Day 17 - Do You Speak Hospitalese?

Those relentless hospital forms that ask you to tick off the languages that you speak, read, and write (in triplicate) don't quite ask you the really useful stuff - do you speak/read/write Hospitalese? If you say No they ought to send you for remedial classes before hospitalizing you. Here's why.

After my son was born nearly five years ago, I had legions of hospital staffers who trooped in after my surgery asking me weird questions.

Imagine this scenario, if you will:
"Have you evacuated?" asks a resident gynaecologist.
"Why, is there a fire or an earthquake?" I ask dimly alarmed.
"No, have you evacuated, voided, passed flatus?" she asks impatiently. I sigh. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good word game at three in the morning as much as any woman who has just had a baby ripped from her uterus does, but my inner thesaurus is not particularly at its best.
"What does that mean?" I ask admitting linguistic defeat.
She clicks her tongue at my unbelievable imbecility and gestures meaningfully towards my nether regions and then in the vague direction of the bathroom several times until I finally get what she is asking me.

Soon after, another girl wanders in wanting to know if I am in a consanguineous marriage. I recall vaguely that sanguineous has something to do with blood - I reason that she either wants to know if my husband is related to a con man or if he is my blood relative. I shake my head no to both.

Now if there's one thing you need to know about medical histories, it's that they're top secret and no one ever divulges anything they have heard to anyone else. So you have to repeat the same things to doctors, nurses, ward boys, florists, plumbers and other mysterious people who drop in to ask you about your fascinating evacuation, voiding and flatus habits. I am also woken up and asked if I am still in a non-consanguineous marriage. Well, unless I have accidentally married a long lost cousin while in the throes of a childbirth-induced midnight delirium, I guess I am.

Anyway, in my five days in the hospital, I pick up these words like a pro. So when I hear a knock and a girl enters I launch into the by-now familiar litany. "I have evacuated, voided, and passed flatus multiple times," I tell the startled girl and as an additional bonus offer up some helpful nuggets of history that no one has ever thought to ask me, "Oh and I have been regurgitating regularly throughout my pregnancy, though i had no issues with sanguineous discharges. And talking about all things sanguineous, I am still in a non-consanguineous a marriage," I add for good measure.

The girl stammers, "Umm, I'm from the Nutrition Department and I just wanted to know what you'd like to eat."

Eat! I'm sure she has violated basic hospital protocol. At the very least, she ought to have asked me what I wanted to orally ingest into my abdominal cavity. But maybe she is new here. I look at her, my heart filling with newfound maternal compassion. Why, she's a mere babe in the clinical woods just learning to babble hospitalese! No matter little one, you'll soon learn!

Day 16 - Old School or New School?

Schools have changed dramatically since our time - the way they look, the way they work, and of course the way the kids dress, eat, work, and talk.

But one thing remains just the same - they still send parents to the ends of the earth to get weird stuff that isn't available in any normal store. Just a few weeks ago, my son's school teacher wrote in his trusty almanac that he needed a pair of silver pom poms. 

"So what are pom-poms anyway?" I overheard one baffled father ask another while dropping my son to school the next day.

"Oh, you know, it's those things that cheer leaders hold in their hands, yaar!" replied the more enlightened of the two.

"Cheer leaders, what are cheer leaders?" the first dad was still bemused.

"Arre yaar, those girls in skimpy outfits that dance at the T20s. Don't tell me you've never seen them!" He added as the first dad still looked baffled.

"Yes, yes, of course I've seen the girls. But, who was looking at their hands?"

Fortunately for him, this dad had come minus his better half, and unfortunately for me, I couldn't stick around to find out how that conversation ended because I had my own pom poms to get.

In my own time, I recall my folks chasing after the proverbial 'kalyanasougandhigam' as my grandmother acerbically put it, those endless out-of-print books, the graph papers that had to be just so, a dinner plate of a certain brand to be taken for a trip, the list goes on. But the most creative demand that I recall was for my sister's biology class - bring a dead mouse to class, the expressionless biology teacher had intoned without a trace of humour.

