Of injection pricks and sore behinds!

When I was a kid, we had an MBBS doctor in ONGC’s dispensary. He was a chubby Assamese guy; cheerful, and a great cricketer. However, I was morbidly afraid of him, like most kids are, of doctors. Since the dispensary was within the premises of the township we lived in, all one needed to visit the doctor were the slightest of symptoms, and a personal medical record book. For this reason, my mother often sent whosoever was sick amongst us brothers to the doctor all alone, properly rehearsed with what to say to him. Though I detested going alone to the doctor, I had often no choice, with my dad busy at office, and my mom having many other important things to do than to attend to one of her son’s running nose. As I sometimes waited in the queue to see him, my medical record book clasped tightly in my little hands, I used to pray to God that I don’t end up getting an injection prescribed. When it was finally my turn, I always crossed my finger before entering. Once inside, I used to greet the burly doctor with a ‘namaste’, and then like a parrot narrate in well-rehearsed lines my symptoms to him. But, like a man who seemed to know-it-all, he used to nearly finish writing the prescription in my book by the time I finished speaking about my illness. Sometimes, when either I was very ill, or sometimes when he was in the mood, he’d poke his stethoscope at random spots on my chest ever so briefly before handing over to me my book. So many times I tried to gather the courage to ask if the prescription included an injection, but I never really could. So it was another wait at the compounder’s window, who filled up our prescriptions, and who would finally let out the sentence, ‘There’s an injection here, to be taken once daily for five days.’ The hell would break loose on me, and if god-forbid it were the Quinine for malaria, I used to almost die out of fear for the utterly painful injection (in those days Quinine injection was the treatment for malaria, and malaria used to be diagnosed in our dispensary only by the doctor’s clinical acumen. Lab tests were rare.). More often than not, the doctor decided to mix a dose of Analgin (for fever) with Qunine, creating thus the devil’s own mixture, and I often thought if this was the infamous third-degree torture they often talked about in films. The nurse who administered the injection was no less than a daakan (witch) to me (poor thing, I hope she’s doing well wherever she is now). She chose the largest of the syringes for me with the thickest of the needles, precariously boiled for not more than a jiffy after the last victim’s injection, and poked into my behind with criminal indifference. That I shouted at the top of my voice and even cried in muffled sobs did not make any difference to her, and it was in those days when I had first started wondering if God pardoned at least one murder per person, per life. Once, after the first of such five injections, I decided to give the whole turmoil a slip by not declaring to my parents about the prescribed injection, and quietly skipped going to the dispensary the next day. To my great horror, the witch herself showed at our house, late in the evening, after she’d finished poking everyone else’s behind at the dispensary, fully armed with the injection kit and all. That evening not only did I suffer the great prick on one buttock, my dad placed a few smacks on the other as well. Malaria is now-a-days treated in much more humane ways, but I bet there won’t be another nurse anywhere who’d go to the errant boy’s homes to give them their missed pricks! 

India's cricket debacle!

The charisma of the game of cricket is such that the true fan falls in love with the format of the game he is watching. When IPL was in full flow, one thought which idiot of a man invented the test cricket.  A five-day game of cricket? How boring. But the current series between India and England, in England, has mesmerized me. Now I wonder why they don’t have more test matches! I know India has fared very, very poorly in the two tests played, plus the disappointment of the elusive hundredth international hundred for Sachin Tendulkar….it does get on to the nerves but then, there were ups and downs that kept the audience spell-bound, and there was certainly no dearth of drama. My own hero Rahul Dravid made back to back centuries in vain, and he must be feeling awful for that. The depleted Indian team without Viru, Zak and Gauti looked uncertain of itself from the very start of the first test, and coupled with poor form of top order players like Tendulkar, Yuvi, Dhoni, and Bhajji the debacle was only waiting to happen. Imagine, the turbanator managed to scalp just two wickets in four innings! And the English players are supposed to be ‘bad’ players of spin bowling! MSD chose a wrong match to show that he could play the game fairly, when he re-called Ian Bell who went on to smash a scintillating century. Then there was Micheal Vuaghan who sparked controversy with his Vaseline remark on the appeal that was turned down against Laxman. But honestly, one has to give it to the British players. All of them were in form- Pieterson, Strauss, Bell, Prior, Morgan, etc. Even some of their bowlers batted well. Bresnan did well, and Stuart Broad is emerging as a promising all-rounder. Not only did he bat very well, he did not in the least look like he was the guy who had once got hammered by Yuvi for six sixes in a T-20 match! In all, he scalped 15 wickets in two tests!!

