Ninety Minutes Inside An MRI Machine!

If that title sounds like and conjures up images of `Around the World in Eighty Days', this author begs to (a) violently differ and (b) be forgiven.  That is not the intention, since the aftermath of taking temporary residence inside an MRI machine for any length of time cannot be pleasant, period.  Especially if the specimen subjected to the vicious experience is usually stricken by the sight of a doctor and the all-enveloping antiseptic smell hanging like an unseen dome inside a hospital or clinic.

You have heard of `White Coat Syndrome' (WCS)? Simply stated, it is that churning feeling you get when you think someone has inserted a hand directly into your innards and started squeezing, just as you are entertaining thoughts of an encounter with a doctor.  What it does is this - if you are going for a blood pressure check, it shoots your BP rocketing up; if the issue is something to do with the heart, your palpitations increase dramatically; if your lungs are causing problem, your breathing becomes shallow and erratic; if it is diabetes, your system has suddenly upped the quantum of sugar manufactured internally.  In short, WCS unfailingly exacerbates the symptoms, if not the problems themselves, you are approaching the doctor to mitigate.  This author assumes that his readers are not such naive softies as to believe that anything can be cured - so, mitigate it is!  Then the wise doctor, who has known you for twenty years and has done nothing at all otherwise to cause fright in you, examines while you apprehensively watch his furrowed brows and creased face.  And wait for him to either tut-tut or cluck-cluck (all doctors are not predictably uniform in their reaction and each one has his staunch preference - not that two of them agree on anything else) condescendingly, by way of prefacing his remarks.  Then, with a pitying look on his face and a vague smile (he has perfected the art of being always pleasant to the patients) he finally delivers his cheerful judgement `So, what have you been doing, it has gotten worse'!  Result is another half a kilo of tablets per month.  Remember, this is not because the problem has gotten more acute, but WCS has sabotaged things for you.

Why that detailed rendering of what WCS is?  Just to provide the essential background, as any half-decent author will do, so that his audience gets full value for time committed, in understanding and appreciating the story.   What do you think happens when someone, suffering acutely from WCS as well as claustrophobia, is forcibly inserted into an MRI machine, ashen-faced with fright and shuddering from uncontrollable emotions?  Read on and you will find out.  Disclosure time.  The temptation was to write this in third person and get away with that.  But an honest author does not economize with truth nor does he attempt to misrepresent.  So here goes (there is no dignified way of saying this, I guess) - the WCS infused patient who gets into the MRI machine in this story is the author himself!  The context was the need for an MRI to inspect the plumbing in the nose, to see how bad the deviated septum was.  Knowing the highly perceptive and intelligent readers following this blog, they would have guessed facts anyway, given that such clarity and attention to detail can emerge only from a life-changing and intimate personal experience!

Just to frighten me a bit more and make me feel less than normal, they forced me to change into the hospital attire, as if I was going in for a complicated surgery.  The prepping process included a short list of do's and dont's, delivered in a monotone by a bored technician - Do not shift the body (I wondered how one did that, since there was not even wiggling space inside).  Do not shake your head or neck, lest the picture scrambles.  Breathe, only if you have to. Already petrified, I tentatively asked what happened if the picture quality was patchy.  I should have known.  `You have to go back for another hour again, and that is chargeable', as if they were giving me a pleasure-ride!   My dear wife hissed `Don't behave like a kid, get on with it'.  Already the doctor, who happened to be a cousin of hers and she had mirthfully discussed this scene and giggled heartily, while all I could do was frown in silence because I had more sinister things gnawing at me.

I was launched into the capsule head first and my dear wife robustly waved me off as if I was on a Mars mission.  Very helpfully the technician told me it would take forty five minutes and gave me a calling bell.  He asked me to press the button, if I wanted the process to stop for some reason.  Now, I was all the more worried as to why that would happen, but before I could ask for elucidation, somebody said `okay, go'.  As soon as the machine commenced operations, it let out a high-pitched whine to let everyone know who would be in control.  Then started the vibrations, which were abnormally high in the estimate of the technician and the doctor attending.  They hastily concluded that the patient's own involuntary body tremors were adding to the machine's.  So, the patient was peremptorily pulled out and told in uncertain terms that unless he co-operates, they would have to sedate him and the readings would be sub-optimal in that case.  Which meant, the lease period for occupancy of the machine for the patient would have to increase, if required, along with the charges.  That promptly eased the tremors somewhat and the process re-started. 

The inside of the machine was obviously built strictly for utility, not for entertainment.  There were many contraptions all around,  making the same whirring sound following some algorithm as they kept moving about busily.  Just to jazz things up a bit, there were disco-like lights overhead, angrily flashing here and there, as if they were upset and disappointed at what they found inside my head.  In five minutes, I have had enough and pressed the calling bell button.  It worked and I was overjoyed to realise that someone was indeed outside and the machine was stopped.  The technician impatiently asked me what was wrong and was downright annoyed when I said I was just testing to see if the calling process works - only for emergency purposes.   He threatened not to stop during the process even if I had a problem since I was abusing the facility.

