Book Review: The Silent Patient

I just finished reading this Novel “The Silent Patient”. One day my wife came home from a book store and gave me this novel and asked me to read. When I got the novel from her, I quickly scanned it and made mind to read it. In fact I hadn’t read any book in the past few months and had been spending too much time on Neflix and social media. So just to re-cultivate the habit of reading books to which I was once addicted I started reading this book.

I would say the Novel is interesting and  filled with suspense and thrillers. The main strength of the Novel is, it can hook the readers throughout every pages and the readers will always have a feeling of “what will happen next?” at the end of every chapter. The Novel is about the story of an artist (Painter) who is admitted in a pschyiatric rehabilitation centre because of her mental condition and with the accusation of killing her husband who is a photographer. A therapist who has good intention of treating the artist applies for the job in the rehabilitation centre just to get close the artist, but in the end he turns out to be the murder of the artist’s husband. So this is the whole story in 3 lines. But the Novel has many twists and turns in the story and never fails to disappoint its readers. So in overall a good book for those who are interesting in reading thrillers and suspenses.

Joining PhD had always been a dream for me. After completing my Masters in Public Health (MPH) in 2010, I wanted to work for few years and then wanted to do PhD. But when engaged in development field, you are so much occupied by the deadlines, field visits, trainings, workshops and reports you hardly have any time to think about your academic career. This happened to me as well. Immediately after completing MPH, I started working in a very reputed international organisation working in the field of HIV in Nepal and after 3 years switched to another organisation. After after working in that organisation for five years I went to Bangkok to work in another INGO in a regional program for Asia Pacific region. The career ladder was moving a head and I was juming from local NGO to INGO at national level and then to international level and the dream of pursuing PhD was somewhere lost in this trajectory. After working in Bangkok for two years, the COVID pandemic emerged and there was family pressure to come back to home, so I returned to Kathmandu by accepting offer from another organistion where the job was regional (Nepal, India and Bangladesh) but the position was home based. I got the type of job that I was exactly looking for. When I was relocated to Kathmandu from Thailand, I had to make a long circle around the globe as I had to travel to Dubai from Bangkok and then to Kathmandu from Dubai as the direct flight from Bangkok to Kathmandu was still not resumed due to COVID. The job that I was working in Kathmandu was FCDO (former UKaid) funded program and nine months into that job, there was a major decision from the funder that they are not going to continue the program due to COVID-19. After nine months of coming back to Kathmandu from Bangkok, I was jobless. And I was jobless for the first time in Aug 2021 since completing my Masters in Dec 2010. For first few months I enjoyed my free days. But slowly after few months I started getting bored and started hunting for jobs and consultancy opportunities. Slowly I got some consultancies and was still looking for job. And suddenly my passion for PhD emerged again. As I was free, I registered for IELTS and appeared in an IELTS exam by doing some online preparaton in home. And in few days after the IELTS result was out, I saw a adverstisement for PhD studentship which somehow matched my profile and was asking for IELTS 7.0 score. Luckily my score was enough for this application. I got shortlisted, appeared in the interview and I was offered PhD. Finally, I was enrolled in PhD. Connecting the dots.....I can see that the decision to come back to Kathmandu from Thailand, accepting the offer from another organistion for a home based job, the pullout of the program by the donor for which I was working, me being jobless for few months and my decision to appear in IELTS examination.......I can now connect the dots and see the link.

Finally, I was in for PhD. The course starts in April 2023....everything goes smooth. I complete all the assignments, attend all the meetings, complete all the project work, do everything that was required for the project. I was like a nursery kid again doing all the homework and classwork on time. In Feb 2024, I submit the Year 1 progress report and appear in Viva as per the University requirement. This is just like an annual examination in school where you are decided whether you can go to the I next class or you should stay in same. I did all the preparation from my side in close consultation with the supervisors, submitted the report and appeared in viva. In viva also in my perception everything went fine and answered everything perfectly. I appeared in Viva in the end of Feb 2024 and was expecting the result in two weeks. However I got the result only in the mid of May. In the result report that I received from graduate school there were lots of comments that I need to address and resubmit the report again. This was completely in opposite to what I had expected and I was a little bit frustrated too. It took some time for me to recover from this trauma as it was completely unexpected for me. But there is nothing I can do against this. The only option for me is to diligently address all the comments and suggestions that the examiners have asked me to do and resubmit the report in three months time. And this will ultimately help in making the PhD thesis more stronger. So I just need to have patience, work with supervisors, work on the comments from supervisors, work on the report everyday, do some literature search and study everyday and aim for submitting the report on time. And I am confident that I can turn all this around swiftly.