LOCK, SHOCK AND BABBLE

I have 'bowed my head' to a galaxy of barbers in my lifetime but I am yet come across one who, like the Trappist monks, observes a vow of silence.The phrase ' silent barber ' is in itself an oxymoron. The quintessential barber is a multi-tasker; while his scissors snip, he plays the talk show host. Unless, of course, he is a practitioner of  'Oil Pulling' in which case he gargles a mouthful of oil all the time making it difficult for him to babble. Or, maybe, when his doctor placed a thermometer in his mouth and forgot to take it out.When it comes to his chatter, your friendly neighbourhood barber always finds the ' flavour of the day ', something around which his chat is built. Last Sunday, when I visited my barber, he was developing on the theme of 'the statewide bundh'. His invigorating account on the subject included a scholarly discourse on '5  Ways To find food during bundh.' 


Unlike other professionals, especially the lawyers, a barber is quite lucid in his expressions. He is the only professional whose conversation you can follow, even though he talks over your head! When he holds court, a barber's peppy gushings can be a delight for the grandstand. The absolute depth of his erudition can make Wikipedia sound like pulp. And there is more.



At a barber's salon, stormy workshops are conducted at which red-hot national and international issues are analyzed threadbare. A keynote address by the barber sets in motion the brainstorming plenary sessions on topics ranging from LPG gas leaks to Wikileaks. It is at a barber's lounge that you can gauge the mood of the society you live in; whether the society is in a jolly mood or if there is a furrow of anxiety on the society's brow. It is here that many journos get their scoop.


Present day Gen Y 'hairstylists' have taken the multitasking to a new level. These colts watch the TV (that is kept for the benefit of waiting clientele) while they cut the (h)air. Add this to the customary banter and you get the proverbial powder keg. And if you happen to be on one such barber's chair, you get into 'shear' panic. What if the bloke pokes your eye with the scissors or shaves off your eyebrow? So you think of the old adage that the hair on your head is worth two in the barber's brush.Consequently, you try to divert him into a chat on, say, Rajinikanth's "Enthiran The Robot" before he starts acting like one.  Or else, yours could end up being a case of ' hair today and gone tomorrow '. 


Finally, there is one question that has always confounded me: When one barber cuts another barber's hair, which one does all the talking?

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A BORING DRILL

(Continued from last post "A Pain In The Neck".)

So who is this master bore? A sales representative is a classic example of this ilk. As a part of his sales pitch, such a person would indulge in long-winding blabber about matters unrelated to his visit such as Obama's religion, of how Zen Buddhism took roots in Japan and finally, just when you begin to wonder where all this leads to, he would wind-up by extolling the virtues of the the wares that he has come to sell. So forceful can be the discourse of such a bore that an insurance salesman may convince you (or at least try to make you believe) that your days on this planet are numbered. Or a dog biscuit sales person may highlight the merits of his product in such glowing terms that you start wishing you were a dog.

A third and final variety of bore is one who is most injurious to your mental health. He bombards you with bland and insipid prattle. He can put you to sleep with such alacrity that he can give any anaesthesiologist a run for his money. Simply put, he is a bore to the core. People tend to avoid him a if he were a bearer of some kind of pestilence.

There was one such character in our hostel during my college days. He was nicknamed 'Boric Acid' because, like boric acid that banished germs, his presence made other students vanish without a trace. The moment he appeared at the hostel's entrance, the inmates bolted to the nearest room and bolted their doors. His apparition had the power of imposing a curfew-like situation along the hostel corridors. Some even suggested that he was an ideal candidate for the post of commandant of the riot police. For, all he had to do in case of social unrest was to walk along the street and hey presto, the curfew would come into force without a getting an order from the magistrate!

But then, the Bores have their own uses depending on circumstances. When you are waiting for a shop to open or sitting in an airport lounge awaiting the arrival of your plane of indeterminate time-table, even a bore may come in handy to while away the time. But if, en route to the airport, you run into Mr Bore, avoid him like a plague and take flight. Or else, instead of catching your flight, you might get caught up in your friend's flight of fancy!

(S)MOTHERIN' CONSPIRACY

GREAT AMERICAN SCREAM

On the morrow of the American Presidential Poll, 2000, The TV newscasters across the U S treated themselves to a yummy one-course feast that featured crow chops as its piece de resistance.And they stuffed themselves silly with the corvine cuisine even as they kept chopping and changing the election verdict as frequently as they scratched their collective heads. While field reporters beat around (the) Bush, the editorial staff smelt blood... and Gore!

