Bail-ey me out of here

The days draw to an end in the space-time continuum (yeah I picked this word of Wonko's blog where he waxes ad nauseum about continuing on some continuum or the other and gymming at the end of it) as my exams get far too close for comfort. It is in times like these that one resists every temptation to read Revolting Rhymes or The Lord of the Rings or the transcript of the Matrix (all of which, in a moment of weakness, I put onto my ipod to peruse at will while listening to the Supreme Beings of Leisure). Instead, having delved through the oft mentioned textbook of surgery, I decided to do a last minute sprint through the bible of all surgical trainees - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery. It's not short and I won't tolerate any practice jokes. Will join hands with a lawyer and practice on you.

The book has always been a favourite. Not because it's british and has large illustrations that significantly reduce the amount of text to be read. Not because at the bottom of every page footnotes exist outlining the life and times of the person who lent their names to the many eponymous conditions that often attracts medical students. But simply because it almost feels like reading PG Wodehouse or Stephen Fry ever so often. Examples follow.

What's 'yaws'? - Syphilis.

On pruritus ani - In case of pinworm infestation, children should be made to wear gloves since they may reinfest themselves by scratching and nail-biting. Parasites lost, parasites regained.

Or when the books warns against proclaiming brain death in a patient who's hypothermic - No body should be declared dead unless it's a warm body.

So I'm morbid. Sue me.

For the amount medical students have to read at all points of time in their lives it's a relief and a joy to see a book that makes life just a little more enjoyable.

Of course one has to tolerate lines on the line of, 'So Bailey's your new Love?' But it's a small price to pay.

For those interested in other such moments of joy feel free to refer to Robbin's Pathology (where he speaks of congregating amyloidologists and thyromaniacs and quotes Isak Dinesen's 'What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?' at the beginning of the chapter on Nephrology. )

Again I reiterate my nerdish claim. And also plead exam-induced insanity but there I know I'm not the only one. Got this message from a colleague at a similar point on the space-time continuum - 'You've been building castles in the air all these years. It's not a bad thing. Now is the time to build foundations under them.'

This incidentally is also the person responsible for putting the idea of forwarding service messages.

We're back... and presenting The Arabian Frights

Public outcry and the swamping of my inbox with multiple instances of the same comment brings the blog back to where it was.
Aside: What did Heisenberg say? No same thing at same time in same place? I think my amateur html just proved him wrong. But hey, I'm not a rocket scientist.
And no I will not delete all the carbon copies of the comments. Let them stay as silent tombstones on my programming grave.
And finally as the crap said... oh it's carp on the comments of the previous post, Rest in Piece and Chait - another click and a window is the least you can do to be heard. Some less fortunate have to actually start a blog and update it regularly.
Word verification will be turned on if I get spammed. And I don't mean by T, V, Tan etc.
Now to business. The Dday for the exams draws close, my sanity quotient as I mentioned earlier is dwindling as is my threshold for the world at large. In times like these I resort to the giants, who before me have been there, done that and managed to write something about it. This weeks stress buster is Roald Dahl's (again? yeah but a different book... Read on) Revolting Rhymes. His take on the Fairy tales. Gruesome, twisted and with rhyme and meter that would make Vikram Seth lift an eyebrow.
Downloaded it off the net and laughed as I read and then some one was kind enough to lend me the book. Quentin Blake's illustrations do make it funnier. Lay your hands on it people, it'll be worth your while.
The usual profound brain-things inside my head started up after I read this and some delving in my cupboard, various inboxes and hard disk led to the discovery of an old poem I wrote. All ye who haven't eaten anything yet may leave for refreshments, the rest of you read on.