Though we regularly came face-to-face with these creatures, they must have got wind of the scholastic summons - for on that particular day, there wasn't a single mouse in the house. The maid was dispatched to her own rodent-rich neighbourhood to procure one. She returned with a rat instead of a mouse, the zoological nuances being quite lost on her. After a few panicky phone calls (remember, there were no texts, Google Pluses and what have you) it was finally decided that a rat was as good as a mouse and would do just as well. So off went my sister to school the next day, a song in her heart and a dead rat in her bag. Oh, the things you have to do in the name of education!

Yes, some things never change. And in case you were wondering, I did get those pom poms at long last, after encountering many many such blank stares and no, I did not repeat the T20 story. I finally got them from a shop that, according to another dad, sold everything excepts cars and phones. Which is perfectly fine, as schools almost never ask for cars and phones. Not yet, anyway.

Day 15 - How to become someone important

The first important thing you need to understand  on your quest to importance is that doing something important is far less important than being someone important. If that sentence didn't make any sense to you that's because it's all-important, and important things are convoluted.

So, let's get you started. The first thing to understand is that important people always seem to be getting a lot more done than the rest of us. Being important involves a lot of hard work and you have to be prepared to do it.  But the operative word here is 'seem'. Being important is 99% the art of creative and artful misdirection.

So first, always have at least fifty chat windows open on your laptop and have one person on hold on your phone waiting for you to put another person on hold while they wait for you to put yet another person on hold to get to talk to you, because that's how regular people talk to important people, they get in line. And yes, once in a while you should type something like - "Had a great time at the Grammies last night' or some such thing into all the chat windows and quickly follow it up with "Oops sorry, wrong window! Smiley face." Guess how many people will spend the rest of their day wondering who was in the right window.

Second, drop names liberally. In the midst of a conversation, you could say something like - You know, when I was visiting the United States a few years ago, Clinton actually pulled my skirt! Of course, the trick with this is you have to know when to stop - all will be lost if you explain that Clinton was your neighbour's cat who pulled the said garment from your clothesline! Or - you know I was on a call with the President yesterday - well, you were actually whinging to the president of Unimportants Anonymous, whose name you don't know, but let other people think what they will.

Third, know how to act more important than others when you have to wait. For instance, when you're in a traffic jam, never honk and yell - that's for the insignificant hoi polloi. No, wind down your tinted windows and yell into your dongle or your state-of-the-art phone for all to hear, "Can you ask New York to ask London to wait for a bit - I'm stuck in a &%$#& traffic jam!" If that doesn't shriek IMPORTANT, nothing else does. The only thing you could have done better was to call God to hold the earth a bit on the whole rotation thing while you got out of the jam.

Fourth, be fashionably late for everything including your own wedding, no important person worth his or her salt has the time to be on time and everyone knows that.

Fifth, be a sesquipedalian, excogitate and exercise those neurosensors to conjure up important-sounding words like antidisestablishmentarianism and usufruct. Simple, monosyllabic words that convey the meaning is for sissies.

Sixth, always use words like 'and so on', 'etcetera', and 'among other things', so that you convey the impression that what you are deigning to divulge is just a miniscule portion of what you actually know.

Seventh, always try to appear that you don't want to be recognized - wear large dark-tinted glasses and cover your face artfully but not completely with your hand taking care to flash that diamond-enscrusted Rolex and platinum charm bracelet. That's what all important people do - they try hard to become rich and famous, and then spend the rest of their lives trying not to be recognized.

The mathematically alert reader would have noticed that all the points above talk to the 99% of being important - the art of creative misdirection. What about the remaining 1%? Well, I'll assume that I'm already important enough for you to be reading this and will divulge the rest of the Secret.

Dear reader, I'm afraid you may not want to read this - but the remaining 1% of being important entails actually doing something important that really makes a difference to people. But if that's not your cup of tea, no problem - if you get the other 99% right, you should be well on your way.

Day 14 - Proof that aliens once existed - and travelled by Indian trains

If you have ever taken an overnight train in India, you would have asked yourself the unpoken question predominant in most travellers' minds: Was the average Indian train constructed for the average Indian traveller? The answer to this is an emphatic NO. This manifesto moves to prove this point.