I decided to grit my teeth and go through with the hellish experience, despite being rattled by many doubts and questions:
-- What if everyone outside went for collective lunch or tea and there was no one to respond to the calling bell?
-- What if there was an earthquake or fire and everyone scooted, leaving me inside, blissfully ignorant of reality?  I did not see any way of scrambling out on my own.
-- What if the process is finished but the technician could not retrieve me because he had a heart-attack or was otherwise disabled?

I also made mental note of all the very practical enhancements that I figured were necessary to the MRI machine, in order to make it a more wholesome experience:
-- Fit the inside with TV Screens (HD, if possible) with a few channels and provide ear phones to the patient (Time-pass, if not entertainment).
--For those who do not appreciate TV, provide a teleprompter kind of screen and e-book to read.
-- Make glass windows on both sides so that the patient can see he has not been left unattended (Reduction of anxiety in the patient, helps control fear).
-- Have a hole through which the patient can put out his hand and this can be held by a pretty and gentle nurse throughout the process (Reduces stress and makes the expeirence somewhat acceptable)
-- Enhance the machine to accept brief breaks, without punitive levies, so that the patient can take a walk around the room for fresh air, when claustrophobia overwhelms him.

May be, I was being unacceptably busy with my hyper-active imagination as well as analytical bent of mind.  The picture quality was way below normal level and I had to go through the same process again for another forty five minutes.  When I finally emerged at the end, there was resounding applause from all those present, fit for returning astronauts.  When I gave the list of my questions/doubts as well as the suggested improvements, the doctor glowered and wanted to send me back for another MRI of my scattered brain!  I have never been back there, but I hear they have framed those notes and displayed inside the MRI room; of course, without disclosing the name of the patient, out of sheer pity!  Very considerate of them!

 

Chaar log kya bolenge? ('What will four people say?' in Hindi)

Old Indian films and literature in any of the multitude of languages in which they were created, were replete with scenes of distraught people, especially the elderly in the family, wringing their hands and moaning "Now, what will four people say?".  Invariably the context would be a rather embarrassing predicament in which some juvenile or devious black sheep of a family member had landed the elders through 'his'  umpteenth nincompoopish act. This author vehemently protests being labelled sexist, but a superficial research effort has yielded reasonably convincing statistics that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of such acts were from the male of the species even those days.  Anyway, men tend to protest such allegations far less, because they guess they could be guilty!!  And of course, dear wife will go through this like a hawk, so why create an opening for a debate one cannot win? The affected parties, who valued their family's standing in the society more than their own lives (this literally translated to seeking quick redemption via wholesale suicides in some cases), tended to behave like deer in the headlights, not knowing which way to go.  Such headlights were deliberately shined in hi-beam by the viler elements of the community (yes, the villains), who enjoyed any discomfiture accruing to the honourable families and had a full-time job of actively creating and exploiting such opportunities gleefully.  Such people - who revelled in schadenfreude - were critical components of the `chaar log' the title refers to.

One has heard so many heart-wrenching real life stories from those days, of parents being unduly harsh on the children just because they saw the situation and the aftermath entirely through the prism of family honour, in deference to those ubiquitous `four people'.  Some rational elders might have been broad-minded enough to empathize with the youngsters, whose actions militated against their own old-fashioned ideas.  Some might have been sensitive and understanding enough to place the youngsters' happiness above all else.  Still, they were ultimately so heavily swayed by the unbearable potential stigma that society would slap on them and succumbed to that pressure, ending up shredding some lives and peace at home.   Children were forced into wrong lines of education only to sustain the pride of the parents and the legacy of the family.  Youngsters were denied the pleasure of pursuing new and challenging fields of work which appealed to them but perceived as inferior by the seniors.  Men and women were brutally separated and prevented from wedlock in the name of lineage and status.  All these were done to satisfy those four people who were never gun-shy to malign a family. But the consequences were disastrous, leaving the family feeling sad, broken and guilty - yet, with their false sense of pride in tact.  A genuinely pyrrhic victory, if there was one!

Where are those four people now?  Are they still part of our lives?  The answer is an emphatic yes; however, it is true that within a couple of generations, the old order has undergone some form of  metamorphosis and things have been turned on their heads somewhat.  While people at various levels of society are still fixated on what four people would say and the latter have retained their preeminent position in tormenting  others, the underlying issues have changed in terms of substance and trajectory.  Family honour and personal standing in society are probably still driving the behaviour of people, albeit in very different ways.  Here are some vignettes, based on the observations of this scribe.

Forty years back, only those celebrities, who imagined that their personal features formed the fulcrum of their careers, went under the knife periodically for cosmetic work on their bodies.  Now, the only requisite qualifications seem to be the availability of money, one's own or borrowed and a overweening sense of vanity.  Even the decrepit, the aging, the pot-bellied businessmen and rotund housewives avidly seek botox treatment and bariatric surgery without batting an eyelid.  The motivation is to wow those four people with superbly concocted stories of their own supposed dedication and commitment in going through yoga-based therapy sessions and stringent dietary control  - that is what they tout as the reasons for their rejuvenated looks.  The audience may not be naive enough to believe them because all the weight is very quickly regained, thanks to terrible eating habits and the complete absence of yoga or any semblance of exercise from their lives.  Nevertheless, all this is grist for the mills of the those four people, who are omnipresent.   This author has come across men and women with egos the size of a football and brains the size of a pea - if that big - who would rather hobble along with torturous pain in their knees and create additional problems for everyone around them by collapsing and fracturing bones no one knew existed.  They would obstinately refuse to use the support of walking sticks or wheel chairs, for fear of being labelled `old' (which they unquestionably are) by four people, who are for ever ready with their derogatory comments.  

