Green tea. Organic India.

I have been getting some time to do nothing at home.    

 I drank Green tea for the first time in my life a few days ago.  

These guys are amazing writers, with not a single reason being a figment of imagination, not that people who drink green tea ever read what's written on the pack on the reasons on why you should drink it.  

Helps you relax 

Reduces stress 

Strengthens immune system 

Abundant in antioxidants 

Keeps you going 

Boosts stamina 

Improves digestion 

Improves metabolism 

Helps fight illness 

Helps fight cough and cold 

Anti aging 

Uplifts mood 

Anti jet lag 

They missed out anti dengue.

Featured here 5 minutes of twin infusion. 

Feeling Lost ? It is just a feeling, not reality.

Everyday While I spend approx 70 to 80 minutes behind the wheel, on my way from home to work. I feel lost in the traffic, work and life and imagine I could have done better and I deserve better and I could have been somewhere else. I should have been somewhere else.  

These are just daily repetitive repeated fleeting thoughts of no consequence. 

Every stretch of the 26km drive to work through the city has its own different calling. theme of the city flavour of the city call it whatever.  From crossing the river on a toll road at 100 KMPH to 1kmph in 1st gear to exit the same toll road.   

The entire stretch of the dark side of the city visible marked in particular with the top of the lotus temple in the centre, and its not an irony.  It's plain reality.  

Crossing the replica of the shanti stupa is a reminder that peace is inside you. Don't waste time searching for it.  

Crossing the bhairo temple reminds me that it's ok to be drunk in the morning.  What you can do in the night can be done during the day. 

Crossing the Supreme Court and the supposedly orderly chaos outside with all the red beacon ambassadors and the three pointed stars and the four inter twined circles and everything mean nothing to justice. But they come to deliver and receive or delay justice in it.  

Inevitably I do have to stop at the red light at barakhamba road which reminds me of the Delhiites dream of schooling their children in "Modern school".

CP is nothing but a circle of everything in life which one has to exit.  

 I pass the crematorium everyday, reminds me that the resting ground is not far away and you don't have to walk or drive yourself there.  

The pigeon feeding point always makes me want to stop and click a few moments of hundreds of pigeons in flight taking off and landing without bumping into each other.   I take imaginary shots with my mind and no memory stick. It's a daily opportunity missed thanks to the traffic around the roundabout. But I never miss the lady seated on the divider with her prayer book, praying and turning the pages.  I am positive she is not lost. She might have lost her mind but she is surely not lost.  

 It's this last stretch and the feeling of being lost that brings me back to reality with lone physically blind humans walking with their sticks constantly on the move negotiating what they can't see and still being in control of where they want to go.  They are daily reminders to me that lack of sight does not mean lack of vision and direction.  They step out everyday for their mission of whatever it is , not knowing who will help them cross the road but they have the belief that when they will reach that point some one will stop and help them cross the road.  The same road that I have difficulty in negotiating behind the wheel and feeling lost despite being blessed with sight and vision and all basic faculties.  The day begins. 

Gear shifts

It’s a scene that replays on my mind time and time again – not many scenes do.

Its not even a scene – its just a fleeting moment.

Winters are cold, Delhi winters are not cold, they are bitterly cold, the zen’s air blower struggling to warm the feet is the only way I remember it, I don’t remember if the sun came out that day or not.

The road, one of the only long and winding roads in Delhi, the Ridge road, the bend just before the Raj Niwas up the hill.

I was not always the driver I am today, I was habituated to keeping my left palm on the gear shift lever, it’s a kink I had, to drive the perfect drive where you never feel the shift in the gear downwards and the sound of the engine engaging into the power train again merges with the release of the clutch without a change of sound, its an unconscious moment most people don’t even feel it or care about it but it’s the difference of those split seconds of shift -  engage - and release, that is imperceptible  that decide how smooth are you ?  its happening all the time.  It was the way I was taught to drive by the sound of the engine. 

Call me addicted to it or call me obsessed about it but that’s the way I am. It comes naturally to me, its part of me,  an extension of my body but when my father is seated next to me on the other side – I am conscious about the entire process, “conscious”  how many times ?, I have no clue, you can imagine the number of times I would have changed a gear shift lever with him next to me – there has never been a time I have not been conscious about it no matter what the situation, its like every time I am being judged for my performance of that seamless transition in and out of the shift.  Its like breathing, you are not conscious about it and now imagine that you are conscious about your every breath and imagine that every shift of the gear downward or upward is a breath you take - and you can understand what I am trying to say about the frequency of the activity performed.

