Brain teaser

Having now spent every day since January 5th 2010 renovating my brain - really, you should have seen the state of the place last year - it seems appropriate to blow the dust off this blog.

I now have an interesting new scar, punk hairdo and weird suntan, all from a prolonged run-in with a Chondroblastoma tumour that was drilling into my left temporal lobe with all the finesse of a BP oil platform. Then I was assaulted by a guy with a knife (fortunately he turned out to be a neurosurgeon) and was then baked daily in a Tomotherapy radiation machine that smelled like fried ear wax. For six weeks.

During all this, I've become a great admirer of Indian medical science. In Mumbai I've been fortunate enough to have been treated by the most tremendously capable, clever, skillful, motivated, caring and reasonably priced people I have ever encountered.

And I am now totally sick of them.

Be fair - it's now been over four months of them poking, scanning, slicing, bandaging, medicating, irradiating and saying "How are you feeling?". Having just finished the radiation therapy I'm really hoping never to have to spend time with any of them ever again. Which is not going to happen because I already have my next appointment for July 20.

Anyway, I would rather be telling you about some of the more interesting stuff you can be looking at on this blog, which includes some of the work I've been writing for Indian newspapers and magazines since my arrival in Mumbai in 2002. Let's start off with some open letters I've written for GQ.