she wanted to design such clothes which she could wear herself, a website reported.

The Hit Me Baby One More Time hit maker has launched her fashion line in association with American label Candie's and the apparels will be sold at Kohl's department stores.

"I wanted to design clothes that I would wear and my fans would wear. That was the most important thing to me. I wanted to make both daytime casual looks and fun dresses to go out in at night. I met with the design team for Candie's and Kohl's, and we started making sketches and designed a line. I got to approve every single piece in the line. It was really a lot of fun.

"This collection really represents my personal style. I took pieces from my Circus tour and pieces that I wear every day. I love denim, I can't wait for it to come out," Spears said. — PTI 

According to a Vietnamese proverb, brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. This bond that a person shares with none but a sibling can make them the best of friends. But on the flip side, it is also an accepted fact that there will be competition among them.

Competing for everything from parents’ attention to privileges at home, sibling rivalry is bound to exist and it’s the parents who can make things work. We bring you some tips on how to handle it well.

Neena, mother to teenage kids Sonu (17) and Soni (15) finds sibling rivalry challenging but manageable. “Managing it is difficult, but one needs to device means and ways to tackle it,” she shares. Now that her kids are ‘old enough’ she leaves it to them to sort out issues. “It’s natural for kids to get mad, crazy and argue. I do observe them from a distance. But they know if they come to me, they are going to face the consequences that are not going to be too favourable,” she shares. So fearing a grounding by mum, Sonu and Soni rather resolve differences amid themselves.

Says Neelam Nayyar, a homemaker from Sector 2, Panchkula, ‘listening patiently’ is the key. “Some bickering and fighting is an essential part of growing up together. In fact, now that my children are grown up I miss all that,” she says. “When they were young, I realised that I need not to do anything more than just listening to them. Giving them time and understanding their needs is the key,” she adds.

City sociologist Kiranpreet Kaur also emphasises the importance of interaction. “It’s the law of nature that no two individuals are the same. Depending on behaviour and accomplishments, there would always be some conflict or the other amongst siblings. And parents play a crucial role in resolving it,” she says.

And it could be even more challenging if one kid is gifted and another is not. “Parents need to talk to kids to know what’s going on in their mind. If its Facebook that they are available on, why not try talking there,” she says.

“Interaction is the only healthy link in the family and with changes in lifestyle, parents need to be more pro-active in managing their kids,” suggests Kiranpreet.

“Siblings rivalry can also be healthy, for it teaches the child how to negotiate,” says city psychologist Rajshree Sarda. All children are not the same and parents need to understand the unspoken needs of each child, she opines, “Checking or comparing children will make them anxious. Rather than asking a child to study more to be as good in academics as the other sibling, teach him how to,” she says. “Encourage the less gifted child, give him more opportunities rather than playing favourites,” she adds.

It’s the parents’ inept handling that complicates things. “Sibling rivalry can also help the child adapt better to the outside world. ‘Negotiating’, which a child learns in a family, comes in handy later in life. The key is to be objective and mature in handling sibling issues,” says Sarda.

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Toddlers throwing tantrums and adolescent sibling rivalry are the norm when children clamour for their mother’s attention.But when kids hit their 20s and beyond, wondering if they are mom’s favourite, still has repercussions that could lead to a visit to a therapist’s office, according to a study by a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The study, which looked at 275 relationships between mothers and grown children in the Boston area, explored the link between parental favouritism and signs of depression.

“Parental differentiation among children seems to have important effects on psychological well-being even when the children are in middle age,” said Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell. The behavioural ramifications of parental favouritism among school-going children has been closely studied, but Pillemer said investigating the link in the latter stages of family life is relatively new.

More than two-thirds of mothers interviewed showed favouritism toward one of their adult children when asked whether they had a stronger emotional bond or more conflict with a particular child.

And a whopping 90 per cent of the adult children thought their mother had a preference for who would take care of her in old age.

Answers also crushed the notion that heightened depression was linked only to non-favoured siblings. Pillemer and co-author Jill Suitor of Purdue University found that the so-called golden children also struggled.