 

Empty road, no rush hour, I know the stretch of the road well, (I have been lost walking on these roads as a child visiting my grandmother's home and that is where this drive started), like the back of my hand, the destination 10, K.G. Marg is a second visit in a lifetime only and both on the same day, today.  

I hate not knowing the route,  it disturbs my gear shift pattern,  every turn has to be etched in memory to be the perfect driver, I simply hate not knowing the road.

 

Am lost in myself with my palm on the gear shift lever,  I can see Pooja in the rear view mirror,  staring into emptiness, from the corner of my eye,  I can see my dad on the left looking into his own folded hands,  the quietness of the cocoon speeding down the road is broken only by the warm whirring of the blower. 

And as I take the bend and I shift the stick forward my dad’s palm slips over my hand and he says quietly “ I don’t want to die“ the clutch released under my foot, the power train engages, I lift my right hand off the steering wheel and across my heart and put it on my dad’s hand on the gear shift and say nothing.  For those split seconds of life – life stood still in a void with the car going into the bend with no hands on the wheel, till reality forced my right hand back onto the steering wheel.

 

It was one of the few rare moments of my life when I saw a conscious acceptance of a weak moment in my father’s life span spent with him.

It was the only moment that I saw from the corner of my eyes, a man looking into his folded hands that life was only a matter of time.

That said I don't remember him  even flinching one more time ever again till the end, other than the one request.    " please don't let me suffer " 

 

Every time I shift gears I hear those words “I don’t want to die.”

216 seconds of your doctor's time.

Witnessing a doctor see 49 patients in 3 hours. I was the 50th cos I was a non paying goodwill gesture patient not in a queue. Waiting 45 minutes to see the doctor Is practically speaking not a wait given all things and other people actually being critically ill. 

The doctor's board reads physician and intensivist.  I google the word : Intensivist: A physician who specializes in the care of critically ill patients, usually in an intensive care unit (ICU). 

All I know is that he brought my wife practically speaking not to exaggerate "back from the death bed".

I have no problems in waiting.

That's 3.6 minutes to a patient including smiling and hearing and writing a prescription and measuring BP  and pulse, listening through the stethoscope.............

Life threatening and life saving split second alternate courses of medications reviewed and chosen all in the mind.  

For those 3.6 minutes of audience with the medicine man, there is a 2 hour round robin life circle of your own to manage and then the intake of the magic pill works or not is a hit out of the ball park or is it just a canter for a home run or simply strike one two and three.  Wham you are cured or you keep coming back in hope.

Courtesies exchanged.  

All good sir, 😊

BP reads 130/80 

Perfectly wonderful. 

Let's stick to this one pill and meet after 3 months.   In case you feel you want to see me feel free to come.   

Any thing I can do to get off this pill ? 

Nope ! Live healthy,  maintain healthy habits. Walk regularly and low salt intake. 

I curse and mutter under my breath and as always say "Thank you so much for your time sir. "

My share of 3.6 minutes ends and the doc smiles and takes off his reading glasses and packs up for the day ! 

I would not exchange my life for his, not for all the money and all the good things that life has to offer to anyone in the world because I would just keep wondering if what I did in those 216 seconds each time was the right thing or not and here was this man doing it day in and day out,week after week, month after month, year after year with a smile on his face. 😊

I still remember - Even when he said "sweetheart  admission is not an option."  He said it with a smile on his face.   

I like a man whose smile and shoulders are always fighting the existence of gravity. 

I guess that's how you choose a physician for life, someone who knows what to do when things go drastically wrong too and handles it with a 😊

Cardiac arrest

CARDIO PULMONARY RESUSCITATION 

Was reading about the CPR and everything simple associated with it.   Even if your heart stops beating the doctors believe the next ten minute window that the brain is kept alive, by pumping the chest it pumps blood into the brain. 

It is this critical window that can make the difference till medical help arrives. 

I really don't know why they don't teach such basics right from school.  

If Keats can be expected to be understood and addition and multiplication is progressed to trigonometry and calculus why on earth can't basic life saving techniques be taught in school. People should grow with this kind of knowledge and hands on practice just like addition and subtraction. 

