The Chinese ‘lock trick’ and a need to pee….

I recently read a joke in Readers’ Digest magazine- A teacher sincerely tells a bunch of 5 year olds “You should know that God made everything”.One of the kids lifts his hand and innocently opines “But my Daddy says that everything is made by the Chinese?!”.
The Chinese are everywhere….gone are the days when the term ‘Chinese’ made your mind fill up only with appetizing images of noodles and soup or of Bruce Lee ‘chettan’ and his potent Karate skills….now the Chinese are into everything…they do everything ,they make everything. Apparently they make cheap door locks too by the dozen, and export them all over, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia…and many a time these innocent looking things can mess up your life. A few weeks ago one of my friends got locked up in his room courtesy one of these cheap Chinese innovations, but c’mon that couldn’t happen to a smart, intelligent, resourceful and humble dude like me. I mean getting yourself locked in …..how dumb can that make you feel?? Pretty dumb …as I learnt in the course of time.
A couple of days back I was alone at home , with the wife and kid gone visiting relatives for a week. I was planning to retire early, after gobbling up some poorly made(a.k.a self-made) noodles (Chinese again) .So around 11:30 I drag my lazy self to the couch in the drawing room. I am about to plop down when I realize that it’s quite hot ,so I switch on the AC in full cool, and bang the drawing room door shut.
After half and hour of blissful sleep my bladder conveys a lil feeling of fullness to my brain ,so I make the grand decision to pee….…I re-drag my , by now lazier and sleepier self to the bathroom…voila!!!!…the door lock has jammed …as if by pure magic!
So now its me with a burning need to pee but no means to flee…..the perfect antonym of glee ( Having to pee and not being able to, does bring out the poet in you)
For a few confused seconds I try various innovative calisthenics with the door handle ….but apparently the handle and the lock are working hand in hand…one of those Chinese conspiracies, against poor Indians of course. So now I think of plan B……and realize that there is no plan B ,which is logical too, considering there really wasn’t any concrete kind of plan A either in the first place.(Unless you give the plan A status to the grand peeing program)

Now the advantage of living in Saudi Arabia is that most likely your landlord will not understand a word of what you say and vice versa, so you pretty much mutually leave each other alone (Which I sincerely feel is the best way to carry forward a landlord-tenant relation)…. normally communication is via extremely broken Arabic and sign language (in the reverse order mainly).So a telephonic communication with your landlord is basically like voting for crazy politicians during elections in India….pretty useless, yet it has to be done.
‘salaamualaikum’ says me
‘Walaikum salaam…kaif hal doctoor’ (How are things doctor?)
‘Wajid mushkil….bab sakkar… ana maujood inside…stuck….maloom’ (Big trouble….door closed, me inside,stuck.....get it?).For sake of decency I avoid any references to the other burning issue.
Duh??
‘mawjood miftash extra?’ (do you have an extra key?)
Duh????
By now I realize that the conversation, like me, is going nowhere and its already past mid-night. So I decide to hang up and call one of my rather resourceful contacts who’s been In Saudi for the last 10 years or so. This was the same guy who rescued my afore-mentioned friend from a state of self-inflicted imprisonment a few weeks ago.
“Hello” Me
“He…..ZZZZZ….llooo” My obviously half-asleep maybe-may -not -be savior
“I am stuck ….locked in ..the doors jammed…have to pee also…I ‘m going crazy!”
“ZZZZ….oh.sorry …ZZZ..you seem really busy….ZZZ…will call you later…good night” The phone clicks off

Now the stark reality starts sinking in with all its dreaded possibilities….earlier the big questions in life ( mostly around this time of the night ) were on the lines of ‘ to pee or not to pee’…..now it was basically down to simply how not to pee…..
Whenever I am in a difficult situation I often try to visualize what a Hindi movie hero would do in a similar situation….but unfortunately here I couldn’t remember anything filmy to inspire me. So I do what common sense tells me…….I switch off the AC..the heat I assume will make me sweat more thereby reducing the need to release fluids by any other orifice .I follow my decisive actions with what I sincerely feel is a look of fierce determination on my face ( I must have looked like a stupid dodo when I think of it retrospectively) and lie down on my back, close my eyes and try to remember all the good things that happened to me in my crazy life…….

