Zen and Dentistry.

A few days back, I had the misfortune to chip my tooth. Suddenly a whole new vista opened in front of me. A vista of pain. Not a very welcome one, but educating nonetheless. The next few lines deal with how Vibhu da brahman found pain and then dealt with it.

It was dinner time and I was eating the South Indian staple meal ender, Curd Rice or as we like to call it Majge Anna. It is nothing special, just simple steamed rice with lots of cool curds or yoghurt, salt to taste and a dash of the house pickle. As you can imagine, weak teeth should be safe with this soft, gooey combo right? Wrong. One bite into this gruel and a sudden flare of pain.
Now, I have heard people describe pain in colors, so here goes.. It was white hot one moment and then receded to a dull mauve (sounds really sophisticated, Mauve, roll the sound off your tongue) and when I was brushing my teeth, a giant fireball right in front of my face.

Every guy has this macho image of himself being able to stand pain with a grin. Right now my grin was looking very disturbingly like a cross between a whimper and a grimace. So told myself, Vibhu da Brahman, shame on you, a tooth-ache getting you down? All 180 cm, 80 Kilos of you?
So decided to set my jaw and grit my teeth and show my mouth who is the boss.

Well.... bad move. All this setting the jaw and gritting the teeth is good enough if you have got Dabur or Colgate teeth, but with teeth that chip with Curd rice, bad mojo. Another white flare, mauve and great fireball later, I was swooning on my bed. Wondering how I will survive the night, before I can get to the dentist.

So, lying on one side was thinking of ways to get my mind of my teeth. I discovered that my brain actually loves my teeth and it is disgustingly hard to get it thinking of anything else. (No wonder I am fat! My brain keeps feeding the mouth so my teeth do not get bored.) I recalled all the ching pong movies I had seen as a child. Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee never felt pain. They conquered it as only the ching pongs can. So, I started ticking of the various chinkie methods of alleviating pain.

Acupuncture was out. No way was I sticking needles on myself. So tried acupressure. I jabbed, pressed, massaged all my toes, extremities and various other reachable parts of my body, but nothing helped. Went and burnt paper messages hoping the ching Gods will take away my Indian pain. Sadly no go and no show. Though my mom did come out and was happy to see me burning incense and prostrating before the house gods. Little did she know!

Then I hit on Zen and the art of pain control. Doused the fires and stuck the Incense on a holder and rushed to my room. Assumed a warrior stance, feet at shoulder width, hips bent, fists out at waist level. Evenly poised to spring like a dragon and crush ten enemies. All for one chipped tooth. Then I started intoning, pain is good, pain is your friend, find the pain and pull it in. Pain makes you a better fighter. Pain is good, pain is your friend, find the pain and pull it in. Pain makes you a better fighter. Pain is good..... Well all I got from that was achy hips. It is actually hard to bend your hips when you are this, how can I put it, X axially expansive.

Disgusted with Zen, I got back in bed and started thinking. The pain was driving me nuts and glimpses of my life were flashing by me. All those candy and the ice creams, the sugar treats, stuff my dreams were made of, suddenly got horns and turned in to nightmares. Then out of nowhere a snippet of information flew out of the recesses of my mind. I had read somewhere that Sexual thoughts usually drives any other thought from your mind. It was supposed to be a biological thing. No wonder Biologists are so thoughtful and distracted.

Latching on to this thought as a god send, I started intoning Beautiful, Blonde Bombshell on your Bedside or BBBOYB. My mind started a ten speed preview of all the BBBs I had ever seen or dreamt of. Found one and then concentrated hard. Suddenly BBBOYB was happening. The fireball was turning in to tendrils of beautiful blonde hair. Then just when I thought I had it licked, (the pain, that is) I smiled at my BBB and wham! mauve again. All of a sudden, the blonde and the fireball merged and my pain was worse off now.

Tossing and turning I somehow managed to fall asleep. Woke up in the morning with a funny feeling in my mouth. Sent my tongue to explore it, bad move.. The world turned hazy and I started whimpering, again. Managed to brush my teeth, have my coffee and started calling friends up for dental references.