There have been instances of BMW owning busybodies visiting other cities and missing flights because they sent back the `ordinary' car that showed up for their airport ride and insisted on a BMW - "what will four people say if we travel in anything less"??  One senior bureaucrat, a genuinely good and wise man, who cared two hoots for public or private opinion, used to travel in auto rickshaws and buses, completely shorn of all trappings.  Until he was threatened with divorce by his domineering wife, for whom those four people were akin to Oracle, especially if they were from her own family.

There was this couple, so completely made for each other in their obsession with living the high life just to impress society.  The family wealth has been accumulated in a very short span, using highly suspect and very often openly corrupt business ways.  The heir to this wealth was their daughter, a bright young lady of immense good sense, who hated the trumped up and blatantly fake lives the parents lived.  Her problem was that she was forced to be a reluctant participant in their parents' charade more often than not and she was bristling with resentment at this.  When her own wedding was being finalised, she insisted that it be a quiet affair with a few friends and close family.  But the parents, with their heads swollen with moneyed arrogance and false pride, ignored her pleas and staged a grandiose event, attracting massive attention.  The bride and groom were a very unhappy couple and expressed their anger in many ways during the ceremony.  While  people were suitably impressed by the dog and pony show, the glitz associated with the wedding unfortunately invited the probing attention of the authorities, who eventually succeeded in putting both the parents behind bars, because they were running the business jointly.  Now while those four people gleefully savaged the guilty who landed in jail, the daughter seems to be at peace, though!!  And some are criticising her for being indifferent to her parents' lot.  It happens!

But one thing this author cannot figure out is - why four??  Why not three or five?  Because, in many languages this number seems sacrosanct.  It is always `what would four people say', never some other number??  Wonder why.  May be, this is one explanation - when one departs from this life, one needs four people to carry one on the final journey.  Metaphorically, it is those four people's approval we seek all through our lives??  May be.



   

Caveat Emptor!!

Those of us who have developed the virtuous and well-honed habit of reading multiple newspapers for at least two hours daily (yes, this presupposes that you are either fashionably semi-retired or pathetically over-the-top-retired!), might have recently seen a report screaming out to the filthy rich that a Greek island was for sale.  In terms of moolah, one required a measly sum of  USD6MM to own that piece of real estate.  But being part of a decidedly dishonest environment in which the same parcel of land is earnestly sold multiple times to many gullible investors, with the connivance of government officials, this author felt one had to be of really solid timbre, besides rolling in money, to go after such genuinely distant dreams.  Such an investor cannot ignore the wise Latin dictum `Caveat Emptor', which simply means `Let the buyer beware'.   All through the ages, this principle has been avidly held up by the wise men of the society as the essential bedrock of all commercial transactions; but men and women have willfully ignored this splendid, sage-like advice, to the utter detriment of their own treasury balances.

This scribe first came abreast of the above term, loaded with wisdom distilled from the experience of  ancestors ruthlessly conned for centuries,  during a Mercantile Law class, as part of the Cost Accountancy course.  The professor with palpably far-leftist leanings began with the mistaken assumption that a seller was always economically better placed than the buyer and  bellowed that anyone who had something to sell, had a clear agenda without even a pretend-veil, to cheat potential buyers.  The logic was and is impeccable - the seller knows a lot more about the item on the block than the buyer and unless the latter exercises extreme caution, this dangerous mismatch in knowledge is bound to result in the buyer getting burnt somewhere in the bargain.  This precept is incontrovertible generally, but people tend to swat it aside because they have neither the patience to look carefully nor the ability to digest the truth.  Until one is taken for a huge ride resulting in a significant dent in his or her finances.

Recently a friend went to Mangalore and had booked a room with a well known budget hotel chain for two nights, paying in advance with his credit card.  It looked like half the eligible bachelors in that place were getting forcibly engaged during those two days while the other half were getting hitched after the satisfactory waiting period.  There was a huge influx of good men and women who were hell-bent on being part of the above festivities, rendering all types of hotel rooms mighty scarce.  Into this reveller-infested city,  rode the aforesaid friend and rightfully demanded the reserved room at the hotel, while many lesser individuals without such a reservation were hanging out at the Reception, desperately praying for a miracle.  After the room-boy had ushered the visitor into the rather modest lodging and made a big show of switching on the TV and the AC, he collected a tip and left in a hurry as if a few more seconds there would have cost him an arm and a leg.  The friend did not have to wait very long to discover why.  The AC showed 29 deg Celsius and stubbornly refused to budge from there even after half an hour, that `cooling' period he had generously given the machine to do its job.  It would have been an interminable wait for any cooling because the AC was dispensing only hot air - there was no gas in the compressor.  Visits by two technicians and a manager to cajole the machine to relent did not yield any result.  Anyway, the perceptive friend had concluded that the hotel staff were just playing dumb-charade with him, being fully aware of the fact that the AC had no gas.  By this time, it was midnight and the room, without any other form of air circulation or any opening on the walls, had started resembling a cauldron.  All that the expletive-laced rants of the friend could elicit from the staff was an assurance that they would change the room the next day.  They did and the second night in the hotel was a breeze, literally.  When the friend returned to base, he furiously wrote a complaint to the hotel, asking for refund of one night's charges and is still waiting for a response.  That he asked his bank to block the payment to the hotel on his card and the bank demanded to know if he had anything in writing to show that the hotel said they would give an AC room is another matter.  None of us checks that kind of stuff on the booking confirmation, do we??

