GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First-year students at Medical School were receiving their first anatomyclass with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgerytable with the body covered with a white sheet. The professor started the class by telling them, "In medicine, it isnecessary to have 2 important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you should not be disgusted by anything involving the human body." For an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck his finger in his mouth." Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventuallytook turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead body and sucking on it. When everyone had finished, the Professor looked at them and told them,"The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middlefinger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention."

Something to Laugh About.....

Here is something that is a really funny read...so, obviously it's not my creation...but it served the purpose and made me smile at a time when I was finding smiles becoming quite costly ......

The Pastor's Ass

The pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered in another race and it won again.
The local paper read:

PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the pastor not to enter the donkey in any more races.
The next day the local paper headline read:

BISHOP SCRATCHES THE PASTOR'S ASS.

This was too much for the Bishop, so he ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey. The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a nearby convent.
The local paper, hearing of the news, Posted the following headline:

NUN HAS THE BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The Bishop fainted. He informed the nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey so she sold it to a farmer for $10.
The next day the headlines read:

NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the Bishop, so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the high plains where it could run free.
The next day the headlines read:

NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.

Alas ... The Bishop was buried the next day.

MORAL OF THE STORY???
Being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery and even shorten your life. So, be yourself and enjoy life!!

Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and you'll live longer !!!!

house help

Some time ago, someone very close to me remarked about the number of people that me and my family keep.... and how this kind of "servitude" was totally unacceptable in a society like.... the U.S., lets say. Needless to say, given my nature of getting easily swayed(or sensitive) by the words of people close to me, I found myself thinking whether the people who worked for my family in the house for as long as I can remember, are better off without this "servitude". I recall the day when my father was still in the service and reached one of the higher posts for which I can defiantly say he worked hard for..... our house was filled with a retinue of people... ranging from a washer man to a sweeper to cooks to guards and all that. I guess a lot of people who are not used to that would be either wistful at not having such luxury or cringe at the thought of so many people being under the "tyranny" of one. I think that is what some of my marxist friends would decipher... that I come from the family which can not live without the help of the lesser privileged. And that should all these just disappear we would falter. What I am going to attempt through this post is to be somehow lay my thoughts on the matter and of course there is going to be some amount of defiance and justification on my part but for the most part I am going to try and be neutral. These thoughts of mine are in no coherent or particular order.

I have gone through the period when me or family have not the least bit of help and we have coped. And coped well. But I ask myself... why should I feel guilty if I and my family have and want people to work for us? Does that mean I or any of us for that matter who have kept house help have no concept of dignity in labour? Let me try and see if I can break what I am feeling about all this and whether I can come up with arguments, not to counteract my friend who said that to me but, rather for me to tell this to anyone else who might even assume that the reason I keep house help is because we have no dignity in labour or that we like making use of people for our comforts. I think a lot of families in India keep house help or employ the services of people outside the mainstream of white collar jobs or routine gainful employment. And I think maybe quite a few families in the U.S also employ house help if they can afford it .... but whether they are judged on the basis of that, is something I am not concerned with. I think it boils down to the simple logic that if it is affordable most of the people would take the chance of having someone to help in the chores of maintaining a home.

What I find annoying is the assumption that people might make that, JUST because a family has house help they have no concept of dignity of labour and how it might be if they had to clean their own bathrooms. Lets talk about the scenario in US or other so called developed nations. I am taking a guess when I say that a lot of people would definitely want house help...... its just that it is expensive. I guess they don't need someone to sweep their house because almost every American household has a vacuum cleaner. I don't have a vacuum cleaner. and I know many who don't. In addition, come to think of it, most of the households in more developed and systematic countries have a screened in house, which is to say, they have very less dust or grime coming in, for which most families I know of, keep a maid in the first place. To clean the house! Because most housing so far does not provide for a system of keeping most part of dust out. Seems like a very flimsy statement to make.... but taking my example....I live in one of the most dustiest cities in the world and despite all my efforts I have lost the battle of the dust! And thus I have a maid to mop and clean. The Armed Services, the Civil Services and all other Government Services provide employment to lakhs as support staff. It is of course a misfortune that qualified people sometimes end up doing manual jobs, but that is a serious flaw which does not have a solution that can emerge by waving a wand or by engaging in rhetorics that we are engaging them in an undesirable employment. But just to keep our focus on domestic help, many unemployed throng to these jobs, not out of their desire to serve but to have a secure job. They are guaranteed three square meals a day and a place above their heads.

