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Hello all readers/friends/fellow bloggers!

Dad was in and out of hospital 3 times in January/February and had some minor endoscopic surgeries. He was scheduled to have a couple more, but then got fed up and refused to have anything more to do with hospitals.

It’s been two months that he’s been homebound with spells of down time. He sometimes resumes reading the newspaper and doing his beloved crosswords. Has not shown interest in turning on the computer or returning to blogging. His phone is for the most part, on silent and with me.

I cannot tell you all if he will ever come back to the blog. 🙂 Wish you all well.

Ranjan

My Indian friends who read this will immediately appreciate the fact and the joke behind this image.

Thayir Saadam is simply a dish of a mixture of cooked rice and yoghurt sometime seasoned with mustard seed, lentils, curry leaves and red chilli, which is a comfort food in India.

Quite how popular it is can be shown by what happened at a recent meeting at my home.

Two weeks ago, it was my turn to host the monthly meeting and lunch of a group of Seniors in which I am a member of. The youngest in the group is 75. You can imagine what a rambunctious group it would have been by just one simple change to our normal meetings, of that day. We always adjourn to a restaurant after the meeting for lunch but,  on that day, one gent decided that he needed a special dish not readily available in restaurants and I had the pleasure of contacting a catering service specialising in that particular combination called Dhal Batti Churma to get it delivered at my home. Knowing however, the quirks of my cohorts, I had also organised some Thayir Saadam made at home, just in case there was demand for it. Lo and behold, that turned out to be the most popular item on the menu that afternoon.

For me, it is a daily must-have comfort food and I take particular pains to set the yoghurt every alternate day so that we never run out of it.

Have you had it?  If not, please do try and I bet that you will fall for it like all of us did that day.

My young friend LCG posted this in Facebook.

I think that this is one of the most profound thoughts though, I suspect that the originator had humour in mind rather than profundity.

This year’s father’d day has been rather unusual for me with a flood of WhatsApp messages greeting me for it from people who think that I have been a good father and from those for whom I am a father figure. Both ideas rather unsettling for me.

To add to my musings on this matter, my now fifty year old son Ranjan, came to have a chat with me about some things which is very unusual for him as he is quite busy with his own affairs. His talks took me back to my initial experiences with him as a child.
This photograph was sent to me by a nephew who is now 58! Ranjan would have been about six months old and I did not have a camera those days to record his earlier days. This photograph was taken by a very dear family friend and mentor who had a camera but, it was pre colour film days.
That child today!
I have enjoyed being a father as well as a father figure. How about you, dear reader?

I live in Pune which is sometimes even now called “Pensioner’s Paradise”.

So, it does not come as a surprise to me when I responded to a survey in Facebook and the results are as follows:

Too many “Over Seventy” reprobates with nothing else to do other than answer surveys!

My favourite perch, my recliner, broke down during the third week of January and I approached the manufacturer’s Customer Service telephone number to request for repairs and also reupholstering.

After the usual tryst with numbers to be pressed I was told that someone from Pune will contact me and arrange for both the repair and reupholstering. This was confirmed on January 22, 2022.

After that, it took me a few more telephone calls before the local technician could call and give me an estimate and this happened on the 27th of January. After receiving the estimate and giving approval by effecting part payment on the same date, I was assured that I will be hearing from them again shortly.

That ‘shortly’ was actually a few more telephone calls from me before the recliner was finally collected on the 19th of February, 2022.

Again after a few telephone calls reminding the service centre, the recliner finally was delivered on the day before yesterday, after forty days from my first contacting the Customer Service Number.

After effecting the final payment after delivery and getting a receipt from them, I texted the local service centre – “From my first request to final delivery of my recliner it has taken 40 days. Is this normal?”

The response is classic. “No, it normally takes 35 days but, the upholstery worker was away from work for three days and it took five days more”.

How do you like that for chutzpah?