A family friend of ours recently went to a well known diamond jewellery shop to do valuation of her solitaires and was blithely told that they do not evaluate diamonds bought from another source.  It sounds pretty innocuous at first and this friend realized the diabolical game being played only after she got the same answer from four other shops.  That meant she had to go back to the jeweller who sold the solitaires to her and how do you think they would value what they sold?  So, unless one knows a jeweller personally, it is difficult to get such a valuation done and all jewellers live happily ever after, having sold at their own price to their unsuspecting clients.  And the generally accepted practice of a second opinion always showing a lower value, if one can get such a valuation, goes a long way in keeping the original sellers warm and glowing!

This is the story of a body-slimming vest someone bought online in the US.  Advertisement spiel had it that if one used the tight vest daily for four hours or so, weight loss would happen and the body will slim down.  After a month of diligent adherence to the instructions in the manual that came with the purchase and going around in the vest, with the extremely uncomfortable feeling that the body was being tightly squeezed from all directions, there was no evidence of any real loss of weight or slimming of the body.  However, the owner was so seriously bothered by the odour that started emanating from the vest, he decided to put it through the rigours of the washing machine - just once.  Lo and behold, when it came out washed, the vest had shrunk to half its size and could no longer be forced down the torso of even a child!!  May be that is what the seller meant - there is no guarantee that the body would slim but the vest definitely would, after one wash!!

Recently in Bangalore, the Development Authority, the government agency in charge of allotting land for building residential and commercial spaces, decreed that some 100 houses built on a piece of land have to be demolished.  Why?  Because the houses were illegally built on a dry lake bed.  Fair enough, serves people right if they encroached on a lake bed, falling into the trap laid by avaricious private builders, who had no right to that land to begin with - people thought as they read the news item.  They even nodded in appreciation that some government agency was finally doing its job.  But they were rendered speechless when they found out that the land was sold to the house owners by the same Development Agency twenty years back!!

When I discussed this subject for the blog with my dear wife, she wholeheartedly and readily agreed.  What bothered me was the quizzical look she had in her eyes - as if she wished someone had drawn her attention to the tenet of Caveat Emptor some 32 years ago when she thought she was making the most important 'bargain' purchase of her life!!

The Writer's Block!!

This scribe is sure it has happened to even avid readers amongst you from time to time, with reading.  After thoroughly and effortlessly enjoying some four or five works of fiction or non-fiction back-to-back, suddenly you decide you need a break and press the `pause' button without thinking too much.  Very often, after a week or fortnight, you are able to release the `pause' button and resume your reading without much ado.  Almost as if the break was not there.  But sometimes, even though you try the hardest, you are forced to prolong the shying-away from the `unappetising' idea of picking up another book for a few weeks, may be months, despite sustained efforts to even jump-start the process. Even if all the titles you impatiently waited to lay hands on are within reach and time is not a constraint at all.  Pretty much like you are unable to stand the sight of your favourite dish made lovingly by the mother or the wife, leaving them bewildered as to what ails you!  You lose the intensity for something which has been almost an obsession till recently and have seemingly developed a transient apathy, if not an aversion, to that task.  And rationally you are unable to explain why that is happening, which further puzzles and distresses you.  You are with me??

Of late, it has been my misfortune to experience this with writing.  I have been posting a new title on this blog of mine once or twice a month for the past four years without any apparent difficulty - of course, not counting what the readers have silently suffered!  I say `silently' only because they have been considerate and generous enough not to respond with vituperative criticism till now.  However, since the last post a couple of months ago, I don't seem to be able to write one full sentence without stumbling or choking on alternate words.  And when the realisation dawns that the resultant wonder-sentence, the product of that fretful and laborious process through intermittent sittings over a few hours, seems to make even lesser sense than usual, I promptly undo that nugget.  I hastily abandon any further attempt at writing for the foreseeable future (but I must confess, the temptation to revisit writing lingers all the time) and withdraw into my cocoon of despair for a while.  Wondering how it has come to such a pass that - recalling a spontaneous scribble I shared with my MA classmates when a rather bumbling professor came to our class the first time - I probably might deliver a child more easily than a reasonably well-written blog-post.  That the professor wrongfully ejected my friend and neighbour from the class, mistaking the latter's uncontrolled laughter as an insulting response to some part of his own lecture and I escaped unscathed is another matter.  In the two month hiatus, there has been no dearth of topics I have tried to write on, but regardless of the subject matter, the result has been pretty much identical after all efforts -- nothing to show except a leering, taunting, blank!!  My dear wife is all sympathy and reassurance, but right now she is not being Muse enough!!