Well, like in politics, there can never be permanent positions in cricket. The current English team is the best I’ve seen in a long, long time, and they richly deserve the newly gotten number one test team status. With two bad losses in two tests, the best that can India hope for is a 2-2 final tally. But that seems a tall order. Unless Viru and Zaks make it back into the team.

Going Ga Ga over Ms Rabbani!

It is not very often that Pakistan gives the Indian public a reason to smile. The last one was a stand-up comic called Shakeel who made us laugh with his one-liners in ‘Comedy Circus’ on Sony TV. So when the 34 year old glamorous Ms Hina Rabbani Khar arrived in India as Pakistan’s Foreign minister, the Indians sat up and took notice. I don’t remember who was the last Pakistani diplomat to have visited India; not that I care. Visits of innumerable diplomats from either side has not made as much as an iota of change in the Indo-Pak relationship, and after Pakistan back-stabbed India in the wake of AB Vajpayee’s brave bus diplomacy, I have trained myself to see diplomatic meetings not more than a mere eye-wash. Perhaps some of the Indian news channels agree with me and that is why, after deliberating ever so briefly on the political aspect of Ms. Rabbani’s visit, the contrasting dullness of our own aging SM Krishna notwithstanding, they immediately focused on the persona of the visiting lady. She is young, beautiful, fit (after three children), and has a style-statement of her own. The media went ga ga over her accessories- cool shades; a showy watch and a beautiful ring; a glistening white Hyderabadi-pearl necklace to go with her pristine white dress; and a pair of high-heeled shoes to enhance her already tall stature. The hand-bag she carries is rumored to be worth seventeen lacs rupees! Though, perhaps, owing to her status as a visiting diplomat, she hid her figure beneath layers of loose clothing, she made the best out of what she could reveal- after deliberately leaving a loose lock of hair in the front, she swept it away ever so gracefully every time it fell on her forehead- and this must happened a hundred and forty three times in the whole of yesterday!  Knowing perfectly well what the Indian public would want to know about her, she teased by not playing into the hands of the prying media. When Ritul Joshi of ‘Aaj Tak’ tried to get casual with her by asking some questions about her appearance, she carefully ducked them and answered only in political terms.

But she is not where she is, because of her glamour. Educated in the University of Massachuechets, she is the daughter of a politician- Ghulam Noor Rabbani Khar, and niece of Ghulam Mustafa Khar (those who have read Tehmina Durrani’s ‘My Feudal Lord’, would know that Ghulam Mustafa Khar was a monster of a husband, and an astute politician). Her family is one of the richest in Pakistan, having business interests in almost all lucrative areas. She also co-owns a posh restaurant which is run by her businessman husband. With almost everything on her side- age, persona, pedigree and education, I hope she achieves for Indo-Pak relationship what her worthy predecessors failed to; though she did leave a mark of being the astute Pakistani politician-in-making by meeting up with the Kashmiri separatist leaders- Geelani, Mirwaiz et al, irking the Indian authorities no end. Now they can’t decide if she is more salty or more chilly!

A doctor's plight!

It is a Monday and I am down with a viral sore throat. Nothing can be worse than a viral sore throat for me. It does not show on the outside, and yet, it drains me totally from the inside. And when the viruses decide to hit me, they send the worst of the lot- Mean, and highly virulent. The throat feels like sand-paper and I am hardly able to swallow anything. I feel overly thirsty, as is common with this malady, and the warm water hardly quenches the thirst. Except for my wife who doesn’t tire warming water for my gargles, I find no one else sympathizing with me for my plight. Not in the least, my patients.

Sharp at 8.30 in the morning I got a call from a patient. It is noteworthy that Indian public have absolutely no qualms about calling up their doctors on their cell-phones at any time of the day. They only need to make a second or a third visit in the out-patient and they misunderstand the doctors’ profession-driven friendly demeanor akin to that of their closest pal and ask for the cell number with as much sense of a fundamental right to it as would an eighteen year old have towards voting.

‘Doctor, I’m coming to your hospital for consultation at 10 today. My back still hurts.’

‘Er…, I am taking an off today. Can you come tomorrow?’

