Peek A Boo

I went for my annual health check-up today, finished the paperwork and was waiting for my turn. The nurse practitioner called out my name and I went inside.

I was made to sit on a chair and she came and stood right in front of me. The slightly pregnant lady in her late 30’s was wearing an EXTREMELY low cut dress and there was nothing left for imagination!!!

And now, she wanted to check my blood pressure. Oh please!!!!! After that, she spent considerable time looking for a vein to get the blood sample. (Trying) to be a gentleman, I looked around in all possible directions and was trying to appreciate the wall colors.

Seriously though, shouldn’t there be a dress code? I mean, she ought to have known that she was not wearing a proper attire. And get this, she told me that a guy working with her was fired. I wonder why!!!

Temple

What do you do on the first birthday after death? 

ದೇಗುಲ

ಗಂಟೆ ಜಾಗಟೆ ತಮಟೆ ವಾದ್ಯಗಳ ದನಿಯಿಲ್ಲ
ಬರಿ ಮೌನ, ಬರಿ ಧ್ಯಾನ
ಭಕುತರ ಮನಗಳಲಿ ಹಳೆಯದೇ ಬೇಡಿಕೆ
ಮತ್ತದೇ ಪ್ರಾರ್ಥನೆ
ಹೋಮಕುಂಡದ ಒಳಗೆ ಎಳ್ಳುದೀಪ
ತೀರ್ಥಕ್ಕೆ ತುಳಸಿ ಎಲೆ
ಆರತಿಗೆ ಕರ್ಪೂರ
ಮುಂಜಾನೆ ಮುತ್ತೈದೆ
ಸಂಜೆ ಹುಡುಗರ ದಂಡು
ದಿನವೆಲ್ಲ ಜನಜಾತ್ರೆ
ಕುರುಡು ಯಾತ್ರೆ

ಬಿಳಿ ಹೊದ್ದ ಅರ್ಚಕರ
ಮುಖದಲ್ಲಿ ಅದೇ ನಗುವು
ಕಾಲ್ಮುಟ್ಟಿ, ಕೈ ಹಿಡಿದು
ಮೌನದಲೆ ಮಾತಾಡಿ
ಮನೆಗೆ ಹೊರಳುವ ಮುನ್ನ
ಒಮ್ಮೆ ನೋಡುವ ಬಯಕೆ
ತಡೆಯಲಾಗದು ಮನಕೆ
ಗರ್ಭಗುಡಿ ಒಳಹೊಕ್ಕು
ಎಲ್ಲೆಲ್ಲಿ ಹುಡುಕಿದರು
ಕತ್ತಲೆಯ ಕೋಣೆಯಲಿ
ದೇವರಿಲ್ಲ

Dates, Memory And Dreams

Read this story and come back, I will then tell you my story.

Crazy, huh? I agree.

Even before I knew the basic math, I could tell the exact day for any given date. Trust me, I didn’t know that 1+1 was 2, but given an year, month and date, I could tell you the day in a matter of seconds. My mother accidentally discovered this ability and suddenly I became popular among friends.

Infact, interview for my school admission had the headmaster asking me days for July 1st and August 15th of that year (yeah, I will come to my memory later). My classmates, seniors, teachers, family and friends were always behind me asking me the day for some date. What was amazing to the others around me was not at all a big deal for me. Needless to say, I would get tons of questions from “How do you do it?” to “Can you teach me please?”, day in and day out.

Shakuntala Devi (no introduction needed) is a family friend, both from my father and mother’s sides. Thank God, my parents were certainly not keen on trying to make me a ‘star’ by taking me to her to get more ‘training’. That’s pretty much what almost all their friends told them constantly. Even when Ms. Devi visited our home, absolutely not a word about my skills were spoken. Furthermore, a doctor friend of my mother who was living in America for a very long time wanted to get me onto Oprah Show!!! It probably wasn’t feasible at that time, but the point I am trying to make here is that I had slowly realized that I had some ability which most others did not.

Slowly but steadily, the pressure was building.  I was scared. I no longer wanted to be the ‘intelligent kid’. Plus, I had so many other hobbies that I did not want to miss out on. So, when people started asking me the day for a particular date, I started declining to answer. And to this day, I have kept that up. A few people around me know that I have this capacity. But, I really don’t like being the centre  of questions. I agree to tell the day only when I am in a mood, and that is quite rare now. But, quite regularly, I play with dates within my head. That gives me a kick and makes me feel happy, that I am as ‘intelligent’ as I was when I was a little boy!!!

Now onto memory. Fortunately or unfortunately, I remember so many details from my past with pin-point accuracy. I honestly wish that I did not remember so much detail. For kicks, let me throw out some examples here:

May 25th 1979 – We left Mysore to go visit my mother’s cousin in Bombay. We reached Bombay on 27th. The next wednesday, I had a lot of pain in my legs because we walked too much and I was just a little kid.

July 9th 1983 – I was playing ‘chAr patthar’ on the street and I suddenly had a bad stomach pain. Later I was diagnozed with jaundice.

August 30th 1983 – My parents flew to America to give music concerts.

October 12th 1983 – My parents came back from America.

August 8th 1988 – I had fever.

April 1st 1990 – I was sitting in my room upstairs, heard ‘Mere Sapnon Ki Rani Kab Aayegi Tu’ from neighbor’s TV, and came down running to switch on the TV.