Now, if a small, part-time scribe like me is derailed so badly by this hurdle, being left with an awful feeling as a consequence, how do big-time authors, who are used to publishing frequently, handle such a blow? Here I am, sniffling about my inability to churn out a couple of pages on any subject on the earth required for a blog-post, without having to bother about characters, their inter-play, emotional peaks and troughs, a denouement and climax.  But famous, prolific authors who are used to serially reeling out  three to four hundred page novels replete with all the above, have a monumentally onerous task of pushing a huge boulder uphill and over to safety in a similar situation.  How do they cope with this enervating disease called the writer's block?  They too have confessed to being afflicted by this pestilence among writers from time to time and they seem to rebound after a period of abstinence from writing, engaged with other facets of life which catch their fancy.  Come to think of it, golfers and tennis players do that too, vanishing from their profession temporarily when their form plummets inexplicably.  So, there has to be some solution in due course, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, so long as one not give up.   

At this juncture, I see myself as a recuperating patient, who has had the wind taken out of him by a debilitating blow which he never saw coming and never felt until he was flat on the ground. I realise I cannot even pretend to do as I please, simply because I don't seem to have the reserve required for that kind of bravado!  Then it struck me that I could probably use my state of distress to fill a few paras and make a post of that, just to break out of the rut!  Here I am, unloading on you and rambling about my rather-not-so-serious travails.  Some of you might have even heaved a sigh of relief that the monthly e-mail notification of a blog-post has been conspicuous by its absence for two months.  Then I think of Jeffrey Archer, that amazing author of fabulous novels like Not A Penny More, No A Penny Less and A Matter of Honour, who continued to write even from the oppressing confines of a jail, after copping a sentence for perjury.  When `writing' is a passion, it comes out an overwhelming winner even against all odds, I guess, of course granting that the quality might be indifferent to tolerable with most writers, at best!  But then, Archer had millions beckoning him for his pains and I distinctly lack that kind of  motivation as well as that guaranteed prize at the end of the rainbow.  I am still waiting at the lowest rung, looking up at him, for I am fully congnizant of the huge chasm in the levels of writing.  I may have the writer's block, but am not labouring under any delusion, you see!!

Clean-up India

When the Prime Minister (PM) of India recently announced an ambitious and aspirational initiative to `clean up India', he would not have bargained for the spectrum of responses from different segments of the country.  All the well-intentioned PM meant to do was to give an impetus to half-hearted, still-born and non-existent efforts to significantly improve cleanliness in homes and in public places and urge Indians to collectively work towards that goal.  But, this scribe hears that various constituencies interpreted the over-arching goal as well as the process differently to suit their own agendas and convenience.  Here goes.

As usual the politicos get the prime spot.  It is rumoured that the beyond-the-pale-corrupt and the fence-sitting corrupt amongst politicians (this author is willing to yield to those `chaste' politicians, who ruefully point out that there is a minority amongst them who do not dip their private pens in the public ink-pots) decided to see a metaphor in the PM's appeal where none existed and interpreted `clean-up' very conveniently to mean `take the country and public funds to the cleaners'! Consequently it appears many of the `proven pundits'  already enjoying their jail terms in suitably luxurious settings, are hoping for immediate release so that they can offer their expertise as management consultants (phew, I can visualize their Linked-In profiles!) and help in expeditious swindling generally.  Their minions outside are sharpening the tools of their trade for the leaders to emerge from incarceration and start harvesting.

Immediately after the PM's announcement, there were unbridled celebrations in various parts of the country, obviously on public roads, sponsored by political parties wanting to jump early on to the bandwagon.  In the aftermath, mounds of litter (remnants of fire crackers, rotting flowers and garlands, water bottles, empty boxes which had housed sweets earlier, stones and glass bottles meant for acts of defence and offence in emergencies, broken parts of pubic buses which came in the way, other assortment of removable and destroyable public property etc - all that paraphernalia going with a successful public rally in India) have apparently been left behind. With an assortment of political leaders blithely telling their fervent followers that the PM's team of 9x9x9......(he nominated 9 people, who would do the same and so on) will do the clean-up after them.  Last heard, the civic administrations in various towns and cities have just barely made way on the roads for the senior politicians to move around, leaving the others to climb over mounds of waste in their untiring efforts to reach their destination.

Senior spokespersons for the national party which recently lost the election but had ruled the country for many decades, leaving the country's affairs in an unholy and filthy mess (self-preservation dictates that this author does not get adventurously more explicit and leaves the identity of the party to be guessed by the supremely intelligent and perceptive readers of these blog posts) who had gone into hibernation, promptly made their presence felt on all TV channels.  They appeared in one of the 24 to 30 (they were difficult to count due to their very small size,  could have been more) postage-stamp sized boxes on the TV screen and swore that they were who they said they were (there was no way for the viewer to establish their identities otherwise, due to the tiny images which made faces unintelligible).  Their well-rehearsed statement was delivered in bored monotones: `Our party takes pride in saying we had originally launched a similar initiative 52 years ago, which was sabotaged and run into the ground (that explains the permanent littering of the country) by the Opposition parties.  So, this PM cannot take credit for this, no way'.