‘But I have an appointment for today!’ (How can you even think of taking an off?)

‘I’m not well, so..”

‘Not well? But you’re a doctor!’

‘So?”

‘So? You’re a doctor, doctor! How can you fall ill? If you doctors fall ill, where will we go?”

‘But we are humans too!’ (I begin to feel irritated by now)

‘No, doctor, you doctors are Gods! You cannot fall ill. I am coming at 10 and please see me, my back feels bad.’

 Not in a mood to be intimated. I said, ‘By your logic, an undertaker must never die; a car mechanic must never have a broken car; a dhobi must never be seen in dirty clothes; and a divorce lawyer must never marry!’

I don’t know what effect my outburst had on him but I got a disconnected tone on my phone. Something pinched me and now I am ready with a warm shower, a couple of pills, a breakfast of tasteless cereal, and a plastic smile- ready to enact the role of a doctor- a hale and hearty doctor with godly powers to heal. Heal all and sundry- except myself. God, I need a doctor!

Mental Polygamy

‘Apni girlfriend ke saamne doosri ladkiyon ko kaise dekhein!’ thus teaches a stupid soft-drink ad on TV these days where the boy fools his girlfriend by pretending to criticize the dress of the girl he was actually staring at for other reasons. The soft-drink makers claim that this brainy idea was because of the drink. That’s preposterous by itself but is besides the point. The ad is probably viewed, laughed or scoffed at and brushed aside. But no one realizes that it depicts a very male phenomenon. I call it ‘Mental Polygamy’. Would the ad have the same effect if it said, ‘Apne boyfriend ke saamne doosron ladkon ko kaise dekhein!’? I doubt it very much. Though, strictly speaking, ‘polygamy’ means being married to multiple women at the same time, to me all extra-marital adventures are as good, or I should say, as bad as polygamy.

Boris Becker once infamously said, ‘Men aren’t made to be monogamous,’ after his wife divorced him for alleged extra-marital affairs. So, are some men polygamous by instinct? The civilization of our society has perhaps forced all men to stick to one partner through marriage, but then there have been people like Tiger woods. Then there are Strauss Kahn, Shane Warne and Shiney Ahuja- people who come immediately to mind. Then there are daily incidents of rape and other sexual assaults against women. It’s never the other way round. This is not to say that women are never polyandrous, but they are far few and in between. Women may change partners, but, unlike the men, they are seldom in multiple relationships at the same time. And while such women are readily labeled as ‘sluts’, the men are awarded titles like Casanova and Playboy. Also, the reason behind a woman’s sexual overtures may not be strictly sexual. Sometimes women give away their bodies outside their marriage in quest for true love and affection. But I’ve never heard of a man having reluctant physical relation with a woman to win her love. As the famous Indian sexologist Prakash Kothari has proclaimed, ‘Men give love to women to get sex; and women give sex to men to get love.’ In olden days, Kings used to have harems full of wives and concubines; never did ever a queen have a ‘male harem’. We have heard about the existence of ‘gigolos’, but for all practical purposes, a ‘sex worker’ anywhere in the world is assumed to be a woman. Prostitution isn’t the oldest profession in this world without a reason. A particular religion allows the man to have four wives, not vice-versa. Do not all these facts point to something very obvious?  So, are all the men who have been faithful to one partner all their lives really monogamous in their minds? I don’t mean to get offensive here but I don’t think so. How many of us ‘monogamous’ men do not drool over the sexy dancer in an item song? How many of us monogamous men would refuse to view a readily available ‘hot’ video? If a man stares at a woman, or even views her ‘obliquely’, he’s very unlikely to be appreciating her hair. If this is not mental polygamy, then what is? I dare say more men are mental polygamous than there are not. 

OBITUARY: The English language passes away...

