SOAP AND WATER-

All you need in life is soap and water.

I am a keen observer of people and they continue to amaze me all the time.

The chappal bears the crescentic dust shadow in the front just facing the toes, This shadow is seen in people who may have dressed impeccably but are too careless about their feet. The sparkling nailpolish on the toes fades in the company of the lunar dust shadow.

The shoes resemble as if they belong to a nuke infested war zone.Layers of dust and grime adorn them and they had the misfortune of being polished only at the time of manufacture. The socks with holes smell hellish. Sometimes, I have had to leave the room in a state of nausea,me furiously sniffing my eucalyptus oiled hanky.

The toe nails are clawed like demons and apes and they grow without the fear of ever being snipped. A black brown line can be seen sub surface.

People have a weird fixation about scratching their crotches and axillae all the time. It is their favourite pastime. They follow up with a firm handshake and smelly hugs.

I have seen people using their belly button as a storage receptacle. Balls of cotton and hair frequently hide there.At times, I have seen grains also.

People also advertise what they have consumed for meals. Garlic, Onion and Tea flavored breaths are a rage in our town. Nocturnally, meat and cheap whisky rule the roost. The brush and the tooth paste are used seldomly, if at all.Communication with such people should be done with our backs facing them and their putrid assault.

The shirts and the trousers are used again and all over again till the salt layers accumulate like those of a salt pan. They smell like a mix of napalm and tear gas.The less said about the inner garments is better. They would alone merit a single blog.

The face bears so much oil so as to put the gulf nations in a worry. A once white hanky is rubbed repeatedly to polish the face. The eyes and nose are badly in need of a cleaning too. Boogers are blown and wiped on the poor betel leaf spat red walls.

Hairwash is a weekly affair for some and on the other days the smell of sweat,oil and anti dandruff conditioners loom large on us if we have the chance to get that close.

Supersonic farts and burps are fashionably blared by some people regardless of the emotional and olfactory damage caused to the innocent bystanders. Indiscretion is a definition for their valour.

I recently treated a bed bound millionaire lady who was left to die all alone in her home. The sons came to cursorily ask about her well being. She had a bad maggot infestation in her festering bed sores. She was a helpless lady and all I could do is to point my fingers of accusation were at her sons and their wives.

I saw their shoes and chappals and shaking my dizzy head walked out of their room.

I have a healthy disregard for such people in life. I never hesitate to show my displeasure and point out their hygienic shortcomings.

I feel like gifting them soap and water.

GOD.

God.

A single word, yet means so much to our world.

People spend their entire lives searching for him and when death approaches mortals, they see a bright light and claim to see and reach God.

I never saw God in temples,mosques or churches. All I saw were his poor children begging for their daily slice of bread. Had God been present in such proximity, would he have tolerated such poverty and filth around him?

Some fake people who claim to be Gods exist as leeches in our society. I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting a few with medical problems,an affliction of us mortals! They were Gods and they behaved like Gods too but their bodies were made of the same human flesh and brittle bones.

They were all frail humans with the same anxieties and insecurities which were carefully hidden from their blind masses of followers. Their so called healing hands seldom and never cured themselves.


I am yet to see his physical form but have felt him in all walks of life.

I hear him in the innocent cackling laughter of my kids,the chirping of the birds and the sounds of nature.

I feel him in the blessings and wishes of my parents.

I sense him in the love and care of my wife and my siblings.

I see God in eyes of my patients,filled with tears of gratitude.


God is everywhere. God is in every form. He is infinite.

You cannot lock him in domed or spired buildings.

He cannot exist in mortal bodies.

My dad who is no more with us, had a near death experience 2 years back.

He described a sense of levitation along with some dazzling lights during that entire
experience.

Maybe God exists somewhere beyond our reach, in the afterlife.........

A FIGHT WITH GOD.

I was a heart broken person last year after my dad's demise.

I began to doubt the existence of God. A cascade of unfortunate events, resulting in multi organ failure had brought about my dad's downfall. He fought valiantly but God had already made up his plans.

During his mid life, he endured diabetes,heart and kidney ailments with an ever smiling face. In USA, a couple of years back a doctor called him a superman. He was a charismatic person and had his fan following wherever he went.

Why God could not give him an extension for a couple of years started eroding my mind. We all needed him, always by our side for his reassuring support.

I was upset with the almighty. All my prayers and beliefs came to a halt.

I was a devout believer but now I became an agnostic.

I just stopped praying.

After a couple of months or so, I got a home visit call.