All secular parties in the country (that is basically all except the one, well, may be three including a couple of allies) have been vociferously unified in their demand that the other minority communities should not be deprived of the exhilaration of freely littering public places at the same per capita rate as was done during Deepavali.  Since this rate has not been established, they wanted an all-party parliamentary committee to arrive at this all-important number. Translated, that means until one round of such littering is completed by each minority community during their own festivals, they - the secular parties - would not brook any sustained attempt to clean public places, come what may!  Such parties are contemplating diktats to ardent followers to stop trains, block national highways and do multiple rallies which would generate tonnes of garbage, just to drive home the point while showing their might.

Tamil Nadu politicians have come out strongly against any clean-up anywhere prior to the Sri Lankan government and their President are removed from power by India.  They are shy to confess they have no clue as to how this can be achieved but insist, nevertheless.  In their mind, this action is an essential prerequisite to any attempt to clean Tamil Nadu, if not India.  Mamta Banerjee has gone mum on this issue, ostensibly because she has enough to clean up in West Bengal and knows she will be tied up in her own cleaning activities for the foreseeable future and cannot talk or think about any other mess.

As far as citizens are concerned, those who have always cleaned up and maintained cleanliness are continuing to do that.  Others, who have lived in the midst of all the filth right outside their homes and other public places, thanks to their own and civic bodies' indifference, are waiting for Sharukh Khan or Priyanka Chopra or Tendulkar or Kamala Haasan or at least Ambani or Tharoor to show up with the magical broom, so that they can have a photo-op if not a selfie with one of them! Civic bodies are now putting an innovative spin on their proven and inherent inability to clean up by telling people that if things get tidied up now, none of the above-mentioned individuals will show up and the loss will be the people's!!  The latter can see the reasonableness of that argument and are sitting pretty on piles of litter, awaiting the dignitary to materialize!

At the lowest level of the chain, while our home and the environs remain reasonably clean, my dear wife is visibly upset by one prickly garbage dump,  which lies on a path we frequent.  It began on the side of a narrow road but has displayed expansionist tendencies to go viral and occupy half the road.  It is just outside some apartment blocks and a host of shops and restaurants, but inexplicably people living there do not seem to mind being the principal beneficiaries of this visual and olfactory treat.  Every single time we pass this dump, my wife wants to jump out and clean it up, even without the involvement of the creators or abettors of that dump.  And she wants this author to help, forgetting that I am not Kamala Haasan or Tendulkar!! So far, my retort - `what makes you so sure that you will shame those people into changing their ways?' has kept both of us away from that filthy dump, but God knows for how long!!

Generational Gap!

"Kittipul? What's that? Something to do with pulling a cat"?  Notwithstanding the feeble attempt at banter, it was clear from the lad's arched brows and quizzical look that he was puzzled.  His younger sister sought to venture a guess that retained the cat in the picture and added some grass (`pul' in Thamizh).  They were woefully adrift and surprisingly we were embarrassed they were. A childhood friend of this author, who banished himself to the US some 35 years ago when he was still a bachelor, had come visiting with his family - wife, son and daughter,  the entire package carrying that unmistakeable stamp `Made in USA'. Their exposure to India had been limited to periodic sojourns for a couple of weeks, indifferent at best, mostly to assuage the itch of guilt the friend needlessly nursed for having decamped from India.  We were reminiscing fondly about the time his upper lip got split in a game of Kittipul (Gilli Danda in Hindi).  I had pedalled a bicycle with him groggily wobbling at the back, gory face and all, held steady on each side by two running aides, all the way to the clinic for a few stitches and a grandfatherly reprimand from the friendly doctor.  His two children walked into this conversation and sought immediate edification on kittipul.  My dear friend sat there, frozen for a bit, not because he could not explain the game, but was apparently mortified by the idea that he had to interpret something as earthy and fundamental as kittipul to his children!!  He later lamented that the fissure caused by growing up in an alien land had been cleaved further into a chasm by the Generational Gap (GG)!  No dispute there, because kittipul aka gilli danda is not something easily visible in towns and cities in India and seems to have been vapourised in a single generation.

We are always aware of its ghostly presence but from time to time, this GG chooses to hit us in the face with a violence that staggers us - literally - as we found out recently.  An unsuspecting group of friends - age from 35 to 65 - had gathered for a celebration at this bar, without any warning that the `volume' buttons on their music system were ulalterably set from 'Very very Loud' to 'Severe Impact on Eardrums'.  Within a minute of arrival, a couple of ladies had wilted by the onslaught of outrageously wild blare. They bravely went to the designated `controller of noise' and implored him to play music rather than noise.  He pretended to fiddle with the system and walked away; we did not realize that move was to tag our group as `softies' to the higher authorities for further processing.  The manager promptly descended on us and curtly told that within the next hour, that whole place would be crammed with screaming youngsters, who would compel the DJ to `go where no man has gone before' in terms of noise-level, in a take reminiscent of the Star Trek tagline.  He warned us to abandon our post forthwith and take refuge elsewhere so that he could have a homogenous crowd for the evening, without GG spoiling the fun for his regular clientele!! That we stayed put because the wilted ladies could not be revived was another matter.  We were amazed that groups of youngsters were having delightful and very meaningful conversations above the ambient noise, laughing and smiling while we were struggling to avoid choking whenever we tried to raise our croaking voices!! 

