Month: January 2022

No, I Am Very Much Alive!

The day before yesterday was Makar Shankaranthi. It was also the birthday of a now 72 year old ex colleague of mine KPS,  from Ahmedabad.  A very dynamic young man when I had first met in 1972.

I sent a birthday greetings to him on WhatsApp and expected a thank you response from him which did not come the whole day, nor was WhatsApp showing the blue ticks showing that the message had been seen by the recipient.

It had still not been seen yesterday morning. I was beginning to get worried as people of my age do when messages do not get responded to.

I rang up again at 1.00 PM when to my great relief he answered but when he found out who it was calling went almost into a shock as he had received an Obit Notice about my demise just last week from some other ex-colleagues still around. I told him that I was most decidedly not calling from Vaikuntha and that I was very much alive and kicking. I also chided him for not responding to my message and two earlier phone calls when he answered that he was busy with Makara Shankaranthi matters. This little clip being the most significant part of the festival and which had kept him occupied.

He was flying kites!

Later in the evening he sent me a message as to how the confusion took place. Another ex colleague with a name very similar to my surname but of two first and surname had died last week and all of us got the obit notice about his demise. Since KPS read the notice without his reading glasses and rather absentmindedly, he had mistaken the notice to be for me demise.

 

Has anything like this happened to you?

Strange Behaviour.

While getting ready to visit my dentist earlier this afternoon and without being conscious of it took all the things that I normally carry on my person when going out kept in one particular drawer of my Chest Of Drawers.

Visit over, I came back home, unloaded all the stuff that I had taken and spent the rest of the evening with other pastimes till I took my cardigan off to get ready to go to bed.

It was then that I discovered that I had worn my wrist watch without being aware of having worn it in the first place and not having seen the time on it the whole time. I had used my mobile phone to check the time a number of times and if fact, even used the alarm in the phone to good effect to remind of medication time.

I had worn the wrist watch out of old habit but had not used it due to new habit of using the mobile phone!
NUTS!

Food Again! Moong Dal Pakode.

This image is doing the WhatsApp rounds over here with the caption “Mumbai variant called Pakodacron has arrived.”
This is a spoof on the Covid Epsilon Variant as shown below.

I thought that the pakodacron was quite creative and funny. I also went down memory lane to my Mumbai days when near the shops of my main dealers, a snack bar on the platform of a suburban railway station called Masjid specialised in freshly made hot Moong Dal Pakode. This used to be sent for to accompany cups of hot chai during discussions.
The treat was not served like the image above in nice  dishes but came wrapped in old newspapers and were accompanied by green chillies dipped in lime juice and coated with salt.

Remembering this old treat I have decided to get them made at home tomorrow just to go on a nostalgia trip.

Does the pandemic situation give raise to such developments for you too?

Patience.

I recently developed a severe tooth ache and luckily was able to get my dentist to see me on a Sunday to see what was wrong and to remove the discomfort.

She diagnosed it as a root canal problem and put me on medication to prepare me for the treatment and to manage the pain.

The next appointment was for Wednesday and during that visit I was told that there would have to be three more visits before the treatment would be over. I seriously considered getting rid of the tooth but she advised me to save it by the treatment. I agreed and am now under the regimen of medication and waiting for the next visit due on Monday.

Being the impatient fellow that I am, I simply cannot understand why such a long duration treatment is necessary but am assured by my GP and some friends who have undergone root canal treatment that this is SOP.

When I expressed this impatience to a friend, he suggested that I act my age and to buttress his advice sent me this image.