Voila!!Magic again…..I wake up at around five…….fresh, and most importantly not having a dire need to pee. I call up a friend who arrives soon with a rope and tools ,tosses it up the only accessible window and I manage to wedge the door open. Soon after I manage to rest in ‘Pee’ce!




Moral of the story:
1. Don’t trust Chinese door locks……..they may be cheap, but may end up putting you in trouble deep!For that matter don’t trust anything cheap!!!
2. If you have an uncontrollable desire to pee in an unpeeable environment….switch off the AC/fan if it is on!! Works especially well if you have a Saudi Arabian summer to back you up!



Some links on how to deal with a jammed lock.(Chinese or otherwise!)
http://www.ehow.com/how_6458016_fix-jammed-door-lock.html
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Locksmithing-3110/jammed-lock-removing-door.htm
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080920131926AAtqSTF
Image courtesy: www.1912bungalow.com/Outside_Handle02-thumb.jpg

30000 idiots……. (learning to cure –Part 1)

FLASHBACK (in 24 bit colour....I’m not that old for a black and white/Eastman color flashback)

1995, February….anatomy dissection hall, Medical college Trivandrum.
Scene – half asleep, gangly, geeky, nerdy guy (The character in this flashback may look, talk and behave nutty like me , but is not me....similarly the other characters may resemble real life nut-cases, but that obviously is just co-incidental ;) .The first person narration is purely for my own ease) looks through his thick spectacle lenses, with a sense of ‘shock and awe’ at the specimen of a dissected human upper limb placed in front of him (His mind is pretty blank as usual but at least now he realizes why this stuff is called ‘gross’ anatomy).A slightly more gross, but live, human form is staring at him through thick-lensed, thick-framed spectacles, across the table – no awe ,just shock….mixed with equal measures of disgust and contempt – my anatomy examiner.

“Tell me the surface anatomy of the ulnar nerve” Madame X threw her question at me with contempt (ps: the names have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the glamour quotient of the characters in questions….it is purely for sake of being unidentifiable).


“Uh…the ulnar nerve…duh….it’s surface is …er…smooth..??” I am sure Madame x does not have a high opinion of rhetorical ,dumb questions as answers to her straight questions…but c’mon I wouldn’t have answered that way if I was sure of the answer would I? Besides from the specimen I had in front of me the ulnar nerve did look kinda smooth.

Madame X’s anatomy ,physiology and biochemistry all got quite ruffled it seemed.The lady was turning various interesting shades of purple and blue.

Madame X upped her ante.

“Tell me about the elbow joint”
This was easy
“The elbow joint…..it kind of folds at the elbow…”I even demonstrated this magical phenomenon for her sake.
Madame X wasn’t impressed, unless it was routine for her eyes to pop out of their sockets when she is impressed.





Madame X was at loss for words (Expletives actually) “ Have you ever attended your dissection classes??????”

Now that was taking it too far.I mean the dissection classes were THE place to discuss movies, cricket, girls, non-existent love lives, ....I mean we even discussed Shakespearean literature....”To pee or not to pee” was a constant dilemma haunting our tortured souls.

Anyway the point was I did attend dissection classes .......very regularly.

“Yes Madam”
“And what pray did you do in these dissection classes?sleep?”
I would’ve liked to explain how the previously mentioned activities kept us wide awake during dissection hours, but Madame X obviously was really not into that empathy thing.
“No Madam”

Next she went right into the heart of the issue (forgive my rotten puns) and pulled out a formalin preserved section of a human heart from the steel tray in front of her.
“Tell me about chambers of the heart”
I didn’t have the heart to do this (there I go again), but adventurous that I was I quickly pointed with my quivering index finger to the 4 shrunken cavities -this,that,this this.....chambers of the heart” So there.
Now madame X obviously was interested in hearing a wee-bit more detailed explanation- like the names of the chambers for a start, but she wasn’t going to pry it out of me that easy.Brevity was always one of my innate strengths...especially when answering in Viva exams!