Favoured children often wrangle with feelings of guilt and feel obligated to care for their parents later in life, the researchers said. Siblings who perceived favouritism from their parents also generally reported poorer quality relationships with each other, said Pillemer. Bringing into the open that many parents do have preferences among their children is a first step to addressing some of the bad feelings associated with favouritism, he said. But accepting that some level of parental preference is normal may be hard for families to understand. “It doesn’t mean parents don’t love all their children,” said Pillemer. “But that children are all different and parents relate to them differently.”— Reuters

Penn State sociologists have found that teenage girls who think they are overweight, but are not, are at more risk for depression than girls who are overweight and know it. “Parents often worry about overweight girls’ mental health, but our findings show that it is girls who have a healthy weight but perceive being overweight who are most likely to feel depressed,” said Jason N. Houle, graduate student in sociology and demography.

The researchers found that female weight pessimists — girls who thought they were overweight but were normal weight — or boys who were actually under weight were at high risk for depressive symptoms. 

“For boys it is slightly different. There is a similar pattern with weight pessimists, but underweight boys are extremely distressed. Underweight boys are far more likely to be distressed than boys who are heavier,” said Houle. — ANI 

Loud music, flashy lights, shiny clothes, drinks and men in black. It's no filmy scene, but a regular discotheque description. And no our focus is not on the music, lights and clothes part but on the men in black, read the bouncers. Besides fun and frolic, security is an important factor in when having a night full of fun. So, comes into picture, the sturdy looking men with a deep gaze and serious expressions (though its just for the warning)

Their basic aim is to let people have fun without any violence and maintain the party standards. But it's a misconception that bouncers have the authority to fight with people if they create nuisance.

Says Boxer, 26, and on the job bouncer from city, "The job of a bouncer is to control the crowd. We don't fight with anyone. The problem occurs when people drink a lot and become loose control. We talk to them sweetly and try to control them. In case of fights, we take both the parties out and try to pacify the situation. And if needed, we take the help of the police also to maintain the peaceful ambience." The most troublesome thing to deal with is, "When people try to bribe us for stag entries and take the names of the VIPs," he adds.

Sometimes girls also create problems and a catfight is not easy to deal with. Says, Amit Sharma of Arizona-9, "We don't only have male bouncers but female bouncers too, to control the catfight. Generally, we have two bouncers daily but on Saturday nights the number raises from eight to ten."

Though they are tough taskmasters inside the stipulated area, their duties are restricted once you are out of it. Baldev of Black Magic who is in the profession since seven to eight years says, "We just stand for security. We are not responsible for the fights happening outside the club. We allow one stag with two or three couples but not beyond that. The only weapon we have to control the people is being sweet to them."

The profession of a bouncer can effect their personal lives also. Surjeet, head of the Solid Manpower Company that supplies bouncers all over the city says, "We don't fight really. We just try to solve the problems. Some people take it personally and try to harm us when we are not on duty. One of our colleagues, Deepak, was hit by a car while on his way back home that left him bed-ridden for six months."

At times people get so aggressive that they don't refrain from vandalizing. Ravi, working in Score-8 says, "People get out of control when drunk. They disobey the club rules and use abusive language with us and the authorities concerned. They break glasses and destroy the furniture too. The only way out for this is to take them out of the club. But sometimes we can't take any actions against such people under the pressure of the police."

And so the men with big muscles and steel gaze come to the rescue. By making sure that the fun part doesn't get out of control.

This one is for the ones hooked to television thrillers. An entertainer with all the mythological masala. And its happening on Mata ki Chowki on Sahara One.The Hindu shastras call this the age of Kalyug; an era where evil prevails over good and humanity seems to have lost all moral values & spirituality. Mata Ki Chowki, from the SaharaOne stable will embark on a journey that will see the end of Sheel Kumar at the hands of Vaishnavi's daughter Saakshi, played by Muskaan.

According to the current storyline, Sakshi rescues all family members from Sheel's chakravyuh. But according to Sheel, he has made her break the five Mahatatwa's and her connection with the divine is now lost. Sheel is now ready to kill Saakshi in front of Mata's statue. And that's where the drama starts.

He is about to break Mata's statue when a hand stops him. It is Saaskhsi's hand (of course) as she drags him to the temple to kill him. Sheel Kumar is scared as he sees Saakshi as Mata's form of Chandika. At the temple, Mata appears and informs Sheel that Saakshi has not committed any sin; rather she has done the holy act of serving her loved ones. And the rest is for the audience to watch.

The entire act is to establish the fact that whenever evil flourishes the good takes over and destroys it. It is said, all bad things look for a good end. Mata Ki Chowki finds one

Watch the drama unfold in Mata Ki Chowki, Monday- Thursday at 10 p.m, only on SaharaOne TV

— Dharampal