When one travels with youngsters on a holiday, GG lurks at every turn.  It begins with `packing' - an activity which, in the minds of older people, means stacking up decently pressed and folded clothes in adequate numbers in a suitcase neatly.   From the youngster's perspective, the rather inconvenient and menial task of packing roughly translates to collecting all the available clothes scattered in the vicinity, regardless of who they belong to and washed or unwashed; carefully making a ball of that compilation and roughly stuffing into a bag always smaller in size than is required for the volume at hand; asking an older person to hold the suitcase down while he sits on it to get the satisfactory, final closure.  The one great outcome of this is that at the other end, youngsters do not compete with oldies for wardrobe space.  Their suitcases left wide open in the middle of the room, serve as their walk-in closet and they are perfectly comfortable wearing the same pair of jeans or shorts and some crew tees during the stay.  When the oldies plan a sight-seeing trip, yielding to that compellingly obsessive habit nurtured over the years,  youth bristles: `Are you guys out of your mind, loitering in this heat when you are on a holiday?? We came here just to chill, watch TV, order room-service, eat and sleep'. Something they could have easily done and were doing at home anyway!!

If you tend to hold your smartphone on one hand so that you don't drop the phone and type with the other, you belong to the earlier generation.  If your phone rings, you are old (it has to just purr, never ring - never mind you keep calling people back, spending more money on calls for which others should have paid).  If you pick up calls from unknown numbers, you are older (`what's wrong with you, why do you pick up random calls?').  If you by chance meet someone, who happens to be a friend of your friend and give him your phone number, you are antediluvian ('how can you give your phone number to random people as if it is some public info to be doled out?'') - reminiscent of what parents tell children when they are young - not to talk to or go with strangers!   If you typed full words on your text messages you are a goner! This scribe is sure there is much more in the realm of cell phones which could tell the generations apart, but that should suffice for now.

Another distinguishing feature of the younger generation is its penchant for online purchases.  While most of the time this works well, to give credit where it is due, when the targeted item is dependent on size or colour, things falter frequently.  Shoes are ordered and promptly returned because 'not the same shade of colour I expected' or 'it seems their size 9 is not the same as standard 9' or 'too much of the top of the socks show'.  So, why don't they go to the shoe store about one block from home and pick up what suits and fits them?? 'Oh, online is so much easier'....Eh??  And, soon they gracefully seek to give the oldies the same pleasure of online shopping and ask you if your shoe also can be ordered online, just so you get to flow with the times!!

When our sons were visiting from the US, one day my dear wife lovingly made some breakfast they liked and sent out the clarion call for us to resume the consumption binge.  I walked up to our progeny and sought their delightful company for the repast.  The youngsters looked at each other and in a well coordinated assault, reprimanded us for eating too much in three meals a day when there is no way we could expend the accumulated energy and fat. They wanted us to follow their illustrious example and ingest only two untimely meals and four cups of stale and acidic coffee during a day.  Our argument that we eat three smaller meals did not cut any ice.  But then, we realized that an entire generation has been growing up eating that way and our pattern did not figure anywhere in their scheme of things.  All this, while my dear wife is always trying to stuff more food into their faces!!

Some people, even as they grow older, are able to ignore GG and deal with the younger crowd in a very sure-footed way, almost as if the age difference does not exist.  This they manage invariably by almost matching their behaviour and responses -- physical or otherwise -- with those of the younger lot.  It is a futile assumption that those who as adolescents or young adults manage the oldies and children well, are able to close the GG somewhat.  It does not seem to work that way.  Sometimes, external help is needed to bridge the gap, like the Indian Pro Kabaddi League (IPKL).  That languishing game from the earlier generation has suddenly got such a great fillip and has a sizable fan following among the youth, thanks to the luminous exposure provided by IPKL.  That tells us something, right??  The wine may be better if it is old, but in order to sell, it has to be bottled anew, with a dash of glitz that appeals to the new lot!!  Oldies can likewise bridge the gap to some extent by changing their spots a bit!! Of course, this does not mean they start packing their bags like the youngsters, god forbid!!

