Month: September 2011

Boomerangers.

A phenomenon worth headlines is that many young people are moving back in with their parents due to the current economic conditions.

These youngsters returning to empty nests are called the Boomerangers. I like that term.

Our son boomeranged after he started making a living on his own on four occasions. We were delighted on all the four. He is now a permanent fixture and I am very happy with that situation.

I however have a peculiar situation in my home and this post is to ask my readers to suggest a term to describe another phenomenon.

My then 92 year old father permanently moved in with me 2+ years ago. What should I call him? My friend who visited last week suggested Prodigal Father. Does not appeal to me though in some ways it is logical. I am looking for a generic term that we can apply to any parent moving in with a child. Who knows, I may become one in my doddering old age.

Nature.

I was treated to a delightful surprise this morning when I went out to sit in the veranda to have my morning cuppa.

This photograph was taken from the top. This flower suddenly appeared this morning in our garden. I have never seen either this flower or the plant before, or rather, perhaps have not noticed the plant before. It is obviously a wild flower and I am unable to identify its name with my limited knowledge. (Since writing that, I have been able to identify it thanks to some intense googling.) It is called the Indian Mock Strawberry.

You can click on the picture to see an enlarged version.

If you trace the stem of the plant from the top to the bottom, you will see that it has grown from a small crevice in the platform of the veranda. Obviously a seed has flown in and settled in a small little space at the corner and the plant has grown from there!

Had I planted the seed, the effect would not have been as spectacular.

As we would say in Hindi, Wah Kya Baath Hai! The nearest translation would be something like Wow! Awesome!!

Weekly Recap – 11.

Saturday saw great news coming in from my brother Arvind and his lovely wife Shanta to advise me that they will come to Pune and stay with us during my surgery and recovery, for as long as they will be needed. It is a great relief. Apart from anything else, Arvind, Shanta and I have not had the time and space to have long talks in many years and I look forward to such talks during my convalescence.

Sunday was Visarjan day and we got a box full of modaks again. Yummy.

Monday was sans newspapers and therefore sans crossword puzzles as it was holiday to recover from yesterday’s send-off processions and parties. I was able to catch up with a lot of reading that had fallen behind.

Tuesday saw two people from my past ringing up to announce that they would visit over the weekend. Jagdish from Delhi an old colleague and dear friend along with his wife Asha would drop in on the 16th and Amit, Ranjan’s college classmate from the early nineties would come to spend the week end with us. I had sent a logistics mail to Arvind to which he replied the way only he can. Big highlighted fonts saying “Don’t Worry!” Tuesday also gave me a telephone call all the way from California from my sister in law which cheered me up considerably as only calls from her can.

Wednesday was totally event less! Just another ordinary day.

Thursday was another totally event less day.

Friday saw my friend from Delhi Jagdish and his lovely wife Asha visit us. We have known each other for the last 44 years and both have been great friends. We were colleagues in the same company for 23 years and it was nice going down memory lane and catching up with all that happened since. Both have had serious health and family problems like all of us and letting off some steam helped too.

Since Jagdish was with me, we made many phone calls to mutual friends and had a grand time reconnecting with all. A new mail group and possibly a reunion is on the cards.

For some strange reason, WordPress misbehaved and my LBC post did not go up at the scheduled time. I was very tired after a the long meeting with Jagdish and Asha and did not check whether the post had gone live. When I discovered that it had not, I had to intervene manually to get it published. Better late than never I suppose.

Breath.

Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Akanksha, Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Nema, Noor,Ordinary Joe, Paul,Maria the Silver Fox, Padmum , Rohit, Will knott, and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get seventeen different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Padmum.

The breathing apparatus that all of us are endowed with performs two functions. One it takes in oxygen and throws out carbon di oxide; and the other is that it gives us the ability to smell things. The former is our main line life support and the latter a sensory organ to enhance our lives.

I would prefer that I restrict myself to talk about the latter as there is little that I can talk about the former.