Firstly, take the width of the average Indian berth. The proportion of the width of the average berth to the average Indian rear end is about 0.75:1. This means that a quarter of all Indian bottoms are designed to hang out of an Indian berth. Obviously, turning over in one's sleep, which the average human is prone to doing naturally and many times a night, is impossible in this situation.

Next, take the height of an upper berth in an average 3-tier train. The upper berth is designed to be a full head above the head level of the average Indian traveller. Divide this by the average fitness and monkey bar climbing finesse of the average Indian traveller and multiply by the steep difficulty of the rungs, and the probability of the average Indian managing to climb up on that berth without misadventure is a pretty pathetic 0.001%.

Clearly, the berths in which we have to squash ourselves into and perform inhuman acrobatics to climb up on were not designed originally for us, but for a species that is at least a quarter slimmer and much more springy than the average human, and perhaps has a cylindrical torso which makes somnombulent rolling over easy and fun.

Now, take the taps in an Indian train. You have to keep pressing up on the tap to start the flow of water. If you take away your hand to wash your face or anything else that needs washing, you run out of water. Evidently, the taps in a train were designed especially for a species that either had its face in its hands or had a long antenna that could keep the water going while it washed its other essentials.

Has it ever occurred to you that the bathrooms, sorry latrines, in a train look like they were designed as kind of an after thought? I mean, four latrines for roughly seventy humans designed to answer nature's persistent calls roughly every four hours, latrines that are actually large holes that empty out into the tracks? Yes, they were an afterthought, because obviously, the trains were originally built for a species that nature never once called. Think about it, why else would we have latrines that have a total of about two square inches that a human can actually stand on where you can close the door without having a shoe fall through the hole?

Now about the food, or what passes for food, that you get on trains, how often have you complained that it wasn't fit for human consumption? Exactly! The food that you get was originally flavored oil intended for this alien species to lubricate its springy joints.

Next time you get on that train and are tempted to whine and whinge about any of these things - just remember. Indian trains are the way they are for a simple reason. They weren't designed for the average Indian, not even the average human. There, doesn't that explain a whole lot?

Day 13 - Labels

I hate labels - until I employed a cook whose intelligence was not particularly off the charts, (well, maybe it was but in the other direction) tea was often in the Coffee container, sugar in the Tea container, and coffee in the one marked Sugar. I still have pickles in jam bottles, masalas in pickle bottles, and pepper corns in sauce jars.

I am a woman - I can't argue with that having given birth to two human offspring and being forced to shop regularly for feminine products. But that's the only label I allow myself.

I believe a woman can do anything a man can do and in some cases, maybe even do it better. But I am not a 'feminist'.

I used to take care of my home and kids for many years and enjoyed my time with my family, my children, and myself. But I don't like calling myself a 'home-maker'.

I work in a large organization and enjoy working, learning, and mentoring others. But I don't like calling myself a 'career woman'.

I do speak Tamil but I don't like calling myself a 'Tamilian'. I also don't like calling my family 'Tam Brahm', especially as the other three quarters of it speaks abysmal Tamil and we don't do too many things that are considered to be Brahminical.

Why don't I like labels? Because the moment you plonk yourself in a neat container, you become a part of it. You are no longer an individual but simply a part of a whole. You become sensitive to any comments hurled (or you imagine being hurled) at that group. You become a geometric shape with defined vertices, characteristics, and rules, and are no longer a delightful abstraction.

When someone cracks a joke at Mallus I laugh heartily though I speak Malayalam fluently and am a Mallu on occasion (usually Vishu or Onam). When someone makes a good-natured joke about Tam Brahms I laugh at that too. I laugh at - and make -jokes about women drivers and working moms and home makers. Because there is a little of all of these in me. And because I am a little of everything, I don't laugh at anyone, I laugh with them, and I laugh mostly at myself.

My marriage was arranged, but we found love along the way, and I'll be damned if I get into a debate about which is better.

My daughter gets good grades, but she is not a 'nerd', she learns classical dance, but she is anything but traditional'. She is weird, wacky, emotional, funny, and smart, and though I am often tempted to call her a 'typical teenager' I refrain from doing so.

Because she is so much more than a label, or even a collection of labels - she is herself, that is all. And that is everything. And I stick to my guns even if I end up eating rice with jam or idlis with coffe powder.