A 80 year old man was languishing in the bed for the last 6 months. He had a series of brain strokes.He had become like a virtual comatose vegetable. He had become totally dependent. He had stopped speaking and only uttered indecipherable grunts.

At times, he used to open his eyes and stare at the ceiling. I saw the man and his poignant eyes just begged for salvation.

His soul desired liberation.

I went home and thanked God for not letting my dad suffer. He was a fiercely independent persona and such a state would have tortured him.

I closed my 'now open' eyes and resumed my prayers all over again.

God always has the best plans.

We realise it too late.

TREADMILL OF LIFE.

It was a very uncomfortable day for me yesterday.

The day began with excruciating chest pain which radiated to my left arm and shell shocked me into believing that something was wrong with my heart. I am 40 years old and not growing younger everyday. The stresses of life and genetic factors would catch me up one day.
The echo and the blood markers mercifully came up normal. A treadmill test was planned during the latter half of the day. My family got worried and began crying. I too became a bit worried with their behavior. My thready pulse started soaring to new highs but my spirits were on a all time low.

The morbid fear of heart disease and the resultant disability gripped me lke a python.

My life had just begun and I needed atleast another decade to settle my kids who were still young. They also loved me and started crying.

I began running on the treadmill like there was no tomorrow with a prayer on my lips and a steely resolve to put all the doubts to rest.

The attending cardiologist, after 12 minutes begged me to stop running on the treadmill. He told me that I had run enough to pass the test. I refused and told him to max out the test. My pulse reached a dizzying 170 beats per minute yet I had neither chest pain nor any fatigue. After the test, he congratulated me on my stamina and heaved a sigh of relief. The graphs of the test were normal.

I was overjoyed and my family was mightily relieved. They started breathing again.God existed for me yesterday. When I got down from the treadmill, I sat down quietly in one corner and started crying. The cardiologist was surprised and rightly so.I should have been happy with the results of the test and my tears had a different reason for their origin.

It was a hot summer in 1997 when I was a MD resident in KEM hospital when my dad was seen in the opd for similar chest pain episodes. He was 55 years old, diabetic and a hypertensive smoker with a strict temperament to boot,thus fulfilling all the risk factors for germination of a heart disease.

As he walked on the treadmill, after 3 minutes he had chest pain and breathlessness. His rhythm became awry and his ST segments started rising indicating an evolving heart attack. The test was immediately aborted and the entire cardiac team rushed to the treadmill to check on my dad. He was pretty cool after the termination of the test and was unaware of anything going wrong with him. The HOD implored him to get admitted on the ICU and undergo an urgent angiography.I too pleaded with tears in my eyes.

He was made up of sterner stuff. He asked the HOD to prescribe some meds for him and calmly walked up to Parel station,climbed the overbridges and came home by train. I was a helpless mute spectator. I could never convince my dad or go against his wishes.

He was our Iron Man.
After a week, we could manage to convince him and he underwent successful stenting to his coronary vessels.He later underwent CABG after 5 years in 2003 which gave him further extension of life till september 2011.

He lived like a tiger, enjoying his life fully, smoking and weekend drinking, seeing movies, playing with his grandkids.

His entire life flashed in front of my eyes when I began walking on the treadmill yesterday.

I went home, hugged my kids and cried even more. The tears just never stopped flowing yesterday.

EK DUJE KE LIYE.

It was a bright sunny day when my parents dropped me at the school at 12 noon. The campus looked empty to me as the secondary classes were going on. I was, a big one hour early to school. My primary mates were yet to arrive. My parents had to go see the movie, EK DUJE KE LIYE. It was a big hit those days and drove hordes of young cupid struck couples to fling themselves off cliffs.

I sat alone on the school steps vowing vengeance on my parents who hurriedly went to catch up the show. They looked so happy. I felt left out of the whole picture. I failed to understand the reason for leaving me all alone. I skipped my dinner in protest that day. I was a kid and behaved like one. After much cajoling and an ice cream candy bribe, I had a late dinner much to their relief.

I never understood what an adult movie meant and why we innocent kids were never supposed to even talk about, leave aside viewing them. I simply understood that my parents had left me all alone, even if for a small period of time. During that hour which I spent on the school steps, I plotted a future revenge plan when I would leave my parents all alone and see an adult movie.

When they came back to pick me up, I just hugged them and cried. I wanted them to never leave me alone.

Time passed by and I grew up to be a tall teenager and finally an adult. The past memories of the revenge had faded away. The movie was screened umpteen times on the tv screen and our country had liberalised from the pallus to the micro minis. The titillation threshold had progressed beyond imagination.