There was a grave expression on her face now “Hmmm ok...I’ll give you a last chance” Her hands reached out to a set of polished human bone lying on one corner of the table. She meticulously selected five of the bones and handed it across. With the kind of mood she wouldn’t have been surprised if she just threw them across the hall and said “Fetch”

“OK...identify each of these correctly and I’ll give you a pass grade”
I looked with an even graver expression than hers on the remains of some poor soul who was probably watching me from up there and laughing away to glory.
So now 5 distinct, interesting looking bones, stood between me and failure.

I picked up each specimen gingerly like those guys would do in CSI Miami (Only difference was here the murder was not yet over...though you could never tell when madame X would tip over and do a little dissection on me)

“This is the..er....hmm.....femur”
Slightly amused expression on Madame X’s face.
“This here is ah...a humerus.....?!” Smile on Madame X’s face ....maybe that was humorous to her.(That's the last bad pun, I promise)

“This is definitely a tibia” Smile + surprise?
“This one is a Fibula” Smile 2x + surprise 3x

Now I picked up the last long bone from the pile, gave it a good look...and realised that I was at the end of my luck...
I kept silent for a minute. By now Madame X was beaming and writing something on the sheet of paper in front of her. Seeing that I was maintaining my silence she pushed the sheet in front of me. A big zero stared back at me.....it was all over....I was crushed.
Madame X was still smiling though and as if to rub salt into my wounded anatomy she tapped on the elaborately drawn zero with here pen again, this time drawing a line right through the middle of the zero. OK...so now she feels that even a zero is too good for me!!!
Now she looked curiously at me ...and again tapped the centre of the zero.
What the heck....???????



Post-script

I passed the exam; though it took a while for me to understand that the honourable Madame-X was actually trying to help me by drawing what she thought was the radius of a circle. Don’t you get it?...line through the zero is a diameter and half of that is the radius and well the bone in my hand also happened to be a radius etc. Etc. After the exam I thanked Madame X profusely for her leniency. She replied that she had earlier had a look at my theory marks (Which were not all that bad, I might mention) and so assumed that I was just having a bad day at the office and so didn’t want to flunk me......besides I got my bones right...right?!


Post-script to post-script

The truth is that theory exams are easy meat for anyone who cares to sit and mug up the whole curriculum...but to apply the same practically you need to understand what’s going on why and how exactly. I never did make an extra effort for that during non- lecture classes like dissection sessions (It was understood that lecture classes, like night, were created by god for rest and sleep) and honestly neither did most of the tutors around inspire me even remotely to make an effort. It was basically mug and vomit. The more eloquently you vomit, the better you score. Interesting having a thorough mugged up knowledge often helps you through viva sessions also because many of the viva examiners are really no better than a theory exam. Evaluation of students is also an art in itself I suppose...an art which unfortunately very few medical teachers care to master. There are around 450 Medical colleges in India, churning out about 30000 doctors and scattering them all over the country and abroad. This still falls far short of an ideal doctor to population ratio …..that however is a different issue altogether.
What set me thinking of penning this bit was the movie ‘3 idiots’. I am sure a majority of those who had seen the movie would identify at least partly with ‘learn by rote’ system satirised in the movie. I can obviously speak with authority only for my own medical education (actually my undergraduate medical education..... because I was blessed with some fantastic teachers during my specialisation period) and I must say when I was doing my under-graduate medicine, the only route to take for ‘success’ was the ‘rote route’.
Medical education is apparently undergoing changes. There ARE a lot of faculty around who are really interested in changing things …..and things ARE changing…at least they’re beginning to….but back then things were quite different...





image courtesy:http://hillbuzz.files.wordpress.com

A passport to hell!!