Day 12 - Why women put on weight - A scientific analysis

You may remember a scene from Desperate Housewives - I know what you're thinking, those 'housewives' (not my word, that's the name of the show) may have been desperate, but they sure weren't overweight - but bear with me for a minute. In this scene, another woman, a desperately dumpy one for a change, appears after a hiatus apparently having put on mounds of weight.

"Oh my God, whatever happened to you," shriek her desperately skinny friends.

"Oh, you know, I had two children," she responds. I nod finding that a perfectly acceptable response.

"For what? Breakfast?" retort her skinny friends.

But it's a scientifically proven fact - women put on weight after marriage and kids - I know enough women to form a statistically significant group - and both of them agree with me! Okay, just kidding. But jokes apart, there are scientifically proven reasons why women put on weight after marriage and kids.

For starters, as years go by, there creep into this woman a daughter-in-law, a mother, a sister-in-law, several kinds of aunts, friends-in-law, and so on. Where do you think all these people will fit? Volume and surface area and all of that. Basic mensuration. And no, that's not a typo.

Then, as her family grows and the woman becomes wiser and more experienced, everyone needs a piece of her, to show the kids the food on the first shelf in the fridge in that box marked "Food for Kids", to tell the plumber exactly which flush doesn't work in case he didn't quite get the hint from the flotsam and jetsam, to help the kids with their homework which she pretends to understand, to get the kids out of bed so that they can sleep through history class properly, to remind her husband of the names of his friend's wife and kids (Okay so she doesn't remember either, but who's going to know, certainly not the friend!). And if a whole needs to be cut up into so many pieces, the mass of the whole has to be sizable. See, once again scientifically proven. Basic physics.

A woman with young children is a portable dustbin and a model of economics. That food could feed so many hungry kids! But if none of those hungry kids are around, well she has to do the heroic thing. And
when you eat for two and three, then, well, your body weighs more - basic physics.

A woman has to be like a bank locker - people tend to tell her juicy, meaty things that she isn't supposed to let out. So many secrets about so many people, all in one body. And no one wants a tiny locker to stuff all those secrets in. So her frame expands to accommodate them all. Scientific fact. Basic economics.

A woman needs to be decently large to be taken seriously. No one's going to pay you any attention if you look like an anorexic school girl. You can look much more threatening and menacing when you're larger. It's a basic evolutionary need. Basic biology.

Besides, a womam needs to have a cushioned lap for her toddlers to jump up on if there's no room for a trampoline, her shoulders need to be padded to cushion the many broken hearts she will need to heal, and she will need to have a padded bottom so she can bounce back up every time someone knocks her over. Because she's fat. And well, you can't have a skinny woman with a fleshy lap, shoulders, and bottom. That would just look daft. Basic biology.

So, all you portly women out there. Head for the gym if you must, but do it knowing that you are going against how science intended you to be.

Day 11 - Just Because

Why must I eat my breakfast? Why can't I have chocolates for dinner? Why must I get up early? Why can't I beat my sister up? Why must I brush my teeth? Why can't I wear my new pants to bed? Why do clothes need to get washed? Why can't we have all the clothes in the store? Why do other kids have so many birthdays and I only get one? Why should I say Thank You when I get a present I don't really want? Why can't I marry mommy? Why can Daddy sleep with mommy but I can't? Why can't I eat potatoes everyday?

Why can't I have half my class over for a sleepover? Why can't I get a cell phone for my birthday? Why do I need to learn History of all things? Why do I have to be good at everything?

When the questions far outnumber the answers, when their energy far outlasts my patience, I do what parents the world over do. I say "Just because!"

Why do so many children go hungry everyday? Why do fathers rape their own children? Why are women looked upon as fair game? Why do politicians seem to get away with so much? Why is everything always so expensive? Why must we go to work everyday? Why do we work so hard to earn so little honestly when so many others make so much by dishonest means? Why do women have to work so hard to stay pretty? Why are teachers paid so little? Why is everything that is delicious so bad for you? Why are there so many diseases in the world?

So many questions, so few answers. I can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in his heaven, an irate God is crossing his arms, wagging a finger, looking down sternly, and saying, "Just because!"