Located one near my residence and got an appointment that very evening. The rest of the day was spent looking like a gorrila with piles during berry season. Then came the acid test. Got to the dentist and sat on his chair. Opened wide and guess what happened. I saw him smile. Not a very pleasant smile. A, Now I can send my son abroad for further studies or finally Seychelles here I come! smile. The dentist was wearing his mask, so caught the smile slightly muffled, but it was there nevertheless.

The dentist asked me how I felt and I gave him the look. He saw it and immediately started working. He started dictating to his assistant and giving me a running commentary. No.5 is chipped and needs a RC (root canal), left molar gone. I said no, then he gave me a look and poked with his metal thingie. A flare and then I said ok, left molar gone. By now I could actually see/feel my pretty little green C notes flying away on pigeon wings.

He worked his magic, snapped a couple of X rays and scheduled ten visits for me on his dairy. I gasped, Ten!! I asked. Then he made me lie down again on the chair, handed me a hand mirror and showed me. With his metal thingie. There are some things a man should never have to see too often, I believe that sight may have put me off dentition for life. He patted my shoulder and said, son, you do not worry. In the end, it will all look natural. That will be Rs.500, please.

I paid up and left. Ten visits later, I was actually feeling good. The RCs were not so bad, He worked hard and fast. My pretty little C notes did complete their migration from one bank account to another, but in the end I could chew on both sides of my mouth and actually feel all my teeth healthier. My brain was happy, I was happy.

One side effect though. Now for some strange reason, whenever I see a beautiful blonde on the telly, my teeth are set on edge and I have to change channels.. Whatever can the reason be??

Jalgaon - Self Realisation.

Just went on a trip with my Area Manager to Jalgaon. It is a town about two fifty kilometers away from Nashik, a town that is about 300 kilometers from Mumbai, that is about three thousand kilometers from Delhi and so on and so forth.

There were no train tickets available, so booked a couple of seats in a "luxury" bus. Non Air Conditioned and seats from hell. Started off at night hoping to reach by early morning. Grab couple of hours of sleep and then attack the seminar like the very devils. By the prerogative of being my boss, he cornered the window seat. The bus was late and then we started at around 10 p.m. We still had a window of a couple of hours before the seminar.

Then we embarked on a trip of self realization. I really discovered what a great conversationalist I am that day. One moment he is awake and the next, bang asleep. I spent the whole of next day trying to discover the magic sentence that turned him out like a candle in the wind!

When I realized that my comments and intellectual treatises were falling on deaf ears, I decided to make myself comfortable and go to sleep. But, darn it, when can you ever sleep when you really need it? Suddenly this guy wakes up sneezing and everything and I discover that he has a dust allergy and can't take the window anymore, so we exchange seats and miracle or miracles, I fall asleep.

The next thing I know is that our great Sol is shining on my face and my boss is greatly worried. I ask him where we are and what we are doing there and he replies that we were stuck in a traffic jam outside Nashik for about five hours in the night and yes the strange clicking sound I was hearing in my dreams was him biting his nails to the quick.

Now this guy is really wrought up because the seminar cannot start without him and we are already about three hours late. The driver on guessing our predicament, then starts stopping for everything from breakfast, to fuel, to admiring the morning scenery and cool breeze.

Before my boss could start gnawing on his fingers, with my great presence of mind, I remind him to call our colleague and ask him to hold fort. Then I suggest getting coffee and breakfast at the pit stop. We place the order and start talking shop, when our neighbor in the bus orders breakfast. He gets it and we are still waiting. So call the owner of the restaurant and guess what? No more breakfast. Being too polite to bash him up, we just utter a few choice multi lingual and multi racial swear words and drink our coffee and leave.

Then our colleague calls up and tells us that only five people have turned up for the seminar. Cannot back out now so we put our best grins and rush to the hotel. We greet our colleague and ask him to distract the people, saying we will join him in about 15 minutes. Rush to the shower and get ready. Thank fully no surprises there.

We hurry to the seminar and start it. I really do not have much work out there, so am relegated to collecting information about the people who have attended so we can follow up later. I do that and get to meet the people really up close. There is this girl whose father is in the Government or something and she is really ogling my boss! He is saying to me, I am married and why is she looking at me so? That too with her Pops sitting next to her!