Are we not providing these people with a better choice then beggary or something lower? I mean, yes, of course there is a failure in the system, if it has not been able to bring up everyone equally and distribute resources equitably. But, then, hey, if we had all the solutions for people misery and their problems, we would not be known as a developing nation. But then again, developed societies are not misery free zones. They just have a better infrastructural capacity. Are we promoting "servitude" among the lesser privileged?? What is a better choice? Not provide them even the chance to earn their keep by providing them work in the nature of domestic work which would keep them off the streets, or let them fend for themselves, either though selling their bodies, begging or taking up arms. I also wish that they have a better job, sit in AC rooms like us and do better things then wield a broom, or clean vessels. But, till that happens, we live in a symbiotic relationship. And it works well to some extent.

We are also providing services albeit in an AC room. We serve our higher ups while they order us about. The huge population of call centre professionals serve myriad clientèle and earn their share of hypocrisy and discrimination at the hands of foreign clientèle. A construction worker of a freeway is also doing the most difficult manual labour in the service or "servitude"of the society. Most professions have their scope of work written down and defined, while the profession of house help has it own orally defined area for which remuneration is given. So, then, I wonder, where is there a servitude? Yes, they work as household help because of lack of choice! Given a choice most of us would want to do no work while we still get paid, or work in a place/profession which is our hearts deepest desire or be ones own master. I would love to work in a fashion house or in the media, or run a successful book lounge of my own, but some of us don't get our hearts desire either because of lack of will and hard work or because of lack of opportunity. And I feel quite earnestly, that, by employing house help, we are providing them a small window of opportunity for them to reach where they might want to. Maybe its a Utopian thought on my part to feel that they are being helped, but then its even more Utopian to think that there should never be a need for people to work as domestic help. For my part, I am ready to mop my bathroom any time, cook any time, clean any time. Then, in that case, hear ye all who come to my house, kindly excuse the haphazardness and messiness!!!

Small Complete Circles

"Life has come around to a full circle." Often, have I heard this being said by mostly elderly people. And at times by random people to express the fullness of life or rather the completion of an experience. And also by people, who are, let's say spiritual in nature. I think all of us imagine ourselves reaching that complete circle..... some people reach that Utopian circle on marrying and having a child to make life perfect or fulfilled. Or others... in fact many others would associate post retirement from their professional life and from their personal responsibilities as completion of their circle. I conjure up a picture in my mind's eye of two senior people...lounging around with a cup of tea looking at the albums of their grandchildren or taking a trip to some hill station without the baggage of children (hmmm....I think the former sounds like an ad for a tea brand while the latter seems to be promoting some tourist destination.)



But my point is that one experiences this completeness...... I think I have experienced it too... not in any huge life changing instance... but my life has had its few complete circles.... and maybe that is what we need in this hurried and harried world.... the awareness that there are small complete circles in life, which we can enjoy, and thereby, not be so daunted and fed up with our lives. There should be the need to be aware of these small circles... so complete and fulfilling in itself... to appreciate these... to yearn for these and maybe just maybe find ways and means to create more of these circles of fulfilment.



I remember the headiness that I experienced when I got admission to what was the most sought after course in JNU.... from the first moment I walked into that portal and went thorough the never ending task of operational procedures that finally established me as one of the numerous students in that educational institution. Attending the first few classes... going to the canteens with my other so called intellectual classmates.... perusing through the numerous books kept haphazardly in the even more disorganised library.... all that, however mundane and lacklustre it might sound to anyone else, was a much awaited experience for me that signified a completeness of an experience. It is surprising that it was in JNU that I found most of these little circles of mine being completed..... be it the first time when i got into a relationship... or the first time I had a bike ride in the chill of winter... be it the first time I experienced excruciating emotional hurt and the recovery after that.... be it the first time I wrote my exams ...... so many experiences that have encapsulated itself in tiny tiny circles of contentment and the knowledge that it has happened once and maybe it can happen again.