ARABIAN FRIGHTS

A land lies between east and west,
Where camels roam and flies infest
A land of beauty, a land of courage;
A land of harems and royal entourage.
A place of mystery in a mystic time,
Where death follows every crime
In the Royal Palace as days turned to nights
Here I present the Arabian Frights…

An intrepid sailor named Sindbad
Set off one day and all were glad,
He sailed around, his voyages numbered seven
Each with a mistress or two, a total of eleven
His ship now was a mini-harem
A sign read, "Girls, Beware him"
Encouraged the sinner picked up more
Every time he landed ashore
In time his boat was filled to the brim
And (Oh my God) you should've seen him
Too much sex had done him to the bone
Till one day his ship sank like a stone

In the land of the Arabs lived a man
Like most, of the princess he was a fan
Till the Caliph heard of his desire
And threw him in a quagmire

Alibaba was a young trader
A brilliant guy, straight A-grader
His family though had no sleep,
For they thought Baba was the black sheep.
Sure he was different, ugly and bald
And with 8th nerve palsy, he looked away when called
His teeth were like little chisels
And when he spoke, he did in whistles
Forty robbers he killed and lived in bliss
But the truth, of course, is Congenital Syphilis.

The Caliph sat brooding and sad
A feeling rose that he had been had
The Royal Dungeon had become an open shelf
For the locksmith was a crook himself


In the land of Agrabah lived a boy
Tall and strong but shy and coy
Until one day he lit a lamp
And joined the nearest nurses camp.
An instant hit was Alladin.
To celibate men he was joyous sin,
And when asked "Where's the Genie, I pray?"
He said, "I don't like him, he's not gay!"


In the Royal Garden she as she walked,
The princess was lost, deep in thought.
Her brave warrior love, no one could find
She figured, so what. Out of sight, out of mind

-- fin --

Comment Box

After much HTML screwing around here's the comment box that Chait asked for. This is a test post so all ye who come by please feel free to comment and put the new feature to rigorous examination.

Much Thanks.

What to do...

Here I am again alternatively battling insanity and boredom as the exams draw close when life drops funny stories into my lap.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin

So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.

Old is Gold.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Been doing some research on that and assuming it's a maxim (this is where I catch Sapru's attention) that involves a little lateral thinking before one starts hunting for some old St. Bernard to teach 'play-dead', I find that the older the dog is perhaps it's easier to get the occasional new trick in.
It so happened that due to a lack of a job and intermittent boredom from too many subway-esque sandwiches (bread, mayo, mustard, cheese, lettuce and assorted veggies, cold cuts, jalapenos, gherkins and olives) I've been feeding off my grandparents for some regular run-of-the-mill pulling-at-the genetic-roots food. In the course (usually the main one) of the meal I learn some classical music from grandmom, some stock market and investment gyan from granddad and I also learnt that you can teach an old dog yada yada.
Before we continue I have to mention here that grandmom solved the easy and medium sudokus with panache. Under twenty minutes and she solved them on a separate piece of paper and then enters the answers in so there is no overwriting invovled. Granddad thinks it's too easy so he bought a Sudoku book and solved the 16x16 grids with letters instead of numbers. Now he's on the crossword.
That brings you and I gentle reader to the main course of this post (all the preceding bit was hors d'ovueres. That one was for Mr. D and his obsession with saying that). First taught granddad the nuances of the Hindu Crossword. He now leaves some two and a half words for me to do when I go there, four if he's made a spelling mistake.
Then he decided one day that he wanted to learn how to SMS on his cool new phone. It's that 1100 made for India thing. Which brings us to an aside where he spent a week doing market research to find the cheapest and best service provider. He thinks it's BSNL. But the signal's not too strong where they live. So the SMS. Considered telling him to do it the old fashioned way but sheer boredom got me teaching him the nuances of T9. In the course of which we discovered that the first option for my mom's name 'Viji', is 'Ugli'. Don't worry I've already been disinherited. But he's the king of texting now. Just a step short from discovering smileys and that's when the world is sure to end.
Compare and contrast this with my Dad, fifteen years younger and thinks T9 is a mind control conspiracy.
Gave grandmom an mp3 cd player for her birthday. Took ten minutes to hook it up to her music system and five to point out the buttons and their function. She was skipping albums and reading into the id3 tags before I ran away.
Old people rock.
And make the best vathukozhambu in the world and are the best companions for a long walk. This one's for you thatha and pati. Happy anniversary (albeit a bit delayed...)

