Getting Missionarised

A long awaited saturday and I find myself playing basketball with friend cum coach justajester (he paid me for writing this line) at the medical college grounds at 8 30 in the morning. A phone call from a colleague was wat it took to remind me abt the important assignment for the day. A team visit to the missionaries of charity as part of what is called Corporate Social Responsibility.
Although the initial member influx was huge, the number narrowed down to 10 on the d day of the visit.
But the team is well bred to counter such in time assaults, why, we bear an anchor who plans every event but never really shows up.
So i was at the gates of the missionaries at 9 after a quick bath.
My team mates were already in, the serenity of the place makes it hard to believe that they house more than 50 children in there. I stepped into a room full of cribs, and cute babies, most of them months old slept peacefully on cushy blankets. Some had woke up and were looking at me with their wide button eyes, I walked up to the next room to find 7 children in beds, they lay there, never moved and some where weeping constantly as if in great pain, they were mentally disabled, mostly abandoned, and were bedridden for a lifetime. Later the nun told me that they would be taken care of till aparticular age and would be moved to a rehab centre. These children are never adopted and would spend their entire lifetime with the nuns. A serious lack of logistics for physiotherapy and treatment of these children was visible, but atleast they are getting good food and kept clean. A professional physiotherapist would be far out of range for these people and the nuns would take up the job themselves.
I could hear chitter chatter from the adjacent corridor and peeked in to find the tiny tots (most vibrant age group of 3-12) waiting there after their morning ablutions, they had seen the toys through the windows and that was the reason for the commotion. Within minutes the place was strewn with coulourful toys, balloons, inflatables.

Most of them dint have any reservations, they were used to mingling with the frequent visitors... one of my colleagues was seen with atleast 3 children hanging on to his neck. I tried to settle down with the less riskty job of inflating balloons for the children, only to find myself later in a turmoil.
The problem was the size of the balloons, the ones who had the smaller ones wanted theirs to be readjusted to match the size of the bigger ones, i had to do it and ended up hunting down new concepts in precision inflation mechanism.
In the mean time on girl walked up to me in a very brisk manner and asked me to dance, she was definitely more than 10 yrs of age and was really smart, later I came to know that her name was rajini and was from andhra, she had landed up in northern kerala and was forced to beg in bus stands . She used to have a daily target of Rs 500 and got beaten up badly if she dint make it. One day at a railway station , in the same way she walked up to a nun and told her that she was going with her who took it to be a joke and agrred, but as the train left the station, she climbed in to end up here.
One thing I noticed about thse children is that they are smart and have a lot of self respect. They dont like to be fiddled with, once i was answering rajinis smart questions and I lied to her, later when she came to know that i had given false info she was really cross and said
You are a monkey:).
But that makes me happy, next time she wouldn't face much problem in recognizing the lone monkey in the group.

Sucker's Payoff

Obsession with cheap DARES is a very dangerous thing. You wont realize it as long as you get to have tea for free every day.


                                                       

Ok. blah blahs aside february 14 was a very happening day, atleast towards the second half.
Workplace was morose as usual...and i never made it any of the lists of the so famed valentine gift recipients, i ws desperately trying to re imbibe the romance in one of those dilapidated roses by forcing its petals open and make it look fresh again..there what works out with humans won't often work out with flowers.

Boredom lingered in the air until i saw myself getting involved in a much hyped DARE to gift the dead (read red) rose to the woman walking in next through the alley door, the vertebrate in me faced the challenge and got himself polished for the fatal exercise.

As i wait for strangers in walks a lady, speedy steps , tottering towards the rest room, probably under pressure, probability of getting rejected is very high...situation also invited fatal physical contatcs... stayed out of the way.

Then walks in princess of the day, visibly a very senior person in the industry, had the aura of audacity and command around her. Definitely not to the rest room, but still one has to play it safe, she halted midway for a chat, snatched the moment, made the dash, committed the fastest valentines wish ever executed.

aplause applause... i get a standing ovation from the team, no one really looks at the perplexed lady who is cornered now.

But the reader should know thatthis is a clear case of 3x1 matrix.