A cardiac arrest occurs when the electrical conducting system of the heart fails and the heart beats irregularly or very fast. Soon after; the heartbeats stop, so does the blood flow to the brain.  As a result the person becomes unconscious and stops breathing. In such situations the victim can be saved within ten minutes because the brain remains alive during this period even when the  heart and respiratory system stop. In medical terms the victim is only clinically dead. 

Knowing what to do is critical. 

I was a silent hypertensive for how long even I don't know, for    someone who gets breathless by a simple activity like stepping onto an escalator is an expression in humour but my wife has been hypertensive for ever since I have known her.  

The insurance companies test you for your medical fitness before they insure your life and for that they run a battery of tests on you : blood, sugar and body fluids, you name it they do it,  then they make you run on a treadmill. 

Well, my blood pressure did not qualify : for me to be allowed to run. The new discovery that my perfect cool demeanour and perfect behaviour of the Mercury being rock stable at 120/80 all my life till now, now read 140/100 consistently for over an hour on 3 different machines on a regular Wednesday early morning. 

It did not sound too good, in fact the non acceptance of the fact as a matter of fact unlike all other things of life taken  as inevitable probably sent the Mercury in a tizzy at 170/108 at complete rest by the evening.  

The next day I was seated in front of a specialist out of turn as if the world could overturn. 

People live with high blood pressure and low blood pressure all their lives. My better half is living proof of it.  Beta blockers and pregnancy safe , , , infant safe all ring in the ear.  I knew the drill.  

3 days of pills and Sunday came and Mercury registered perfect readings for me to qualify to run on a treadmill.  

I have run and I have walked for all reasons all my 41 years but never had I imagined that  I would be running on treadmill with electrodes and wired up and a computer screen recording everything just like the Russian Drago in Rocky IV. Well here I was running for 7 minutes and the second upgraded incline and speed and I thanked myself that I had come wearing Nike air run free 3. 

I could handle this and run this damn machine down. At the fourth incremental incline and speed, I realised this was an unrelenting machine and I was not.  All of a sudden Drago's face of grit and determination came in front of my eyes and I knew there was pain involved here and I had no business to be running on this machine to prove anything to anyone leave aside to myself and I was no fitness freak, even my 7 year old son could out run me without even trying. I really don't know who humours whom when we run together neck to neck and tell each other "faster faster".  I was always a short distance sprinter even in school. The 80 meters sprint medal floated in front of my eyes. Not even 100 meters.  

 This was serious running I was running. Now I knew what it meant by "you can't get off a treadmill".   

Stopping was not an option, just not an option. I was beyond breathlessness, I was panting.  6th upgrade of incline and speed and I was actually running now to save my own life. I remembered scenes from movies in which the villains make you run on the treadmill till you beg them to stop, that you would tell all your secrets and passwords of life to just get off the treadmill.  

Proud man that I was,  so far running without holding the rails after all I was 75kg and 5'10" tall with perfect cholesterol and triglycerides. I asked ? Sorry I gasped " Bhaiya how many more inclines to go ?"  I heard one more to go, I saw my watch 18 minutes of this running business done so far. 

Calculated one more raise incline would probably mean 90 degrees. I would not be running against the wall. I would be running on the wall against gravity. My hands reached out for the rails.    Time left : 3 minutes.   All of a sudden my steely resolve to run against gravity disappeared and I gasped and blurted out "if all those printouts are good enough can we choose to stop now"  and the gentleman of a technician said "yes no problem, all good on paper " stop stop I did not want to sound like I was begging but In my mind I was.   

The damn machine slowed down and stopped.  I got off and now I realised what a blackout meant or would feel like.  I felt weak in the knees out of shape and out of breath is a mild way to put it.    But I now knew the feeling of what it feels like that - if someone were to stab me with a knife in the chest I would not feel a thing.  This was one of those physically numbing moments.   

I was only 41 and all of a sudden I understood what my father meant at age 50 by " screw the TMT, I am not getting it done ".  He was damn right.  I guess fathers are always right.  Ok let me rephrase it. Fathers generally are almost always right. 