Getting a passport for my daughter was something on my mind for quite some time. However my constant practice had indeed honed and perfected my procrastinating abilities.(Actually my modified policy is more like – don’t put off doing anything….just don’t do it!!!)
Anyway circa July 2009, I was finally on the doorsteps of the gateway to the world. I’m sure the babus (More of ‘babis’ actually….if that is the feminine of babus…actually what is the feminine of babus? Bibis?),inside the Kochi passport office describe their hallowed abode in even more grandiloquent terms. I had already made an online application form for my daughter and had an appointment for exactly 9:00 AM.So here I am with all the documents and Photostats of documents and back-ups of the Photostats all in plastic folder walking up to the security ‘chettan’ and confidently announcing “I have an appointment for 9:00 clock”.
Security chettan stares blankly at me in reply.Hard of hearing maybe me thinks , so I lift up the application form from the file and show the bold print saying ‘9:00 AM’.
Security chettan continues to stare (a wee-bit more blank I think).Hard of hearing and sight?? Dumb too maybe?
“Appointment eh? Eh?EH?” a gruff outburst pours out. OK not dumb….at least not in the ‘can’t talk’ mode. Actually quite a talkative guy, as I find out during the next few minutes, when he launches into explaining that the appointment thingy and the online-application thingy is something like himself…quite a farce. “You want give application, you take token, you stand line , you wait, you give ,you understand, you go”.
I go.
The next joker I have to meet is stamping out numbers on the application form. This is how the fully computerised online application works. You get your token number stamped, You wait till your number is called and then you give your forms to another babu/babi who points out each minute mistake in the form and often affords you an invitation for a revisit to correct the deficiencies. (Now what ‘online’ has to do with the whole system was getting curiouser and curiouser for me…something like alice in wonderland…..with a bit of malice in wonderland thrown in free!).

Anyway I finally mange to get a darshan of the first ‘babi’ in the hierarchy after waiting in the line for a couple of hours (oh maybe online was ‘on’line’?!!).Anyway babi dearest , a rather stern and ominous looking lady touching the wrong side of 50, made short work of my application. Apparently I needed either me or my wife to have each others name listed in the passport as spouse so as to ensure that we are married ,so that we can ascertain the fact that we are both Nadia’s parents and apparently there was some confusion whether a marriage certificate actually proved that me and my wife are actually me and my wife ……at the end I wondered (with a slight grin ) whether I was married at all….ok now if that confused you as much as it did me, you should be getting a hang of how the passport office works and secondly, there was the need of both the parents original passports, (not one parent’s alone) for verification (which I admit made much more sense than the former issue which I’m still trying to figure out exactly).Anyway more than the substance of the lady’s comments it was the tone that made my day. I’m convinced that the staffs in the passport office have to pass some basic (or maybe even higher course) in rudeness before they get a job there. The absence of smiles and politeness was so consistent that you simply have to hand it to them!!


Anyway , having a perfectly good day messed up ,I decided to have a little revenge. Actually I really wanted an old fashioned hindi movie type thing where I could beat up all the staff in the office till I reach the big boss himself and then say something like “ Yeh meri beti Nadia ke rejected passport application ke liye” followed by the customary dishum-dishum and so on.However I restricted myself to calling up the higher-ups in the passport office to clarify issues. Now this was a two hour long attempt at various numbers listed in the web-site of the Kochi passport office (including one apparently for complaints) and at the end realisation struck me that the higher-ups are apparently so high-up that they simply can’t be reached ! (at least not by mere mortals like me).I finally ended my own misery by shooting off an e-mail to the only id listed on the web….I know it would be a miracle if I get any kind of response…God might respond to your prayers once a while ,but the regional passport officer never (Old jungle saying).

The good part is I think I’ve hit upon a fantastic solution to prevent brain-drain from India. Just set up more passport offices with exemplary staff like the above mentioned office…..nobody will dare going out…..and even if they do, most of what brains they had would have been drained out by the RPOs!!Jai hind!

