I loved living on the second floor of the bazaar while growing up in India. There was never a dull moment with all kinds of different people, animals, traffic and aromas hanging out on the street all at once. There is something memorable about the smell of all the baked and fried sweets mixed in with the smells of cow manure, pig and dog excretions and sweat. However, there is one moment, in particular, that set the trajectory of my life.

Wearing oily pigtails with jet black hair as a 7-year old, I could hear the hustle and bustle coming from the bazaar behind me. I was too busy to care who might see me peering through my neighbors window. My face was glued to the grey-chipped-paint-rusty-bars on her window. With my small brown eyes wide open like a dear struck by headlights, I saw a lady rubbing her hands together and manifesting scarves literally from the cosmos! She then proceeded to hand out these scarves to people who were surrounding and worshiping her. I remember thinking that if she can manifest scarves from her hands then I can certainly heal with my hands. So imagine my dismay when I graduated from med school without these skills. Somehow prescribing a medication did not feel right. Something was amiss, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, like trying to fish out a small piece of an eggshell that has fallen into a recently broken egg.