The doctor said : well done, all good.  Go easy on salt, pickles, butter and ghee and you know the drill.  I wanted to tell him bloody joker can't you read the blood reports they are perfectly within normal range.  Even the good cholesterol to the bad cholesterol ratio was fine.  I just don't eat ghee and butter is a rarity.  I just wanted to get out of the place.  

I got out.  First thing I did was drive through McDonalds, one medium coke.   I was empty stomach. I wanted the sugar Rush.  Black poison went in.  I could still not think clearly.  My heart was still thumping so hard I could feel the thump on my smiley t shirt. My feet still could not feel the clutch properly.  Smsed to a friend about the test and the response was.  "Ya now we know what we mean by the expression PANTING LIKE A DOG with your tongue out." 😜👍.   

Went to the specialist the next day. 

130/80. Excellent. Changed medicine. Come back after one week. 

120/80.  Excellent. Changed medicine. Come back after one month. 

Ride In the Delhi Metro in peak rush hour

The metro is a great leveller. 

People catching their shut eye moments of life with their eyes open.  

The ear phones plugged into the music phones drowning the din of the drone of the metal wheels and the whining of the high speed short spurt engines. The music playing inside being material or immaterial or transporting you into a trance, whatever. The only touch with reality being the monotone announcement of the next approaching stop. 

Hands cradling the head with the elbows on the knees.  It's like holding the entire world in between your palms and the index fingers pressing both the temples as pressure points to prevent the mind and the pain from  taking over life.   

Stop after stop, stop after stop.  

There is only so much you can absorb as the eyes look into a stranger's eyes and you break into a smile knowingly, another set of eyes simply squirt away.   

Hands holding the hands rails.   It's like a symmetry of wrists broken by the shirt sleeve cuffs and the rings and the watches.  Every watch you see is an imaginary story of age and time and how the leather and steel and resin and glass and plastic have weathered the storms in the lives  of the wearer. The stories that you imagine are limited only by your own imagination unless you are lost in your own imagination.  

Travelling peak traffic time in public transport is real life.  When you travel in the freedom of your personal space without the smell of the sweat of another human, it's the time to appreciate the good things of life that you have bought by burning fossil  fuel and cursing the stationary traffic because of other people who have also managed to do the same.   

As you look at people lost in life on the same track, who have found life with their iPhones and their samsungs and all the other cell phones that both companies are trying to gobble up before the poor become poorer or richer.  

The youngsters offering their seats to elders and the ladies or actually not doing it.   It's just a state of mind of how we judge people.  Never in the world across all ages were all youngsters respectful and nor do we live in times where the world has completely fallen apart.   The tag and the extremely hard earned omega all travel with the nine penny plastic watch.  Yes the metro is a great leveller.   I think observing people who travel alone in public transport- their faces are a true reflection of their real state of mind and life and how they feel about life at that point of time in which they are completely alone. Families waiting at home. Work left behind.  It's Their eyes and shoulders and their feet planted on the floor and in the quite that Is the closest to reality.   Destination arrives and life is an act once again.  

Happy New Year.

New year eves and the new year makes me nostalgic.   

It reminds me of childhood days spent buying new year cards by the score. The dilemma was only between Choosing UNICEF and CRY for fulfilment of social responsibility inculcated by dad inside the heart and the mind, which was split finally equally between both reaching out to India and the world. 

Then choosing which ones to send to whom out of the whole lot of cards. 

I used to take it to the next level by then choosing between the limited choice of variations of postage stamps available at different different post offices and then came the deliberation on the choice of words thought over and above greetings of the seasons and a few family update notes to be written in intricate handwriting by dad, then the envelope for the address was my responsibility.   

Those were the days when greetings were not simply a greeting.  

It was an effort that showed that you cared, and more than cared.  It was like the renewal of a bond built through the years and reminiscing about the times gone by and the times to come.  

It was time taken out for people you cared for : even if it meant to communicate via a simple happy new year card, once a year. 

Those were the good old days. 

These are also good times.  Broadcast  happy new year on Whats app and you don't even care who all it went to so long as you pressed send even If you had not spoken in five years and the number did not exist anymore. 

But you tried to reach out. 

Sending a SMS is also a sign that you cared enough to send a SMS.

I guess this is evolution of connectivity with your past and your future without actually connecting. 

30th December 2014.  

Food : Dead or Alive ?

How do we eat dead meat ? 