Hot!

It's unlike me to post so soon after a post but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do unless it involves many things that could just be a post of their own.
Did a sinful thing today. Women and children this where you don't need to run away it has little to do with carnal crimes though I was accused of looking like an RCSO (Repeated Child Sex Offender)... Note I was accused of looking like one not being one. That's another post again. Well realised early in life that there was little I could do with my looks outside of orthodontics and plastic surgery so took the cheaper option. In this country it's still braces. And on an aside I have a friend who epitomises the term permanent braces - she's had them for six years. Think it's time she paid the dentist. Money, not a visit.
But as always, I digress. The sinful thing's details follow. I was making myself a chicken sandwich for lunch a la Subway except it had regular slices of bread and cost about a tenth when I discovered that jalapenos can be used not just as sandwich garnish but if soaked in vodka long enough they can make Absolut Peppar taste like peach schnapps. So in my infinite wisdom and goodwill dropped a couple of slices in a glass of vodka and left it in the 'fridge to soak. And in my aforementioned infinite wisdom and goodwill informed dad (funny story coming up) that the concoction would be ready by the time he got home. The Provider in HIS infinite wisdom searched the freezer and found little besides frozen peas (duh!). So here I am a peg of jalapeno vodka down, buzzing like a bee on steroids and the insides feeling like Mount Doom - blogging. Colleen McCollough once said that pain brings out the best in us all... those of you who've read till here would agree - balls.
So here's the funny story, will have to give the Provider credit for coming up with the idea of adding chilli/tabasco and other such noxious substances to vodka in order to get to the bee on steroids state. That's not the funny story. The Man walks in one day with a new bottle of hooch pours himself a glass and sips it and says, "Hey, this tastes nothing like what I make. It's actually sweet. Why's it called Hot Fling?" "Dad, it's peach flavoured" "Peach? where does it say peach?" Innocent, quietly amused point at the fine print. Reading glasses later, "This is horrible stuff..."
There's now a near full bottle of Hot Fling untouched for the past couple of weeks and a draft of a letter to the consumer court for misleading nomenclature.
Materazzi while walking alongside Zidane said, "Zizou bhaiya, aapse ek baat poochni thi... log Chlormint kyun khate hain..."

Vegetarian Golfers

Some many things have happened in and around my world that require a mention here. We'll start with this relatively alien concept of vegetarianism. As would have been obvious by now I don't really believe in it. What I do believe in is the freedom to break free the shackles of genetic predisposition and familial condtioning and the maturity to choose to eat beef biryani anytime, anywhere. But this isn't about me is it?
Came to hear of the various reasons why people "turned" veg.
1 - Couldn't bear the thought of a chicken being prepared for a meal. Then again couldn't bear the thought of wading in some paddy field either but that didn't stop rice consumption.
2 - Forest conservation project greenpeacenik realised that some forest she was trying to conserve was being slowly deforested for grazing land for sheep which became mutton in Bangalore. Hence no more meat.
3 - Marxism. Before some quizzical expressions are raised, here's the rub - The amount of resources that goes into feeding a sheep/goat for one sinful dinner of extravagance can be used to feed ten people. And thus...
And here I am asking people to rise in the food chain, stop depriving animals of their food, eat more protein.
This person I know bought two rabbits a few months ago. Because it's apparently hard to determine the sexuality and sexual orientation of rabbits, he ended up getting a pair of opposite sexuality and compatible orientation. He now has twenty. And is vegetarian despite being Bong, like no fish (Mr. D are you listening?).
And in Sports, today's story is the current golfing incident-accident. Turns out that somebody whacked a long shot with a 3 wood and yelled the perquisite "Fore". The ball guided by forced both dark and mysterious managed to get above the 40ft fence and brain the HD's security man. Before a collective akkan, just miss pervades the world, there's more. Another golfer more intrepid managed to set of a bomb scare when his wannabe birdie landed on some asbestos roof in the aforementioned HD's residence. So the servers and protectors hurried across to the golf course and held the golfer under custody. For what I can't imagine. I haven't heard of anybody outside of maybe Tiger Woods who can aim a golf ball into somebody or something. And if it's gone out of bounds then that would've been a really bad shot. The cops think otherwise and now want the place shut down and turned into a park. Haven't they gotten enough land to play aroud with or has the BMIC project gotten back online?
To wrap up we have the tech-entertainment section which essentially revolves around my pod. My iPod you perverse creatures, it's not the time for me to spore yet. The pod's been fitted with a screen protector and displays album graphics with each song, if properly ripped and tagged.
How cool is that?