PS: Apparently after some recent public outcry the functioning of the Kochi passport office had been improved. If this is ‘improved’ I shudder to think what the previous situation was!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4rR98ve_4
http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/16/stories/2008081659851000.htm

Yes we can! (Nadia's diary -5)

There are some days which kinda change your life dramatically..something like waking up from a hypnotic spell on the cue of a finger snap.(Actually that snapping stuff  happens only in the movies I think).Anyway yesterday was one of THOSE days for me….the day I got my first Churidar!!!!(See attached pic) It goes without saying I looked uber-cool (kind of like that word whatever it means), but more importantly it made me realize that one of the essential rights of under-5s is the right to dress with dignity and style (not necessarily in that order).Think of it ,when it comes to dressing we are mute spectators to our overbearing mothers (crazy fathers sometime joining in this sadistic pursuit).How many a times have we been subjected to frilly yellows and garish pinks and been gawked at following this ceremony  with shrill choruses of ‘oh cho chweets’ and other such condescending ,primitive gibberish.Under 5s of the world unite….it’s time to rebel (Anytime is a good time to rebel at our age…but that is another matter)…you can’t pick your parents (though you should learn to pick ON them),but you can certainly pick your dresses!!and if you don’t like the  silly garbs your dumb parents foster upon you…throw,tear,crumple,destroy…use any constructive technique to drill   your viewpoint into their thick-heads.Remember violence is not just an option…when it comes to weirdo parents, it is the ONLY option!!!Rebel in style ..to dress in style.As that Obama guy put it ‘YES WE CAN!!’

(nadia is my daughter - actual age 2 and half years,mental age - 2 and half years, attitude - somewhere around 18 years)

delhi sick!!!

I’m not normally into movie reviews, but the degree of mental trauma I suffered on account of being a mute (more like shell-shocked into muteness) witness to this man-made disaster forced me to pen these words…..and like our good-for-nothing politicians repeatedly do, I condemn this act of terrorism in the name of entertainment and empathise deeply with the other affected idiots/suckers who fell for the promos. The movie does have some plus points I admit ….(I know ,I know …plus points duh?) ,Well Rahman’s music is cool (so go buy a pirated MP3), Sonam Kapoor is cute ( so go download pics of her and keep gawking if you have nothing better to do) and the few shots of the Taj Mahal look great (So go get a post card )……..but for heaven’s sake a movie attempting a sermon on the moral ineptitude of modern Indian society based on a ‘Kaala Bandar’ analogy!!!???I mean just switch on any news channels and you’ll find scores of ‘Bandars’ of all political hues and colors…why bother spending 150 bucks in these recession hit times?As for Abhishek Bacchan ….well all I can say he saved the best for the last ..maybe if he had donned the ‘Kaala Bandar’ outfit through out the movie it might at least have had a semblance of an attempt at comedy.Husband as 'Kala Bandar' and wife in the Pink Panther….the Bacchan family is sure turning into one colourful and exotic zoo !!!

Driving glory

Disclaimer
The below details are absolutely non-fictious.Any resemblance to any living or dead idiot is as intentional as possible.

“I’ve got a fast car…..”.Whenever I hear that famous Tracy Chapman song my mind conjures up the pleasant image of a cool guy in a flashy red sports car ,a ‘scorpions’ tune on his lips,wind in his hair etc etc.Nowadays the image remains more or less the same except that the dude is now replaced with a dudess (cool female of the homo sapiens linn. Species), a ‘scorpions’ tune on HER lips, wind in HER hair etc etc.Duh?
It was a couple of weeks ago when I was cruising along in my not so flashy car when something red and in a terribly tearing hurry whizzed past me (overtaking from the wrong side too) .Was it a bird ,was it a plane….no… it wasn’t superman either…at least not the man part. I was literally shaken and it took all of my presence of mind (whatever little is present )and incredible skills (incredible as in you wouldn’t believe they’re so bad )behind the wheel to keep my poor car steady. The joker in the red Skoda Laura was a 40 something lady, generously built and nourished …and generously made-up, decked under a couple of coats of heavy make-up in an apparently not so successful attempt at looking younger.The finer details of the creature of course registered only when the Skoda rather hesitantly skidded to a halt on the red signal ahead.(For a moment I wondered whether the bull would actually get turned on by the red light and cut through it).But she did know at least some of the traffic rules it seemed.
.There was a time not so long ago when you got angry at female drivers because they were too slow.You kept honking away to glory and the only discernable result would be a stinging in your ear.The sari or salwar in front would be absolutely unfazed, and when you finally go past them they’d give you a frosty look as if to suggest that honking the car horn was either plain indecent or only for emergencies. There was also a time when a women driver basically meant an elegant lady in some ‘feminine’ kind of vehicle –Maruti 800s,fiats ,santros etc.But now you have these characters riding anything you can imagine from bikes to SUVs and riding them as recklessly as the guys do!The worst part is you can't even cuss them freely …no matter how wrong they may be!The liberated ‘Bharatiya Nari’ is surely going places…..fast.

disclaimer 2
This blog is pure nonsense and readers are advised to take it as such.I am not sexist, racist or any of the similar despicable ‘ists’ except maybe a bit of an eternal pessimist.