My father and mother.... now leading a less than usual busy life back in Assam since the time my father retired from his demanding stint in IPS. Now they share, what I enviously and joyously call, their renewed honeymoon and dating. They go shopping in the street vegetable markets each sharing a maize or popcorn...... two on-their-way senior citizens relaxed because their children are financially settled (though a little anxious since they are not married) but nevertheless most of their responsibilities taken care of.... they can once again experience compatible togetherness without me or my brother to over crowd their lives. They have come a full circle.



Many instances. Some of them more significant than the other. Some of them unfortunately not in memory. But they are my circles. And we all have circles of contentment. I just wish we could grasp them, especially when we get bogged down by the mindless riff-raff incidents that life, that jobs, that petty arguments with our peers and our bosses throws at us. Maybe we can't always get what we want so dearly but maybe we can remember the feeling that we experienced when we did get what we want even if it was for a short while.... and maybe we can hope for that circle to happen again.... after all "hope is the feeling one has that the feeling one has isn't permanent." And so also the circles that we have are not permanent but that it was there. And it was beautiful.

I Left My Apple Behind.....

I left my apple behind......not a very significant thing for a person who has the resources to buy a whole cartful of apples if need be. But then since I have started on my monolouge about leaving things behind, I might as well open the entire pandoras box or in other words upset the apple cart.

I did leave my apple behind.....in my office lounge where I enter to have a just-about-sometimes-edible lunch and I took an apple among the scarce choice of fruits that were there. And upon leaving, I left it behind. It made me depressed that I forgot it behind as if its existence did not matter at all. But most of all I guess I was pricked that I seem to be leaving everything behind.....on the same day I left my gel pen somewhere and my cap of the second pen somewhere else....

And since I am talking about leaving things behind I shall get more verbose.....

I had no choice but to let go of my baby powder because it fell in the loo of a speeding train....and I did not want to fish out a ball point pen that fell in the dark, murky depths of an Indian toilet...so to put an end to its misery and my disgust, I flushed and watched it go into the oblivion of that whirlpool......

I found the world hazy one day only to find that I had left my spectacles behind.

After a particularly emotional altercation with a off and on friend of mine, I once locked my car and then realised that I had left my keys inside hanging in the ignition, and my driver had perforce witnessed nice Delhi sights on his way to help me with the other set of keys. And in the entire process had to bear the ignominy of being caught sitting despondently by the same friend.

I left my purse behind in the dance studio once....would have been much better had I let it remain there as there was nothing valuable in there except for my ID card from work (that too, it was necessary because I did not want to be kept waiting near the gates of my office while the guards who saw me everyday confirm my existence) but anyway mid way on my way back home I realised the absence of my handbag, and thanks to Delhi roads took a never ending U turn to go back and fetch it. In the process, I returend home late to a frosty greeting by my mother who took it as her duty to inform me that I was leading a moralless life (not in those words exactly...but the actual words are a bit more graphic). I must say leaving behind things is proving to be very injurious.

I left my hot water flask in yet another dance studio...and I readily mourned its disappearance/death because I had no hope of it coming back to me......it was a very good looking one after all...but lo and behold there are happy endings once in a while and after 3 weeks of absence I got my flask back...oh such a warm feeling it was.....

Ah yes!!!There was this one time when me and two of my peers went turning our room upside down looking for the spectacles that I thought I left behind somewhere in that room, but the spectacles were found perched on my nose....!!!This only conveys that I had left my mind somewhere and those peers of mine had a myopic vision....

I left a pretty gilt covered stole of mine in a friends room...and it continues to be left behind there somewhere.........

Wish I could leave my past behind with such abandon...........

Youth (Childhood)!!! Where Art Thou Gone?

In a short while, I reach the landmark of 25 years. I say landmark for the lack of any other profound sounding word; for the events leading up to this supposedly momentous day may not be noteworthy for any major achievements of life changing proportions. I am settled. At least considered so by people who think that getting a job is a criteria for being settled. (of course, as far as where marriage is considered as an aspect of settled settlement, I draw up short). By some standards I lead an eventful life on account of my numerous dance class and due to the usage of technology which allows me to have an active online life.

Perhaps its the fast paced life that we seem to dwell in or maybe its just me constantly making comparison...or lets blame it on my age catching up with me...but I get the feeling that the world no longer needs people who are just master of one; that's passe now...but competition requires humanity to be multi-faceted, diverse, jack of all trades and preferably master of some more....