What was covert once had blatantly become overt now.

It was a black day for the city when in 1990 many commuters lost their lives in the train blasts. My train to my coaching classes ran during that ill fated schedule and I narrowly missed that train as I had left early that day. I was in the preceding train. We were unaware of the situation.

My parents had no clue of my whereabouts and as soon as they heard the news on their tv screens, they panicked helter skelter. Landlines got jammed and there was chaos.I blissfully was coming home and was surprised to see them on my building steps sobbing profusely. They just rushed at my sight and hugged me with all their might.

I saw tears in my dad's eyes for the very first time in my life.

The whole scene was like a flashback from the past. Me, hugging my parents on the steps. The only difference being that now I was consoling them about things being alright.I reminded them about the past incident of my revenge plot and we all laughed it off.
The common factor being fearful anxiety.

Last year, my dad took the greatest revenge of all and went far away into the arms of God.

As long as we are together,Let us all live for each other, i:e EK DUJE KE LIYE.

THE MALINGA WIG.

After much persuasion by Chaitra, I procured the pricey pavilion IPL tickets in black. This was our first time visit to see a live match in a stadium. Normally, I prefer seeing matches in the cool confines of my home with a refilling glass of scotch. This time, I had to go for my daughter. My wife came along with us leaving my son behind as the din would be too overwhelming for him.

The experience was like a festival of sights and sounds. It seemed that the entire city was trailing towards the stadium. The flood lights lit up the evening sky. We bought blue fluoroscent wigs and tees to support our home team. Vuvuzelas resounded in their glory. The entire crowd was in a state of intoxication. Film stars and Industrialists were seated in and around us to add to the excitement.

We were floating on fluffy clouds of unabashed man made entertainment. An ethereal luminous state.

The dirt laden lanes surrounding the stadium painted a different grim picture.A swarm of homeless had made the city roads their only abode with kids in tow.

As soon as the match got over and we were walking out, a group of feisty kids started to pester us to let go of the 'malinga wigs' and the vuvuzelas.They would sell them to the vendors who would recycle them back to the unsuspecting spectators.
The dishevelled kids knew little about 'malinga'. He was in a way,their sole wage provider during matches held in the stadium.

It was such a stark let downing contrast.

My eyes failed to adapt from such bright lights to the sad deplorable darkness.The eyes let down a stream of held back tears.

A normal expected reaction.

The blue fluoroscent wig covering the bare naked core of the city was torn apart. It revealed the apathetic tragic pate, fate of the cruel city.

The pretence was broken apart with a noise even more shattering than all the merry sounds of the packed bursting stadium.

I walked on with a heavy heart.

CITY OF DREAMS.

My kids wished to go SoBo yesterday.They wanted to sniff the sea breeze and explore the fabled Gateway of India,enjoy a motor boat ride and soak the sights of the city.

Nausea struck me as I alighted from the car.A strange rancid smell of diesel,dry fishes and horse manure wafted through the stagnant air assaulting my senses. The gateway is flocked by out of town desi tourists and a scattered group of foreigners.

Everywhere, you could see squatted hawkers selling cheap plastic toys and nuts. A guy sat with a weighing machine too. He was quite busy.Photographers with tattered albums in hand tried in vain to solicit us for backdrop photographs.

The motor boat ride was a scary one for my kids as the boat swayed wildly from side to side.A desi drunk tourist puked, showering some people onboard with his spittle. After a turbulent bawling ride, we returned ashore.The drunk desi slowly crept out of the boat, hiding his face.

The ill lit promenade was littered with plastic bottles, cola cans and peanut shells They crunched under our shoes..It was an ugly sight.A few couples tried to get cosy on the parapet adjoining the sea in excitement.Heavily made up desi folks scuttled for souvenir group photos.They wanted this slice of history, hung on their native walls.

As we were walking back to the car, my son got attracted to an illuminated spinning top being sold by a hawker. The wares were mounted on one sheet of a raggedy cloth and a naked infant slept on the adjoining equally dirty rag. He was oblivious to the onslaught of the buzzing flies and biting mosquitoes. I bought the top and walked away.

I took a snap of my family against the backdrop for the sake of posterity. The look on my kids' faces indicated that this was the last trip over here.

across the street lay one of the swankiest hotel of our entire city.A world of bright lights and liveried butlers. The lavish spread failed to activate my appetite. My kids ran about the place, amnesiac about the dismal time spent earlier.

A small dust filled road separated two different worlds like day and night.

Welcome to the city of dreams.