As I write this, I don’t claim in any way to be the master of the English language, and you must be finding my blog pieces full of glaring grammatical mistakes. It is only that all of you have been very kind to overlook them. For me, the English language, or for that matter any language, when read or heard, must feel good to the ears and the heart. One need not be either a Wren or a Martin to be able to use the English language well. And by inventing the Windows and MS word, Bill Gates has been correcting all my spellings for me; sometimes he even corrects my grammar. But often, when I have spent a lot of effort constructing a good sentence, he underlines it with a stupid green line, which when right-clicked says quite irritatingly: ‘Fragment: Consider revising’ (what the hell!). Having said that, I must add that the way some people use the English language is no less than murdering it pitilessly. Such usage is often a good source of amusement. I remember a primary school teacher we had, and he used to teach us math so no big deal here, who one fine day ordered a harried student in the class, ‘Open the windows and let the climate come in.’ Even with the miniscule knowledge of English language then, we had  a muffled but hearty laugh at that one. More recently, when I used to be a post-graduate student in orthopedics, and the night-duty nurses used to send us emergency calls for the in-patients duly written in call registers for documentation, there’s an incident when one on-call doctor was summoned by a nurse with this note in the register: ‘To, doctor on call: Patient xyz is unable to pass urine. Please come and pass urine. Thanks.’ Imagine, she thanked the doctor in advance for that!  Then there was this swanky car I saw parked in a busy street with the red doctor’s cross and all. A sign hanging from the back registration plate read: ‘This car belongs to emergency doctor on call. Please don’t park yours in my rear’. No, I won’t. I’m pretty straight. Then there’s an email doing rounds highlighting some hilarious (mis)use of the English language. In India there is a penchant among people for decorating the rear windscreens of their cars with names of themselves, their wife, and children- awkwardly written in bold italics on the glass. ‘Bittu di gaddi’ is an example in Punjabi. One Indica had this written in the centre of the rear wind-screen- MAHABOOB. Obviously, he meant MEHBOOB, but what he wrote made him more famous than he had hoped to become by scribbling his name behind his car. The photograph of his car’s behind must have reached a million people across the globe, with registration number and all. Imagine all the phone calls he must be getting!  A sign outside a furnishing store read- ‘Bed Shit available’. Oh, yeah? Please pack a dozen for me. I want to send them across to a certain Rehman Malik in Pakistan. A sign outside a wine shop: ‘CHILD BEAR available’. So, who do you think I am? MAMMA BEAR? Another sign read- ‘No parking. Other wise tires will be FLATTERED’. I’m VERY flattered here. A notice outside an apartment building read, obviously to ward off hawkers: ‘Salesmen and Hookers not allowed’. Now, I want to live in this neighborhood. A placard at a garment sale said: ‘LADIES BOTTOMS -Rs 199 only’. Quite cheap; I want to buy a few...

There are so many more such examples and I could go on and on. And I’m sure you all would have similar interesting tales to share. So, go ahead and place your comments with some hilarious ones!

Movie Review- Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is definitely a ‘must see’ for its crisp freshness. And for the free (if you discount the movie ticket and popcorn cost, of course) tour of Spain. And for Farhan Akhtar’s mannerisms. And for the subtle, funny lines throughout the two-odd hours. And for the electrifying chemistry between the two of Bollywood’s hottest stars- Hritik and Katrina. And since the kissing scenes have now become as commonplace as the handshake scenes, a couple of them should not deter the families from going and watching this flick as one.

It is a story of how three friends (Hritik, Farhan and Abhay Deol) arrange a trip to Spain as a pre-planned ‘bachelor’s party’, before Abhay Deol gets married in two month’s time. They also agree to participate in three adventure sports- one of the choice of each friend- this is how the film includes scuba diving scenes with Katrina as the diving instructor, the parachute jumping sequence, and the famous annual Spanish Bull Run. The Tomatina festival is an added attraction. The casting director deserves a pat on his back for the choice of the actress for the role of Abhay Deol’s fiancé. Somehow her character’s stupidity and irritability shows so well on her face that either she’s done the part so well or she’s like that only. Apart from the fun and frolic this foursome has during the entire run of the film, including playing silly pranks on unsuspecting strangers, the story has an emotional touch with Farhan finding his father in Spain who he’d never met before because the latter had ditched her mother while she was still pregnant with him. The estranged father is played by Naseerudding Shah, who has seemed to grow oh-so-handsome with age. His five minute appearance in the movie is so effective that had his character been given a longer screen time, he’d have given the younger stars a run for their monies.  There’s added drama about Abhay not actually wanting to marry his fiancé (how he ‘accidentally’ gets engaged to her is hilarious). A couple of songs are nice numbers, the music quite reasonably having a Spanish touch to it. 

The Spanish tourism department could have well financed the movie to the last paise because including yours truly, many must have made their minds to travel to Spain before they die after watching this one. My rating: 3 on 5.