The agony of Immobility!

The last week I was reminded of ‘without glasses’, one of the classic essays of Robert Lynd I had read in school. It was a rather more grave situation…my normal existence itself was in question.Anxiety was seeping into the cores of my heart with each passing minute.I was sad, angry ,confused and helpless….I was literally immobile.
No I didn’t have a paralytic attack or a catatonic attack and neither did I receive my credit card bill….I was without my mobile for a day.24 hours of pure unadulterated ‘immobile’ agony!

Flashback (Try to imagine it in black and white…feels more flashbackish)
I was trying to act a bit too cute for my age, attempting a ‘long jump’ across a not so tiny puddle decorating the centre of a road on my street…I did cross over a la Anju Bobby George, but my dear mobile had other ideas as it decided to take a casual little dive from my shirt pocket into the muddy waters below.

For a brief moment time stood still (as did yours truly), then with palpitations progressively increasing in amplitude and frequency, I ditched out my poor wet little phone from the evil sea (ok..puddle…but you must understand that the melodrama was quite suited to the context, considering the terrible ‘existential angst’ I went through in that moment of despair and by the way that ‘existential angst’ bit was borrowed from a friend who of course used it in a more spiritual context).The mobile was dead. As dead as a dead mobile can be.


The next few hours, I flitted between sanity and my true self, trying to figure out what best to do next.The brave person that I am, I managed to pull myself together to get a bit proactive.So now here I was holding a hairdryer in my not so sure hands waiting to revive my little baby.I had hardly embarked on the operation when I saw the LCD screen getting a bit wavy like a Salvador Dali abstract….Eureka!!!Apparently heat can damage LCD screens !! Well that was that …I had added insult to injury (or death ,I wasn’t sure ).So I decided to play it safe.I disassembled whatever parts I could disassemble and laid them under the fan for an overnight drying session.After all ever night is followed by a sunrise and all that crap.

Well the sun didn’t rise to the occasion this time. My reassembled phone refused to breathe. I would’ve tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, if I new which part of the mobile was the mouth. Anyway, I trudged to the service center and handed over the corpse to the morbidly obese guy behind the counter. His acromegalic face had a striking resemblance to the ‘great Khali’(and for the ignoramuses among you who don’t know Khali, tune into ‘Headlines today’ or ‘Aak tak’channel anytime, anyday )
“Had a bath with the little guy?”queried an amused looking Khali.The irritating grin on the guys face made me want to turn him into a corpse too.
“No,fell down..into a puddle”
“Hmmmppp…you should be careful.These are delicate things”
“Well..so will it live?”
Now Mr Know it all’s face was grim “Nothing can be said now..I need some time”
You’d almost think that he’ll also ask you to arrange some blood, and intimate all the near and dear mobiles.
“How much time?” My voice felt abnormally desperate.The last time I felt this was when my wife went home and I asked her how long before she’d come back.Of course then I was hoping for a lengthier duration!!

“Come back tomorrow ,same place, same time” The nutcase was seeing too many TV shows.


End of flashback (Back to Eastman color)
So that’s how I ended up in catatonic stupor, biting my nails to glory.It’s like Robert Lynd says in his essay (which is basically about how the author had to spend time miserably without his spectacles), you don’t even need to use your mobile, but just knowing that you can use it if you want to gives a kind of emotional security. It’s really amazing what all you can do with this little gizmo.
Well anyway miracles do happen…little ones at least. The next day I met the ‘Khali’ look-alike, he had a grin and some extremely good news to offer me.My mobile would live to ring, sing, sms and mms another day.