Earlier this week, I had posted about the mogra flowering in our garden. Just breathing normally in the morning, I found that the scent can be overwhelming. Mogra in garland form is often worn by Indian woman as adornment on their heads.

I believe that this was the old way of using the scent of the flowers as deodorant!

I had also written about Curry Wars. while the former was about something pleasant, the latter was about people’s willingness to go to war over unfamiliar odours from others kitchens.

Let me take two more of the latter category to explain how we have been brain washed into liking or disliking odours. This is a peculiar human trait not seen other creatures.

Bad Breath, or Halitosis, is the most off-putting problem one can come across in situations where one is in close proximity with someone else with that problem. It is also the most embarrassing message to convey to someone with the problem by someone else about it. As a sales manager, I have had to carry out that unpleasant task with a few salesmen.

On that score as well as on being at the receiving end of Body Odour, my breathing, and I am sure other people and more importantly customers breathing would be assaulted and that could be disastrous for salesmen.

I was not an expert on the problem, and would ask them to go to the company doctor to get proper advise and would arrange to pay for the treatment. I was not a martinet but this was just one of those things that helped salesmen become better at their jobs. Eventually, they would appreciate what was done for them and hopefully they spread the word.

Here are the two cases where one taking in the breath has to suffer discomfort from someone else’s problem with bad breath and an inability to identify his own body odour by perhaps defective breathing or may be by just indifference.

Or is it our conditioning that we have become like that? Surely, our ancestors without access to tooth brushes, tooth paste, mouth washes, deodorants and medical advise, led comfortable social lives? Did they find Bad Breath and Body Odour offensive? I have not come across any indication that they did.

Just some rather odd thoughts on breath(ing).

Rains.

Global warming and Climate change are two terms interchangeably used and or used to establish a cause effect relationship. I am not very well versed in this phenomenon but something that has been happening this year makes me want to learn more about it, and rather than interrupt what I am in the process of learning now, I shall save it for the immediate post surgery period in October.

In Maharashtra in India where I live, the rains traditionally should have left with the Visarjan festival which was on the 11th inst. As I write this, it is raining cats and dogs and the photograph on top and the one below are of the rain’s intensity in my small garden today. Our press reports that the monsoon has not withdrawn as usual, and is expected to continue till the end of September.

My regular reader, known to other readers as Cheerful Monk, has had forest fire followed by flash floods which caused much damage to her property. The Eastern Sea Board of the USA was lashed with hurricanes and the UK and Ireland have been lashed with high winds and rain the last two days. Texas is still experiencing bush fires due to drought conditions. In all these places, I have friends who have been affected one way or the other.

In Pakistan and North and North Eastern parts of India floods have been playing havoc and causing loss of lives and crops/property. Pakistan particularly has been experiencing much damage for the second year running.

My personal experience the last three years has been very erratic behaviour of the seasons in India and particularly where I live.

I believe that something needs to be done but as with most important matters regarding our earth and its inhabitants, politics plays an important part and I have decided to let events unfold and merely be a spectator. I suppose that I can afford to take that stance as unlike Cheerful Monk, I haven’t lost anything. Yet.

The Brain.

There are some mysteries that never get solved and this is one of them.

My late wife always told me that I had no brains. The endearing term that she used was “Buddhu”. I usually agreed with her so that a non issue did not become a cause for major doo. (Difference Of Opinion.)

She was not the only one. My regular readers would remember another great person in my life who not only thought that decades ago, but who continues to do so even now. My father.

Both would however grant me that I was a successful Manager. Successful mind you, not necessarily a Manager with brains.

I wish that this report had been made public when Urmeela was alive. I also wish that I could get my father to accept at least now, that I had an extraordinary, by which I mean extra large, brain. To that latter hope, I must add that for him, no report from any authority other than his own parental one would do justice to judgments made about his first-born’s brains.

I thank my ex colleague for sending me the link to this report with the comment that he finally accepts that my brain is bigger, but not necessarily better than his own.