I move on and there is this cute little family. The mother and father have come with their deaf child. Now the child is as smart as can be, but severely deaf so cannot vocalize clearly at all. Making sounds like Atta, Atta with a huge grin. They have another toddler in the mother's arms.

Now as we all know, children relate quickly to people their equal in mental ages. I discovered that I have much in common with three year olds. Naturally the harassed mother, when she found that I am having so much fun with her kid, turned her completely over to me and gave her full attention to what my colleague was saying on the dais.

Now I have a child roughly my equal in intelligence and who is having a blast on finding a playmate larger than her father. So we end up playing hide and seek, peek a boo, catch my hand, tickle my arm pits and other interesting games of our childhood. Then I discover another trait in me. I cause Micturition Vidyabhusanis.. that for the uninitiated is the urge to pee whenever you are close to me! Thrice in an hour and growing at the rate of two more in the succeeding hours. The mom is so hassled, that she just takes off the child's pants and lets her "go" free. I catch myself just in time wishing that I could be so "free". Such thoughts are dangerously corrupting.

Finally we wrap up the seminar and its actually a better success than we had hoped. Now I think is the time for lunch. But my boss is already missing his wife, (I think the girl gave him the heeby jeebies) so off I am sent to book a cab for us to Nashik, air conditioned, thank you. So after making him poorer by about two grand, we leave for Nashik.

So when I am trying to weave my spell of words, the car starts swaying, swerving and braking hard. Then we go over a bump and I look back and there is a pig twitching on the road and a driver twitching behind the wheel. So I calm him down and when he is slowing down to inspect the damage, my boss is leaning out of the window, telling him that there is no damage and to move on.

We reach Nashik by about seven thirty p.m. Definitely time for lunch, as you can guess he had not allowed the driver to stop anywhere in between. My boss was rushing to the cab stand so we could move on to Mumbai, but I put my foot down and dragged him to the nearest hotel so we could eat. While I was ordering, he disappeared out of sight and arrived huffing just when food was being brought to the table. I cocked an eyebrow and he said that there are cabs available and we need to rush to beat the jam back. I told him that it was Saturday night and all the people of the world were sitting down to their beers and tandooris, but he would not listen. A Brahman finding food after twenty hours and was still forced to force it down his throat. I think his karma is really going to suffer because of that for reincarnations to come.

Finished dinner and then rushed to the stand. Booked the whole cab to discover that we are Rs.300 short. Before any one can say anything, he hares off to the nearest rickshaw stand and goes to an ATM. Finds one, withdraws money and comes right back.

Have loaded the cab already and when he pays and gets in, tell him that we could have paid in Mumbai or got the cab to go to the ATM and paid him there. When he hears that, all he does is ask the driver to make the trip without any pit stops whatever. Hey Ram! I do not know about the rest of you people, but AC cars always make me want to pee at least once in every couple of hours and its a five hour journey!

Somehow I get him to agree to a stop and go lighten myself. Then using the magic of my conversation, I manage to put him to sleep. I nod off myself and before we know it, we are in Chembur, Mumbai, which is about fifteen kilometers from my home, which is about seven kilometers from Downtown and all that.

Therefore, I conclude at the end of the whole shebang that,

1. I can put grown men to sleep with the power of my words.
2. I can make small kids pee with the power of my presence!

All hail VibhuDaBrahman!
Alark Niranjan!

Satisfied customer!

I joined a new company last month. A company that markets a medical device that helps profoundly deaf people hear again. It is a cochlear implant, which to put it very roughly, replaces a non working part of our inner ear. This device gives very good results esp for little kids between the age of one to ten.

One day I had to attend the switch-on of one such kid. The switch-on is a process in which the external and internal parts of the device are connected (usually three weeks after the surgery) and it is 'switched on'. This means that the person will start hearing, again, from the implanted ear.

So, there I was, delivering all the accessories that come with the package. And here is this cute round faced kid, with bright shiny eyes, looking at all the goodies and trying to muster enough courage to handle them. So, naturally I handed them to him to keep on his desk.He turned bashful and ran to his mom, peeping from behind her at all the packages.

Soon all the packages were checked against the delivery note. We moved on to the programming room. Since this is the first time the child was going to hear from his damaged ear, we have to map the speech processor of the device to prevent scaring him with too much sensory input.