1. I give the rose , she accepts (both happy)... that means it gives me a reason to be happy for the rest of the day (I win the bet amount of Rs100) and she is happily smelling away on her fragrant gift(allergy to pollen obliterated).... so each gets 2 happy hours each (2,2)

2. I give the rose , she rejects it...(me sad, she neutral)... i will be sad for the rest of day, beaten down by my own audacity and the urge to kill myself for every single one of those sympathetic looks from colleaguues. So its like 2 sad hours for me , no gain/loss for her.(-2,0)

3.
She accepts the rose, but i dont give it .. i throw it away and walks off with the dirtiest laughter ever recorded)
(me happy , she sad).Usually one do not count happy hours due to sadistic satiations, but here it is unavoidable.
So it gives me 5 hours of sadistic dirty laughter with other equally sadistic souls(this includes the instances when the event finds mention in small talk during tea breaks etc when all souls laugh again and again), and she is sad for another two hours for giving in...(5,-2)

So if u take case 1 the average happiness for each would be 2 hours each, ok leave aside her happiness... if i get 2 hours of happiness  we have an average of 1 hour happiness.

But what if we go for 2 or 3... even combined they will yield a maximum of 0.5 hours of average happiness.

Why am i saying this???
After the prank my princess asked me What would it have been like if she had rejected my rose.
Quite evident.. princess  as u can see , its a clear instance of case 2 and the average happiness is -1.

So i guess I saved the day by proving that understanding and co operation leverages long term happiness (case 1)  although short term pleasure (case 3 ) seems to be attractive and outright rejection(case 2) is bad for all parties involved.

                                                               

Its day off for other super heroes....mohabbat man saves the day.

I stumbled on......

Vandemataram!!!!! Vandemataram!!!!! My moms radio bellowed , ofcourse accompanied by the groovy beats by A.R Rahman, Bankimji would be turning in his grave.but who cares these days. Much of the desi flavours are getting hybridised.

I have just finished the days quota of reading through my latest crush, the collection of essays from tharoor sir, the elephant, tiger and the cellphone.
Rich this time, for someone who was lured by the charm of midnight to millenium and delved into oblivion by bookless in baghdad.... this is ambrosia.
Repetition of facts obliterated this is one of the best reads on India in recent times, ofcourse tharoor sirs frequent readers might find stories getting repeated, like the 
drama in school days in bombay and chintu kapoor (later to become bollywood heartthrob rishi kapoor).
Unlike his previous collections this one is clearly segregated and some sort of editing is done,one finds occassional comments at places and unlike the bookless book , i didnt quite feel that he was doing a promo for his upcoming releases.
Tharoor sir exhibits his home state chauvinism yet again , in one of cutest depictions of kerala, twenty pages dedicated exclusively to god's own country, where one is guaranteed not to miss anything about kerala prevelant in small talks, even the joke of a chayakkada(tea shop) in moon finds a place.

Well, i intend to dedicate another section on dissecting the book, but today i would like to introduce the reader to someone i stumbled upon ..... her name is lajja gauri.

I was reading through Devdutt Patnaik's Mithya or the myth when she finds a mention.

The oldest goddess in mythology, lajja gauri is a woman exposing her genitalia. Depicted in Khajuraho,The posture held a striking resemblance to the erotoc poses profferred in most of the porn sites.

                                                             

But according to Mr.Patnaik the posture has a lot to do with being divine rather than being erotic.
According to the writer the male is associated with conscience, control whereas the female form is associated with the dynamic external factors, the wild, the turbulent..... in short nature.
The statue thus depicts a yielding nature, mother nature in its apex potentials, constructed by artisans in a patriarchal society, the head is replaced by a lotus which depicts obedience to the male counterpart, she doesn't look straight into the eye.

Revelation indeed, but it leaves one speculating
Many of us say women lack conscience..... now mythology too???




 

Behind The Name

Before I bombard this place with my loosely strewn, un edited,
out of mind vagaries of thought process I feel obliged to the reader
to explain something about the name of the page.

"The womb" is a result of an intricate and highly convulsive sporadic metaphysical insights to the abstract world by a truly cataclysmic mind.
or
I was reading an article about the womb when i registered in eblogger.

But still i think the name means much more.
The womb can be anything that nourishes and protects you, a cubicle that
feeds you,helps you grow, imparts you with the virtues.
A womb maybe .. a womb for the infant, the sketch room for the 5 year old,
the playground for the ten year old,the library for the teenager,his garage 
for an enterpreuner, the steps to the grave for the octagenarian.
This place is where I wish to do everything.... wheedle like a child,
scream like a rioter, talk like a diplomat and complain like a sissy.
This is my womb.