Then began the battle royal between 'Earl' Bush pressing for 'early' results in his favour and 'Count' Gore hell bent on hand count of votes, that, he believed, would perpetuate a Democratic ' 'gorement' at the Whitehouse. At Tallahassee, James Baker baked in the Florida sun splurging boodle in Bush-els in order to punch a hole in the punch card postulation so that Gore's victory cake remained unbaked in the legal oven. And Mr War 'n' Christopher with his army of legal eggheads waged a 'holey' war to ambush Bush on his way to Washington D. C.

(W)hole of the U S turned into a hellhole what with devious brains spewing out 'holey' wit. Lampooned a stand-up comedian, " We invented the hole-in-the-wall machine. Our Tiger Woods can score a hole-in-one in a trice. But, holy cow, we can't punch a neat hole in a god damned card."

The Electronic Media went to town with their erudite harangues on the labyrinthine electoral procedures. The TV anchormen's pregnant pauses spoke volumes about the pregnant - chad claptrap, while the spellbound viewers hung on to their lips trying to get a hang of the hanging chad charade.

Copy writers of the placard kind had a field day. ' Gore, the sore Looserman ' declared a Republican placard, while the other one said, ' Gore - President of Chad '. In retaliation, Democrats displayed posters that read ' It's AL or nothing ' or ' A vote in Gore's Hand is worth two with Bush '.

Long-buried English words were exhumed out of their lexical cemeteries forcing readers to cry out for footnotes. Democrats called Ms Katherine Harris' action in the hole-and-corner affair as Kafkaesque (an oppressive nightmare situation in a manner of fictional world of Franz Kafka). The Republicans branded Democrats' effort as Sisyphean( as fruitless as Sisyphus' attempt to push a rock uphill).

The whoe saga was a burlesque of ' Gore-gone-to-one' proportions. Ultimately Bush succeeded in cutting the ' Gore-dian ' knot and the gory battle left Gore thoroughly ' bushed '. George W Bush reportedly utilised those days of suspended animation to spruce up his general knowledge - so much so that when, on the 'Larry King Live' show, he was asked to name the Indian Prime Minister, he, with great aplomb, replied, ' A tall B. Harry Wage Payee'.

At the height of Bush-Gore fracas, a patient went to his doctor with his computerised blood count report. The doctor told him that his white cell count was rather low. The patient promptly asked the doctor if he could order a hand count!!

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JUST CLUTCH, DON'T CHOKE

The line of battle was drawn for the supremacy in the Indian car bazaar when the cavalcade of multinational car companies tailgated on to our roads firing on all cylinders and the market leader finding itself in the 'clutches' of competition changed gear and made a 'bumper' issue of its range of models in order to 'choke' its rivals. But the social spin-off of this brouhaha has been the insidious invasion of car buzzwords into the middle class lingo.

"I thought that I had pulled off a coupe (sic) when I bought a tin Lizzie(old car) for a song," wrote my uncle from Mumbai, "But soon it became a sad song as the car turned out to be a veritable bone-shaker. Now, after six months, my 'state of the heart' could any time lead me to a car-diac arrest needing a multi-point injection from my doctor."

Take another quote overheard at a party: "Despite my obesity, I could catch the pick-pocket because my weight-to-velocity ratio was in my favour. In the scuffle, I sustained a few dents on my bodywork, but I came out of it with my chassis intact."

My aunt Girija, on enquiring about a movie that she recently saw, replied, " It was a murder story. I love films with good 'suspension' till the very end." Her son, nick-named 'dicky bird' for his penchant for travelling in the rear space of cars, keeps asking me why the cars don't have their 'trunks' in front like the elephants do.

According to a friend of mine, our Prime Minister should fit a central locking device to his flock (of ministers) through which he can lock up their blabbering mouths and while unlocking, he should enforce strict 'emission norms' on their verbal diarrhoea.

Car jargon can often have bizarre effects on the odd sections of our society. The very mention of 'saloon' (car) can make confirmed tipplers with suspect 'road grips' drool, thereby increasing their vulnerability to 'hit the road.' An ad for the 'estate' car can give jinxed realtors and property speculators the 'flat tyres'. Windscreen w(v)ipers can make a man with ophidiophobia(fear of snakes) lose his 'bearings'.

