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from the mouth of an eavesdropper

So eavesdroppers are the blight of the society ehhh? Dint your parents box your ears hoping that otalgia(ear pain) would be a good remedy for shameless deeds of auditory stimulation? But that never stopped you from doing it all your life. You just maintain a stoic facade of having dapper manners.

I am sure you all must have had awesome/gruesome eavesdropping- anecdotes from locker rooms/powder rooms etc. I think eavesdropping in the hospital, especially when the conversation is taking place between a frustrated intern and a cynical chief resident, working in a large urban phree-for- all hospital just uppes the pinnacle for gruesome/awesome standards a few nothces.

So, I was in the residents lounge after a 30 hr call, all of which I spent trying to figure the best physical posture for a better sleep. I was in dire need of some spice in my life and considering that I am writing this blog is a very solid hint of how un-spiced my life is.

Move to an animated conversation between an east european medicine female intern and her madrasi male chief resident. The subject of this heated yet animated conversation (source of heat is the intern- not her looks but her talk; and the animation is being astutely shown by the chief who is counting his days before he lands in a research driven cardiology fellowship in podunkland Iowa) is a 600 lbs (yes I dint miss a zero) woman with some not so obscure medical problem. The writer will henceforth refer to the subject as HE and the readers shall know what HE stands as they read along.

Now the intern driven by her usual east european socialist medicine instincts decides to run an MRI on HE. The chief is, as usual frustrated with listening to interns ordering tests like they were trying to do a frontal lobectomy on Bush Jr to elevate his IQ beyond his familial 60. So he okays the MRI... "yeah yeah just do it and tell me about the results". I guess by now our madrasi chief resident can smell the hot chocolate that I just got out of the vending machine. We all know chocolate does weird things to hormones.

I am by that time consumed with how to make my hot chocolate sweeter and fattier. I heard some words like- transfer her to the zoo. I thought may be they had some free fancy hospital for EH like patients. So out of boredom I asked madrasi if he said something about some zoo hospital.

Madrasi chief retorts in his trademark style- "yeah man- bloody 600 lbs.. so we are sending her to the brookfield zoo to get an MRI cos she wont fit in the normal MRI machines here. They have MRI in the zoo for elephants."

Whoa.....i was taken aback... not a lot cos i have lived almost 4 yrs in US evidencing the cholesterol chronicles.

In my usual cynical way I said yeah.... when u cross 600 lbs you are no more a human.. you become Homo Sapiens Elephanticus (instead of the usual Homo Sapiens), and then use an MRI for the animals.

I know a lot of you would take serious exception to my comments about the fat. Hey....this is a democratic country and I chose to be cynical about human suffering (which some people bring it upon themselves) sometimes. So if you are sharpening those fangs, please do so, I am ready with verbal antidote to your emotional venom.

Disclaimer: The above conversation does not violate the HIPAA rules laid out in my institution. Even if there was a violation, you should run and nail the madrasi chief and the east european MRI loving intern and not an Eavesdropper!

art buchwald lives on.....the tradition carries on....

SKK

Run and seek shelter

Have you ever gone on a blind date and felt like running away the moment you see the female? Hey hey, now relax... I know all the women readers are sharpening their vitriolic verbal skills but can it hurt if the girl hasnt seen you yet and you saw her and decide to make a dash?

This was my first tryst with matrimonial dating..huh weird nomenclature ehh.....

I was in India on an unexpected trip and my parents fixed me up with a software engineer(do I hear sighs in all possible sizes/shapes/tunes?) who was working in a european firm in Hitech City in Hyderabad. We chat up a couple of times.... basically trying to figure out where to meet up.

Nota bina- the following conversation is best experienced with a west godavari accent in mind

me- hey how about coffee day?
behenji- umm....havv abboutt shilparaaamam
me-(i m thinking its one of those upscale restaurants with medieval names and touching my wallet) oh yeah yeah fine.
me- so how do i recognize you?
behenji- you shall see mee in a ooorange salwar kurta. I will be standing outside shilparamam.
me- (electric impulses traverse my cerebral cortex to figure why she should be standing outside and not lounge inside). well ok see you at six.
me- so we are meeting up for dinner right
behenji- nooooo. we will justtt have kofi. I have to go home early and SLEEP.
me- ahem well thats fine we shall make it quick (and possibly painless)


So I take the cab and tell him.....bhai shilparamam chal....during the conversation i am rudely enlightened about shilparamam. its this garden kinda thing with artisans selling their wares with an average of 200% markup.

