Can you hear me?” I asked a live audience, testing my mic out. After more than a year, I was delivering a guest lecture in person to a bunch of general physicians. Mechanically, I followed my question with the customary, “Can you see me?”—a hangover from the innumerable Zoom talks I’ve delivered in the recent past during the pandemic, which now threatens to behave like an ex-girlfriend: over, but not over.

The Indian Medical Association has various branches, and each ward in the city has its own division that organises activities for its physicians. Doctors from various specialties are invited to impart wisdom on updates in their areas of expertise so that general physicians—who, I believe, are the backbone of our profession—may be empowered to guide their patients in cases beyond their realm of proficiency. 
We had specialists come up and talk to us on advances in laparoscopic surgery, robotic knee replacement, precision angioplasty, minimally invasive bypass surgery, artificial intelligence guided endoscopy and in-vitro fertilisation along with a few more to cover the entire spectrum of human afflictions. I found it a bit ironic that the talk on premature ejaculation was the last talk of the day—or maybe it was a smart move by the organisers to ensure that everyone ‘stayed till the end’!