I am myself on the 'horns' of dilemma as the force that could break a horse's power is being brought on me at home to buy a bigger car. Their demand may not draw much mileage out of me. For, instead of yielding to pressure like a collapsible steering wheel, I intend to fit the noisier ones with a silencer by discoursing on the need to tighten our (seat) belts to avert a (cashy) crash.

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ZODIAC ZEAL

If all those predictions of wealth that appeared over the years under my zodiac sign in the newspaper columns had come true, by now I should have been hob-nobbing with the likes of the oil sheiks of Arabia or computer tycoons of the Silicon Valley, if not the King of Brunei. But alas, it was not to be.

Yet, on that Sunday morning, when the column prophesied that "a great opportunity would knock at my door and a long time endeavour was about bear fruit", a seed of hope had sprouted. Like all true Taureans I was quite bullish about the forecast.

There was a time when I turned to forecast column solely in quest of a hearty laugh. And whenever it said that 'a tempestuous romance with my neighbour was in the offing' I would promptly hide the newspaper from my wife (an ardent believer) to avoid being hit by a hurricane.

Those were the days when I was a hard-boiled maverick. I fought many a pitched battle of words with my believer friends whenever the talk veered round to the star forecasts. "Wouldn't it sound preposterous if a Swamiji, who renounced everything worldly, were to find under his zodiac sign something like ' a domestic disharmony looms large on the horizon. Keep your wife in good humour', I would argue. But all that changed after a tete-a-tete with my bosom friend, Chandru.

Chandru reasoned that the wordings of a star forecast were like the clues of a crossword puzzle. Without taking them at face value, one needed to interpret them logically. To illustrate his theory he said that once a column predicted for him victory at the court. Of course he had no pending court cases. But, as it turned out, he had string of victories at the tennis court!

Chandru's position was vindicated by an event involving my wife. A forecast in her case said that "someone would make her an offer that promised to keep her on her toes for a long time". And sure enough, on her birthday an aunt presented her with a pair of high-heeled shoes that literally kept her on toes for the best part of a year.

To cap it all, what happened last month reinforced the premises on which Chandru's hypothesis was based. "You are at the risk of being exposed", forewarned my favourite columnist. The very next day, as I was walking out of the bathroom, my lungi slipped from my waist down to the knee for a fraction of a second before I could draw it up in a jiffy, but not be before I was exposed to the chill of the winter and the giggle of the housemaid.

As I was musing upon the march of events (such as the ones just described) that dragged me into the twilight zone between rationalism and blind faith, the doorbell rang.

Shaking my thoughts, I got up and opened the door. There was a young man standing on the doorsteps, clutching a briefcase. He said, "Good morning, sir. I represent Messrs Jackson Farms Limited. Here is a great opportunity to own a hundred jackfruit trees. You will get fifty times the invested amount in ninety years. Our unique scheme......." I slammed the door on his face. Jackfruit, my foot!

Well, if opportunity didn't actually knock at my door as was forecast, it certainly did knell through the doorbell, albiet abortively. And my endeavour was about to bear fruit - of the jack variety.
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I was outraged when his heart-rending scream failed to prick the conscience of the hostellers who went about their business in a detached manner. But the reason for their apathy became apparent when, on a fact-finding mission, I discovered the wailer perched atop his bed shedding pints of tears as he savagedly clipped his own finger-nails letting out a howl of agony after each nick. And his full-throated rendition of the national anthem marked the end of the bizarre ritual.

It was not as if he was a weirdo. He had his head screwed on the right way and did things just the way we did, only he did them differently. His brushing of teeth was an incredible sight to behold - he held the brush stationary on his teth while shaking his head sideways. When he ate, which he did quite often, he bent his head towards the plate to meet his right hand halfway.

With his myopic eyesight he, sans his specs, fathered scores of bloomers that made our day. 'Warm Digamber' he would say reading the poster of the movie 'Warm December'. with him the signboard of a 'Public Carrier' became a 'Pubic Carrier'. And the 'No Parking ' sign? 'Hush! Don't yap. It's a no-barking area'.

The most unlikely incidents triggered his mood swings. A fit of melancholy engulfed him when the hostel mess opened three minutes late. His idea of having a jolly time was to smoke a beedi when it rains cats and dogs.

At times he displayed traces of naivete that was his hallmark. He mailed a registered letter by stamping it adequately and dropping it into the post box. In those days he didn't even know how to draw money from the bank but could draw portraits of exquisite class and sublimity.