Did I tell you that that morning I had been to Visa temple in Chilukur (well it s a Venkateswara temple nicknamed so because of the almost guaranteed american visa if the embassy visit is preceded by a visit to the almighty). For those who have been there, and dont do cross country training on a regular basis (hell when was the last time i was on a treadmill?) know that you would have serious trouble with hindleg mobility for at least a day(in lay man terms pain in the...legs).

So I was in the mood to just sit n sip some coffee(beer would have been my top choice but....first date, indian girl....i curbed my alcoholic pang!).

I reach the destination...get out of the cab.....and look around....and accross the wide road, i see this girl in orange.

First impulse- Bhaag le bhidu....yehi mauka hai(translated as- scram/run/evaporate). However I dint want to go back home and disappoint my granny, who of late, has forced her heart to believe that more than her diabetes my bachelorhood is more responsible for her ill health.

I decided to be good....its good to be good sometimes. I went up to her and said hi.....expecting her to say she was already sleepy.

I was half hoping that she would pick some restaurant, instead she went ahead and bought the tickets. Yeah chivalry went to the dogs- here I am, curbing my impulse to run away, hungry, immobile from painful legs and I should pay the entry fee for a park.... for what???

Since you all know I am shallow, I decided to gauge her nature (arent all you women gung ho about the nature of people....i mean....i am shallow because I hanker after looks right). I started telling her the melancholy of my hindlegs. She dipped into her bag and fished out some aspirin. Isnt it what you all expected......why are nice women visually challenged and why are all the lookers bitchy?

Anyways, post aspirin she decided that coffee day was not a bad deal after all. Post aspirin I also decided that I would foot the coffee day bill.

Move over to coffee day-- time for some serious matrimonial type Q & A. This is not necessarily the progression of the conversation, I am just capturing the highlights.

behanji- do you believe in women working after marriage? I have worked hard in life.. gone to REC (prestigious engineering school)....etc
me- oh yeah...i am a firm believer in DINK families- double income no kids.

behanji- do you take dowry?
me- with a contorted face- whattt? where did that come from....NO we dont. (I mean personally i have always wanted to win a lottery ticket and in some ways dowry is like that.. but hell my ma would skin me if she read this blog).

me- so why dint u get married till so late (she was 27).
behanji- u know i was wearing braces(for teeth) and so i dint want to marry till i get them off.
me-(thinking)......how gross would it be to kiss a female with braces?

well the food at coffee day was good- panneer tikka and some juice.
I guess at the end of it we were both pretty sure we would never see/hear from each other again.

So goes my first blind date.

keep tuned for more trysts

North Vs South

If your parents CROSS COUNTRIED like mine....

Well if your parents were southies and marathoned down to the north, read on. ..

I grew up thinking that punjabi babes were the best... no theres no hint to my precocious testosterone levels here but then...

And then you, blame the genes, cross country back to the south (I was forced to go to JIPMER over BHU- for the uninitiated both are medical schools of varying repute in India).

What happens then is you start exploring your traditional roots although you still maintian that northies are the way to go and that southie babes are what they still call in colleges- IAS (Invisible after 6). Hell to all those who frown on skin's lack of melanin.....did you ever see a DARK SKINNED ANGEL?

So you spend the next few years dating random women, thanking Kodak for inventing color TV....so now you have a range of colored/BROWN women as they call us in Amreeka.

Its not just about the color.. mind you.. its the whole thing about North Vs. South.

And thats a dilemma you still face when you are 28 and raring to tie yourself down. Well.. for the exact definition of RARING TO, you will have to wait for another update.

For a foodie like me apart from the color food is a major DHARAMSANKAT......will the babe make me sambhar *screw dowsas, I can make em. Will I exponentially increase my abdominal girth just because my southie wife thinks belan(the roti maker) is just another tool for post marital clashes. Or will my punjabi wife unknowingly kills me of Coronaries when she feeds me paratha and makkhan every morning.

Just a few thoughts on that....