Being Status-Conscious

For those of the same vintage as this scribe - that is, people who have grown up on a diet of Hindi and Thamizh movies from the 60s - `being status conscious' could unfailingly trigger one specific image.  That of a pipe-smoking and aristocratic-looking gent, striking an exaggeratedly regal posture, in the midst of a pompous and declamatory monologue (no one dared interrupt him!) to his family members. This completely subjugated and distraught bunch would invariably be feverishly wringing their hands trying to extract the last vestiges of whatever juice was available therein.  The patriarch would declare imperiously, while nailing with a malevolent look his only daughter who nurtures utterly misplaced rebellious thoughts of marrying a common man - `How dare you think that a wealthy man of high status in the society like me would accept that low-life ruffian as my son-in-law!! Over my dead body!!'.  All the while menacingly waving that unmistakable prop, the gold-capped cane walking stick and flashing at least ten assorted rings on his fingers on one hand - the other hand usually would have been tucked behind his back or twirling his moustache and either way visibility as to the number of rings on that extension was impeded!! But this author for one knows that this malady of being status conscious has afflicted not only the aristocracy but the various strata of society all the way down, so long as there is a perception that there is space for one further rung below.

A couple of years back, our housekeeper had been complaining that his mobile phone has been giving him grief (he has a right to be aggrieved because he spends one third his waking time and a considerable chunk of his take-home salary on that contraption, the excuse being he is away from his family in Nepal and needs constant dialogue, mostly animated and frequently agitated).  So, when we moved to smartphones, we gave one of our Blackberries to him.  Within ten minutes of taking it from us with a huge smile, he returned with a scowl of disappointment and vented his displeasure `but, this is not a touch-screen phone'.  We were more than puzzled because his expertise with the phone did not extend to internet, games, downloaded movies, music or email; he is one of those classic users of the mobile phone as a means of high-decibel oral communication!  So, my dear wife attempted to demystify the situation and asked him why he needed such a phone just to talk.  He flummoxed us saying `people like shopkeepers, gas delivery guys and newspaper boys, way below my status in life sport such phones, so how can I be seen carrying something less'?  The look on his face clearly admonished us - `how could educated people like you be so naive'! We knew any rationale about the Blackberry being more expensive would not cut ice with him and kept our counsel.

Once a few of us were on a business trip from Bombay to Bangalore and as status symbols went those days, a couple of us had tickets booked in business class.  A relationship manager also had  accompanied us and even though he did not merit the business class status (shame on him!), he had fully leveraged sub-clause 6, point (xiv) of the expense rules, which decreed that if he accompanied seniors who flew business class, he would also be grudgingly allowed to fly the same class as a parasite.  In Bangalore airport, while returning, this relationship manager met the promoter of a well-known IT company whom he had been desperately wooing for a while to expand the business relationship and got chatting enthusiastically.  He made it a point to tell us the seniors under the breath that he intended to sit next to the `customer' on the flight to milk the opportunity. We had boarded the plane and taken our seats when the pretender-to-business-class entered with the trophy-customer and politely waited for the latter to be seated.  Horror of horrors, the promoter-customer, kept walking towards the back of the plane, indicating that he always flew economy!!  Now, our man had to choose either temporary `status' or score brownie points with the customer.  Wisely, he renounced his aspirations to higher status, abdicated his business class seat to the gentleman who had occupied the middle seat next to the business honcho's and continued his pow-wow, in the hope of snaring some incremental business eventually.  I forget whether he succeeded or the sacrifice went waste!

We know of some people doling out lakhs in donations to send their kids to schools favoured by the rich and famous, even though more academically oriented schools, which also tend to impart better values, are easily available.  The objective is not so much to `educate' the children well (practically speaking, there is no need for that, given that the parents already are rolling in wealth) but the ability to crow in parties that their children are friends with the progeny of Page3 crowd and they themselves are on first-name-basis with other influential parents including some celebrities.

Aren't you familiar with individuals who, till the other day, were eating street food with you in a group in Fort area of Bombay or VV Puram in Bangalore (taste and affordability being the principal drivers here), licking their fingers and relishing every bit of things on offer, but flip abruptly after a few years of good life and `growth' ??  They refuse to be seen in the same places and we are not talking of public figures but ordinary mortals like us doing well in life financially and otherwise.  Primary reason for this is obviously the reluctance to be associated with paraphernalia linked to one's earlier, somewhat lower status in life.   Few people do rise above all this and manage to keep the equilibrium, but not many.  One is not snivelling about this, but just stating a fact of life.

Recently a friend, a self-made man from humble beginnings but currently of reasonable wealth, recounted how he shocked his hosts in Madras, when he went there to attend an engagement ceremony.  This is a no-nonsense, practical and down-to-earth individual who does not pay heed to the `norms' of a status-driven-life and does his own things, disregarding all the bemused stares coming his way while he is at it.  Apparently he landed at the hosts' bungalow in the heart of the city in an auto-rickshaw, that despicable yellow contraption, since he did not see the need for hiring a car just for that morning.  After the ceremony, the host came out to send this friend off and looked for an upmarket car, could not find any and asked how the latter had come.  When he found out the truth, the host went into tremors and insisted on summoning his own Merc for the return trip - all the time going into convulsions as to `how can you take an auto-rickshaw'! As if ebola was lurking dangerously in that mode of transport.  The friend remarked that it was just as well the host did not see him arrive or else his entry could have been prohibited, their long friendship be damned!  Ironically, the same status-conscious people don't think anything of taking mass transit or tube or subway while on foreign shores; some compromises to status are acceptable obviously and even preferable, especially when you have the shroud of anonymity to cover you in an alien environment.