He ate like there was no tomorrow and yet had a lanky frame to show for his gluttony. consequently, when he went out in my company, neighbourhood brats called out 'Laurel and Hardy' (no prize for guessing who was Hardy). But he got into high spirits (toohigh for others' comfort) after downing an ounce of beer; so he remained on water-wagon guzzling gallons of orange juice and prided himself on being called 'Mr Sober(s).

But the greatest paradox was that he went on to specialise and super-specialise in a subject that he, as an undergraduate, flunked at the first attempt. He got himself trained in that subject at prestigious unuversities around the globe and today he single-handedly runs an institution of high calibre earning himself loads of fame and moolah.

The last time I met him, a couple of years ago, he was his car with his foot of the accelerator and the choke pulled out all the way! Father time couldn't change him a wee bit.

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Caught In Crosby

Years ago, as a PG student, I was assigned to work on a dissertation titled ‘Duodenal Mucosal Study in Malabsorption Syndrome’. The study entailed taking the intestinal biopsy using a tool called ‘Crosby Capsule’.

Crosby Capsule is spring-loaded metal capsule measuring 1cm long and 7mm in diameter, connected to a long thin polythene tube. The capsule has two halves fitted to each other before using. The patient is made to swallow the capsule and when it reaches the desired part of the intestine, a biopsy is taken using negative suction. Then the capsule is pulled out with the help of the polythene tube and the biopsy sample sent for study.

I breezed through the first couple of cases before the trouble started. At the next essay, the detachable part of the capsule got unstuck and was left behind the patient’s tummy as I pulled the tube out. Though it did not cause any harm to the patient per se, the capsule itself was an expensive gizmo belonging to my boss. But then, an ingenious ward boy came to my rescue: He tailed the patient till he passed the motion right into a pot and after sifting through the goo, restored the capsule to me. I tipped him well and from then on I unofficially appointed him as the ‘Officer in charge, Search & Recovery of capsule’.

The mishap occurred many times after that and each time my ‘search and recovery agent’ rose to the occasion. As I went through the ‘motion’ of taking the biopsy, the tidings of my exploits with the Crosby Capsule reached my boss’s ears and he promptly put paid to my adventure sport.

He gave me a fresh topic for the dissertation. “If you don’t change the topic”, he said, tongue in cheek, “You may have to re-title your earlier dissertation as ‘Lost and Found — A Study of Biopsy Capsule in Motion’”!!!!!

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Slim Chances of Success

I must have fallen in love with food sometime during my sojourn in the cradle when I was weaned from breast milk to porridge. For, my mother recalls from my infancy the throaty gurgle of delight I used to emit with wild jabbing of the tiny limbs into air whenever I heard the clink of the cereal bowl. It was indeed love at first bite.

The love grew in tandem with my body mass and somewhere along the line a battle royale broke out between muscles and fat which the latter won by a decisive margin. And the middle-age corpulence made a munificient contribution to the rotundity.

By then my paunch jutted out, like the solitary rock on a cliff face, to an extent that prompted my colleagues to vehemently demand a handicap in their favor at the veterans sprint event, allegedly because my midriff touched the tape approximately 0.723 seconds before I reached the finishing line.

But it was when my friends subjected me to a campaign of innuendoes to the effect that my abdominal folds, following the law of gravity, would soon set out on an earthbound journey reaching up to my knees thereby rendering briefs and trousers superfluous, that I was finally shamed into embarking on a ‘load shedding’ iternary.

In my scheme of things, dieting was no different from a footloose stud trying to practice celibacy amidst a bevy of seductive nymphets. By implication, the success of my gastronomic chastity hinged on steering clear of all the sensory stimuli that whetted the craving for the chow, while I remained short rations.

Accordingly, I took abstemious measures such as skipping all enticing ads of junk food in the media. A total ban on all talk of food was clamped at home. Chomps, slurps, crunches and burps were declared taboo at the dinner table. Though I could shed 10Kg in six months, there were moments of hiccup. For instance, one night I dreamt of devouring my favorite onion pakoras and woke up with a start to find a corner of my blanket missing!

Things didn’t remain hunky dory for long. A newly opened eatery adjacent to my house threw a spanner in the works. The tantalizing aroma of food coupled with periodic shouts of pizza or sphagetti wafted through my window and bombarded my sensory organs weakening my resolve day after day. Slowly but surely, I was reverting to abyss of gluttony.

Just when I smelt victory at the “battle of the bugle”, I met my waterloo.

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