Usually its done by connecting the processor to a computer and different sounds are passed to the implant. The subject is then asked to mention which sound he / she hears. This way we are able to measure the personal lower and upper level of audible sound.

Everytime he heard a sound, he would raise his hand and it would be like an inner light would turn his face on. He seemed so happy on hearing, that he would keep raising hands for every sound we made, like a laugh or a word to some one else standing in the room.

When we had mapped and had our fun with the kid. I had to explain the function of each and every accessory. The audiologist, who was working on the case, did the explaining and everytime she spoke, this kid kept saying..." Mom, pay the uncle, I can hear!!"

First time in my sales career ever has a customer said to me, this works, please take the money. Have begged, grovelled, threatened even for payment, but this spontainiety in such a small kid, never.

Furkaan, May your life be long and may you always hear. I did not know you and had never met you before.. but you have made me happy in ways you cannot imagine.

Peace be to your family and may Allah always be merciful to you.

Vibhu

Indian Democratic Policy!

Well a new day and a new morning. Woke up with sleep in my eyes and coffee in my thoughts. Remembered, mom is out so made my cuppa myself. Got it nice, hot and strong and settled to glance through the newspaper headlines before moving on to the important parts of life, the funnies and movies list.

On the first page itself, there was this huge SC order stating that "Poverty is no excuse for encroaching on Government Land" Our learned justices even made a pithy comment, " They will squat on the SC itself, move in to the counsel's home" This seemed interesting.

We Mumbaikars have a long long history with encroachments. Its become so, that we fail to find any legal buildings in many parts of this great city. Even the land where our society is built upon had been encroached. A long, strenuous fight for a decade, led to their magnanimously vacating 75% of land that was not theirs and keeping 25%. Our corporator acted as if this was a favor he was granting us. They also reserved the right to produce night soil right in front of our homes so that we could in essence be part of the big happy neighbourhood. People who could afford bikes, television and refrigerators, did not want to contribute Rs10 every month to build a public toilet for themselves.

So as you can imagine, how happy I was to read the SC order. Then came the catch phrase.. "Public Land". You cannot encroach on public land, but private land is a completely different issue. Then, the matter needs compassion for their poverty, their right to a decent living and need for a more convenient locality. Private landowners who sometimes have spent their lives trying to build a decent home in this exorbitantly expensive city, have to live with the fact, that someone is shitting on their millions worth of real estate. But not so the government. While all encroachments are bad and need a solution, why should the brunt of rehabilitation fall on the private landowners? Agreed some of them have excess land, but last time I checked being rich was not a crime. Trying to make profit of something that is legitimately yours to offer is called business, I think. Stronger laws should be able to prevent people from misappropriating government lands, be they Millionaires or Millionhairs, this way we can ensure that land which is ours stays ours, no matter what some politician, bureaucrat or local slum lord says.

But no, SC is not interested in applying the same laws across the board. Some or the other extenuating circumstance arise to ensure that government, which just by virtue of being elected gets more preference than the common man who is just the nation, an intangible commodity. The Govt is the payer of salaries, so obviously the master of the judges. This may not stop the judges from ruling against the Govt most of the time, but real politic would demand that they bend some of the time.

Another issue that always rankled is the oft beaten issue of affirmative action, called reservation. Envisaged by the father of our constitution as a fast track method to integrate repressed sections of our society with the mainstream, it has been flogged like a dead horse on steroids. Somehow a legislature meant to expire after 10 years, has been renewed for the last 50 years or so. Expanding in scope and damage, a shining example how even a good law can become devastating in the hands of politicians.

Case in point, Karnataka. Will be brief and concise.
Med School of two types, Aided and Unaided. Reservations of 50% in both. Aided conducts its own entrance exam, as does the unaided. If a reserve category student, fails to get a seat in the aided coll, where education is subsidised, then he is given a seat in the unaided coll. The disparity in fees which runs to hundreds of thousands of rupees will be paid direct by the government. So now the case is like, my friend who has gotten better marks in a more competitive group, will not get a seat and on top of that his tax money will actually pay for the education of someone who does not deserve the seat as much as he does. Double whammy or what?