Besides the feeling of inadequacy that I face, it is the sense of wonder as to what numerous industries the human composition is competent in dealing with if one is initiated into it at a young age. I remember two sisters in one of my earlier dance classes; just in their teens, the younger one not yet there....and boy!!!Were they talented...both went to ballet classes, the younger one was into gymnastics while the elder one was into kickboxing...the younger one learned the piano while the elder one was into guitar....maybe they were striving to form a miniature Corrs....but looking at those two, I felt a tug of envy...not because they were doing things I could only fantasize about (OK..maybe a little), but the key stage in my life has gone by without me capitalizing it....I call it youth and the elders and other sensible people will call it childhood.....

Don't we all wistfully look back at the past when we think we could have made those changes....kindly ignoring the fact that we will one day look back at today and wish we had done something more worthwhile then penning down these thoughts in a blog or something more worthwhile than moaning about the if - only - those - days - were - back.

My father loves making comparisons (I think that's where I get it from)....it becomes quite a pain. The strange thing is that my father compares himself with a mythical himself. And I get compared to my darling cousins and well to do children of not so well to do parents. I remember this particluar trip that I made to my hometown in Assam and my father was completely bowled over by the crystals and the ambience of his younger brother's abode....but more particularly he made it amply clear that he thought that his niece was very talented (she played the piano, made a drink out an ambiguous mix of ice cream and limca or something, she could sew, paint, write blah blah blah)and all this when she was just 15 or so......oh..yes and I must mention that she could bake. Throughout the entire time I felt my father's penetrating glance on me....as if to say....and where do you stand???

Time has passed and needless to say I am doing much better than my cousin according to her and my parents now!!!!! Poor thing! And she is only in college. But I just cant help but wonder if only I had been attuned to being more creative when I was younger, then I would not spend my nows wondering if I could have been somone different. Cant help the feeling of agedness when I hear my second cousins starting to read pride and prejudice/the da vinci code and the national newspapers, learning bharatnatyam, Microsoft office at the age of 8..... not generation gap but more than that.....

In HR parlance, my childhood/youth and maybe many others out there (though people may not necessarily concur) has been a wastage of Human Resources. But the trial now, in banking parlance if I might say so, would be to avoid making the remaining stages of life a Non-Performing Asset. In the end I hope not to say.... Life!!!where art thou gone.....?

Hype Over Hearts

Yet another so called proclaimed day for the celebration of love has gone by......this budding contemplator made herself artificially unaware of the underlying excitement that this day brought to many. Of course, it so happened that after a point it required no particular effort on my part to think of this day as anything special. Monotony does that to you. I thought my mundanely exciting office would rid me of any speculations that I might have regarding the existence of Valentine's Day. But for once my conviction that my office and my senior colleagues were of the Jurassic park age was defied and shattered!!!! On a mission of mine to roam about the office with the ambition to look busy and aloof I found many of my senior colleagues excitedly wishing each other "happy valentine's day!!!!!Each pointed to the others clothes (especially the excited female lot) and tried to come to a conclusion about the reason for donning on a specific colour.The usually coquettish males begin to nod and knowingly wink at the poor bachelor batch mates of mine as if to say ....we know what you did last summer.

As for yours truly, it is amusing to note that when people perceive you as even above average looking, it is naturally assumed that my social calendar would be full of marks and crosses and that I must have several plans and suitors falling in line......I would benignly smile while redeeming them of their self made conclusions and graciously move on only to find my batch mates enclose me with their demands as to what rocking plans have I made for the V day. Finally ensconced in my work cubicle, I engrossed myself in multi-tasking between having an online conversation with friends; answering useless queries over the phone; calculating the amount on debit vouchers and for the nth time cursing stupid rules of accountancy.

My dance class was no different with all the lovely ladies decked out for the occasion and waiting for their beaus to come and whisk all of them (all of them are coincidentally friends) to a priorly booked restaurant. I refuse to be envious or wistful.....I come back home sans dance class and back to a lonely welcome of my home......Valentine's Day....I mused...the day one is supposed to be with the acknowledged close one....which has never happened in my case.......but I am happy.....for a reason best known to me and which made my day special......

So I lay to a rest my cynicism about this day and postpone it to next year....