Geek

A geek ([giːk]) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination. (wiki, where else)

After much profound searching of cupboard and soul, I've come to the conclusion that I might be one. Of course I might also be a nerd. The dispute continues in international semantic forums once they come to a decision regarding who is a geek and who's a nerd I'll add an addendum to this post clarifying that controversy. But as of now for argument's sake let's assume that I'm a geek.
A spate of cupboard delving happened a couple of days ago. It happens once in every ten or so years like the Kumbh Mela or Swift-Tuttle or Halley's on steroids/nitro-boosters. And like the Kumbh it's a time of rediscovery and often just Discovery. But isn't the Kumbh about separation at birth? Nevermind.
So I pulled my spelunking gear out took two courses of prophylactic antifungals and antibiotics, some four immunisations against newer drug resistant mutations of anthrax and did a Radio City - dove in.
Found the following that led me to confirm my diagnosis of geekness.
- Learn Elvish (after JRR Tolkein) in 30 days, with margin notes in the first ten pages, in pencil. In my handwriting. I don't remember much Quenya except for elen sila lumenen, omen tielvo, which is "a star shines brightly on our meeting". But evidence would state that I tried learning it. Also I feel strongly when in the Preface (yeah who reads those) of the single-book paperback edition of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien shows distress and displeasure at the errata in the edition. And joy that people around the world write letters to him in Quenya. Or Sindarin.

On an aside, someone telephoned the man up and he answered, "Hello, this is JRR talking..."

- DOS Manuals. From the time when graphics was high end, monitors were green phosphor, screensavers were a necessity (lest A:\> got permanently burned onto the top left corner of the monitor. That was also the time when Harddisks were an extravagance, Windows ran on dos, chatting meant smileys like :-) :-( >:- and :-[ (my personal favourite - stands for dracula), and downloading porn was a nightmare involving tabbing across pages of text to find something like [IMAGE] downloading it with all expectation only to find it was an advertisement for cheese.

On an aside, it's like taking pictures with a regular camera (with film) and then waiting for the film to develop and print. The anticipation of the picture and the realisation that it looks nothing like what you wanted in the first place. Also downloading on dialup those days took almost as long as getting a negative developed.

Back to the good old days story. Mice ate cheese and could be trapped with pieces of coconut or vada. Which reminds me there's a blighter running about the house need to set that trap.

- Some secondhand hard cover edition of Silmarillion.

Watched House and found errors. Streptomycin tablets.
Watched ER and found errors. Zavanelli's manouvre for Shoulder Dystocia, who does nonsense like that anymore. I mean Zavanelli, not watching ER.

And a desperate need to read the History of Middle Earth.
An understanding and appreciation of statements like "May the 4th be with you" and joy at seeing a list of the top 10 puns. And here and here.
A raised eyebrow at Platypus' album names - Ice Cycles and When Pus comes to Shove.

A part of my brain says I need to get a life the rest is trying to smother it.

Nai Valaraukar tye-mátar. Hannon le.
(may balrogs eat you. thank you)