But in a democracy, you have to live with this. You just cannot assume with great freedom comes great intelligence. Till the fact the reserved people understand that reservations are just removing the incentive to compete and make a mark for themselves, they are not going to improve either their lot or their society's lot. Our politician who actually cannot see further than the poll booth, continue to propagate the myth that reservation is the fast track to education. You do not need good primary and secondary education. It does not matter if you do not know basic biology or mathematics, we will make you doctors and engineers. But please do not treat us or build our homes, we are politicians, we have to have "phoren" treatment for our colds and coughs. International architects without affirmative action universities are going to build our illegal buildings. All you have to do is vote for me. I will take care of the rest.

Take care all, peace be to my backward friends
Vibhu

Friends, Colleagues and Ex-Bosses

Meaning to write in for a long time. Its been a time of flux in my life, changed jobs and all the other things that go with it.

This piece is dedicated to all the great people and the not so great people I worked with in my last job. It was a great place, peopled with a young group of hard workers, who made my stay with them memorable if not happy.

Let me start with my immediate cabin members, the list included NJ, DM, Shashi Pujari (he never had an acronym to his name, too bad), Lintu (if he had the time, inclination and the energy to commute from way beyond mumbai to arrive at the office, on time).

I got along famously with DM and Shashi, Lintu was like a great friend. Lint and I got along so well, that when together, the cabin was always so noisy that DM had a head ache. Shashi, was low on the totem pole so his problems do not get a mention over here. Never was a day when Lint and I did not have fun at the expense of DM, parodying his favorite songs, clicking funny photos on his mobile phone, even recording risque songs for his entertainment and embarassment. His love life (or lack thereof) always got adequate coverage in these sessions.
Dabbas and lunches were a grand affair, with we two cornering the lions share.

Then there were the others, Sanjay Testroom in-charge, pravin, vishal and our resident 'special' narender (ya the guy with the bald head down below). These were my friends in the service department. Hung out a lot with Vish and Narru. Pravin was the punctual guy leaving at dot 6 pm so never got much out of him. It always used to be me, vish and Narru at any get together.. with me and vish palnning to start Narrus family for him!

One of the very important person was our resident god father! Tall claims of making a temple at his home town, gypped fifty bucks out of me. Have not seen a brick of it yet! Been almost a year.

Then there was this sweet girl, Ms Pratibha Borade or PB, who always used to say that I remind her of her brother. Well shes getting married and all the best to her and her PAN, may they always be happy.

Arun, a great guy in the back office, always hassled by my demands of PLs, leaflets and what not. May you find peace and happiness bro. God speed.

There were others too, Abdul Bhai, Babu bhai, Guruji in the factory. Too bad could not say good bye, may you all forgive me.

Rakesh, Dheeraj and Santosh Ghadi, their lunch at 12.30 always saved my eternally hungry soul. Food for a brahman, may their karma be always very bright. They even had the courtesy to inform me in advance when they got non veg food.

Mamta, the receptionist, My village person, zeroxes, faxes and a smile with a booming voice.. hope you are doing good!

Raju the peon, owes me fifty bucks, have let it go. Got me water and coffee whenever I used to need it. Peace with you man.

Then there was our Sir, Mr Hemant Shah. A lot have I learnt from him. Ethics, hard work, openness to new ideas. Criticisms, jokes and all. He is the person who gave me the job in the first place. Gave me a lot of songs too. Discussed issues with me, when he could have relegated them to others in the office. I have always respected and admired him. May you always be happy and your dreams for Medica be ever bright and successful.

Sachin Shetye, hmm.. our technical manager. Hard working, smart and intelligent. Never spoke much, was kind of reserved. Believes Tendulkar should be rested or (horrors) resign on his own!

Santosh Chauhan.. well the accounts guy.. hopes he pays me my dues!!! Will write after the cheque's in. ;-)

NJ, never got along well with him. Dont know what went wrong, but then never cared enough, I guess. Is arrogant sometimes and does not always do what is best for the team. Has the smarts to make it, but needs to remember that other people are important too. My fault was that I could also not give it my best whenever I had him over me. Maybe I Need to work on my people skills. Believes Tendulkar is god of Indian Cricket.

To all at medica, had fun, have moved on. Will remember some of you, some will be lost in the sands of time.

Take care all, peace to you.