The concept of dead and alive came to me from a Comic strip in which aliens ate live meat, humans asked the aliens how could they eat something which was still alive and the aliens simply asked how could we eat something which was dead.

Visited Uttam nagar by lanes today which had Shop after shop of mutton  and pork, generally I have a strong Constitution and blood and gore does not make my stomach go squeezy  but so much of blood in the drains and so many bloodless and lifeless goats and pigs stripped .... Made me think. 

The cross section of the pork meat in so much of abundance robbed me of my love for bacon, for how long ? I do not know ? 

I have seen headless chicken fly and I have eaten the same chicken. I love chicken meat, I tolerate mutton and I love bacon but bones make me lose my appetite. Chicken patty stuffed between burger buns is fine but the oversized KFC chicken legs makes me lose my love for it. 

Stuffed Chicken breast made by Pooja makes me want to live for another life time.

Beef  is also an amazing item how can you not like tunday ke kebab, beef sliders in Goa made by Vandana are to die for. 

For Almost 5 short or long years, I quit eating non vegetarian stuff, thanks to my monthly visits to pick LPG cylinder @ 6 am  and watching the activity at the Lucknow butchery and the carcasses and the thela and rickshaw "load" of meat covered with blood stained, age old daily used same piece of cloth, as I write this - the memories of aversion revisits. "Screw the aversion",  reached home to devour "amazing mutton chops," there is nothing that Pooja can't transform.

This note was written on the 19th of December 2011. Brought into the foreground of the mind by the ban on beef.   All of a sudden the question arises - is it really a free country anymore.   Tomorrow we might have to stop eating vegetables.  

Plant cells are alive all the time, right upto the time they are chopped and hit the sizzling frying pan or the pressure cooker and subsequently enter your mouth and the acid in your stomach starts acting upon them to extract nutrition for your body.  

Science has still not proven that the plant cells are completely dead by the time they pass out of your system.   

Just food for thought.   

Enjoy your meal whatever be your choice.   

UNPLUGGED.

UNPLUGGED. 

Ever since I was a kid, I loved the song "Wired for sound" by Cliff Richard.  It was one of my all time favourites for no special reason.   Those were the 80s and the 90s and it meant that listening to it on the big sound box and the cooler version was listening to it on the Walkman and the wired headphones all night long till the batteries ran out of electrons.  

Those were the only set of wires that mattered back then.  

http://youtu.be/5OxwhOrX9Cc

Cut to 2015, 21 feb Saturday,  I reached work and took out the laptop and plugged in the power cord  and that's when It struck me, I was wired for life,   for the power cord  was followed by the lan patch cord, followed by the iPhone charging cord  that went into the laptop, then came out the external battery charger cord that again went out into laptop, next came out the hands free ear phones that went into the phone to prevent radiation and my brains from getting fried all day. 

Remove even one wire out of this set one by one and life will stop after some time.  

Cut back to 6 feb 2015.  Had a severe headache. Unplugged  all the wires and stuffed them in the bag and drove home. The pain so severe that I felt I would rather die than be able to suffer the pain along with the sinking feeling.   So next we visit the hospital emergency room with Pooja carrying the bag with all the wires cos can't risk leaving them in the car. If the car was stolen, life could go on, but without the wires NO WAY. 

Next thing I know was that the wires that mattered in life were still in my bag and out came lots of wires in cool colours and clips clamped to my arms and legs and suction cap electrodes on my chest.  

Emergency ECG. 

All of a sudden the one thought that struck me as I was staring at the bright white light on the ceiling while the machine spewed the paper with the printouts for the doctor to understand whatever that meant. 

PAIN and throbbing pain and only more pain and I just didn't give a damn other than  Hope the doctor does something for that, I was not in control of the wires that went in or out. 

What followed was routine protocol to relieve the pain. 

What that meant was that wires had a new meaning in life.   

Wires for sound. Wires for living life. Wires for measuring life. 

19th feb 2015, some one I knew, who lived life with an epic smile passed away after a long fight, God had pulled the plug at age 46 from someone who had the will to live.   

That's our connection with wires and more wires and more cords and synaptic transmission.  I think it's high time we unwire ourselves before God pulls out the plug cos we can't unwind ourselves. 

MTv Unplugged was the best series ever created, but unplugged has a new meaning in life now.