Obviously, it’s not hard to remember birthdays and anniversaries at all.

One last thing, which is hard for the others to believe, and scary to me. There are several instances where my dreams and thoughts have come true. Most of them have been newsworthy items. Things like plane crashes to changes in heads of states. The latest one being Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo. I know, it absolutely doesn’t make sense, you really don’t have to believe.

Going back to the news article, I guess it’s time for me to talk to Dr. James McGaugh. But then again, I am happy the way I am, why complicate things?

Humor – Three Times

Characters invloved:

My friend A and his wife B.

B‘s brother C and his wife D.

My friend R.

C and D recently had a kid and they were visitng A and B. My friend R was all excited to see the newborn. After watching how the kid plays, yawns, giggles, sleeps etc..etc.., R went to A and B and made a comment saying that the kid “looks very much like A“.

Now, A and B were obviously shocked to hear this comment, but they were polite enough not to hit R.

And lo, R suddenly realized that he had committed a blunder by saying what he said. He immediately tried to correct it and this is what he said:

“Oh well, but come to think of it, how is that?”

Needless to say A and B fainted, well almost!!!

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Just when I start thinking that there may be a possibility that my wife is so much more intelligent than I am, she comes up with gems. 

The other day, I was browsing the internet looking for, among many things, ‘Fareb’, Milind Gunaji and others. I stumbled upon an article which said that Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s initial choice for the role of Devdas was Salman Khan. I couldn’t believe that someone could even consider Salman Khan for such roles (SLB is a copycat dumbo, that’s a different story).

I asked my wife to guess who SLB’s first choice for Devdas was. Without skipping a heartbeat she answered:

“Rani Mukherjee”!!!

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For those of you who know how to read a fortune cookie the right way, here’s what I got last week:

“Others will be impressed by your artistic side….”

For those of you who don’t know how to read a fortune cookie, ask someone who does.

Anyway, as for me, it’s time for bed!!!

A True Star

Aamir Khan is a genius!!! I don’t think he can be described in any other way. He should not be clubbed in the elite group with Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shahruh Khan. He is so much more. He will eventually have his name etched along Latha Mangeshkar, Raj Kapoor and Satyajith Ray.

From the cute faced acting in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak to the brilliant directing in Taare Zameen Par, Aamir Khan has always excelled. The fact I like about him is that he is extremely choosy. And to be choosy, you have to be really good and you need to know that you are that good. For the most part, he has picked the right scripts and right movies. His topic selection is varied, colorful and intense. It is quite hard not to accept the park roaming romantic hero roles all the time and be successful in bollywood.

I watched Taare Zameen Par recently. What amazed me was the depth and intensity in the movie. The kid Darsheel has certainly done a tremendous job. But, Aamir Khan gets a lot of credit for making the kid do such a fantastic job. A fine story line and a real problem has been portrayed with so much sensitivity. Of course, Shankar Mahadevan‘s rendition of the song ‘Maa’ is above the World.

The only thing in the movie which was far from truth was Aamir Khan’s clothes. Which school teacher in India wears torn and worn low-rise jeans showing off his underwear band and shakes his bum every other minute? I thought that was the staple diet of IT folks in California!!!

And, I don’t think I have mentioned this before. Aamir Khan is a close relative of mine. He is my cousin’s wife’s cousin’s second cousin’s husband. To put it simply, my brother-in-law. Or easier, my older brother. Oh well, we have so many things in common!!! 🙂

Eloquence, Poetry, Magic, Ethics, Arithmetic….

Conquered all the 64…………and 10 more.

Warm wishes for several more!!!

Devanand’ed

I was writing an article about my father, and it occurred to me that Devanand played such a big part in our lives. Here’s the story:

As a kid, I hated to comb my hair. I would just run away at the mention of the word comb. My father was totally frustrated. He loved the fact that I had such thick wavy hair and he was scared that I would become bald at a very young age. I mean how can the hair survive without seeing a drop of coconut oil, it toally beat him. So, naturally he was very concerned. No amount of pleading or prodding helped.

Finally he came up with a brilliant idea. He called me and said “DS, come over here, I will comb your hair and make you Devanand”. I had no idea who or what Devanand was. But, from his tone, I assumed that Devanand must be something or someone big. I instantly wanted to be like Devanand. Without a word, I obliged. Needless to say, he was thrilled and poured an entire bottle of coconut oil on my head.

This continued for several years. he would call me to “make me look like Devanand”. And, after oiling and combing my hair, he would look at me and say “DS, you look exactly like Devanand”. I was thrilled, still having no idea what or who Devanand was.

After a few years, I did find out who Devanand was. Whatever the reason was, I became a huge fan of Devanand (no, not the combing, I think it’s the music in his movies which caught my attention!). And, I still am a big fan of Devanand.

As you can guess, once I started going to college, my father’s Devanand trick stopped working. I was back to my old self and made sure not a drop of oil touched my hair. My father managed to catch hold of me sometimes and poured oil liberally on my head. Forget the college years, he even did it when I went back to India for vacation now.

Beautiful memories!!! As for my hair, it’s still thick and full, inspite of hardly seeing any oil.  I bet it has something to do with my father and his prayers!!!.