June 19, 2005

When Dr. Jayant Patel accepted a surgical post at the municipal hospital here two years ago, it was a big relief to this farm town, which has had trouble finding and keeping doctors. Dr. Patel was a professor of surgery at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the 1980's, and he came highly recommended by several doctors in Oregon, where he had also worked. But almost immediately, after he declared a patient to be stable when in fact the patient was brain dead, at least one nurse worried about his competence. Before long, nurses were hiding patients from him. One doctor ordered that Dr. Patel not operate on any of his patients, after he saw him perform an operation without anesthesia. An anesthesiologist nicknamed him ''Dr. Death.''

THE LONG ROAD HOME One Step at a Time. By G. B. Trudeau. Illustrated. 93 pp. Andrews McMeel Publishing. Paper, $9.95.

AT this point, most of us have come to accept that ground zero is doomed architecturally. Still, the memorial to the nearly 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, considered the site's spiritual center, has been approached with a measure of sincerity. At one point, a lively discussion between architects, planners and victims' families even seemed likely to yield a relatively thoughtful design.

AT a party on the Upper West Side in 2000, a distinguished American author, and longtime Manhattanite, asked where I lived. ''Brooklyn,'' I told him.

ON a fine spring day in Manhattan, Reshma Taufiq, 28, was the first to audition for a role on a new MTV channel that will be aimed at second-generation desis, or immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. Her emerald-green bodice fit snugly atop navel-baring jeans, and her long black hair curtained her cheekbones as she sweated under the studio lights, trying sexy, then cheery, then exuberant variations on ''Live from Jackson Heights, Queens, it's MTV Desi.'' Ms. Taufiq summed herself up: R&B artist who is bilingual in English and Hindi; news reader for a local ethnic channel on which she conducts phone-in quizzes on Bollywood trivia; frequenter of the late-night desi party scene who thinks that arranged marriages are not such a bad idea; and, well, chemical engineer now working in software development at Hewlett-Packard.