Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

          “Feeling hot-hot-hot”, heh shabda aikoon, a certain anglicised percentage of my generation will start tapping their feet. Joint-aches, ill-distributed adipose and blood-pressures permitting. The popular version of this catchy song was recorded by David Johansen (Buster Poindexter). It was written by Alphonsus Celestine Edmund Cassell “Arrow”. In the mid-1980s, sane professionals danced maniacally at late bitter-winter parties when it was played. The ‘hot’ in it had nothing to do with pre-monsoon temperatures.

          Through the Shigmo week  Goa was 5 degrees above normal at 37 deg Celcius and  we had no ‘light’ in and around my village for a day or two. Ai Saiba, I said to myself, ‘hoon. Hoomein bharla haanv.” This summer sweat gives rise to prickly heat, makes talcum-powder manufacturers rich.     

          Most urban shops in Mapusa, Panaji, Porvorim are air-conditioned, good to do summer afternoon time-pass. Unlike in the old days, they are not shut from 1300-1600 hrs. One custom continues: they don’t worry you to buy anything if you don’t worry them to hein daakhay, tein daakhay. 

          Since we have no knowledge of summers in Punjab, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, UP, places from where our ghaatis come, we believe that our summers are jagaatley besht, as our local milk-vendor told me.

To advertise how much our corner of the planet suffers, he wears only a floral-print, cotton long-chaddi. A naadi holds it just below his paunch in the centre of which is the belly-button black-hole into which a hairy galaxy and globe of flesh get drawn.  Male tourists from neighbouring states believe that’s the way to dress in Goa, giving us niz Goemkars an opportunity to force them to buy t-shirts. “Borem dis naa,” the purists say, bare-ly looking at themselves in the mirror.

          Glassfuls of the bright red, bhirinda sollam drink keeps us ‘cool’. This ‘cool’, naught to do with temperature/style, is an Indian concept hard to translate. Curd is ‘heaty’ but buttermilk is ‘cool’. Brinjals are ‘heaty’ but bananas are ‘cool’. Go figure.

          In my village I don’t see women making papad or saandge. The latter can’t be made easily, one woman told me, because kuwaale, the ash-gourd with which it’s made, is expensive. (The same ash-gourd is used for making the famous sweet from Agra, petha.) Like the green mussels, shinnyanye, which were once sold for a few rupees a sack, it’s now getting rare. Shinnyanye are now a hundred bucks for a handful: although listed under rawa-fry on shack menus, they are often out of stock. Activists, environmentalists, please note. We Goemkars may not get senti about tigers getting extinct, but shinnyanye and kalwan matter.

          North Indians use a square, tin and grass contraption attached to their windows, a water-cooler, if they can afford a fan but not an air-conditioner. Middle-classy. They (both water-coolers and the middle-class) are inefficient in Goan humidity. In Rajasthan and Haryana, road-digging was/is done from 0400-1000 hrs and then from 1800 to short of midnight. In the afternoons, (when the temperatures cross well above 40!! And people die of the heat) workers lie down, like we do, so flies can entertain themselves. I wonder why god made flies. Everything has a purpose. Maybe flies were meant to keep human population in check by spreading disease. They have competition from viruses and vectors like mosquitoes…  perhaps their role is to breed maggots to help Margao with its garbage problem. God works in mysterious ways.

          The good part about the sweltering months: fruits. Water-, honey-dew, musk-, Chinese and other melons. Majhya Awaili phrend from Poinguinuim makes excellent jackfruit chips from a certain kind of jackfruit, ripened, cut and sliced to perfection and fried expertly.   

          Since there isn’t ‘labour’ available for roasting and shelling the cajoo-bhiknaa, the cashew-fruits in our waddo are fertilizing the soil. Intoxicating smell, gives me a ‘high’.

         The pineapples, aambaade and the bhirindya solam keep petty burglars busy.

 My mog is the mango. From Gudi Padwa to Ak-shay-tri-tiya (split to help you pronounce it) nothing else matters. Traditionally, mangoes are eaten only after Akshaytritiya, but I start to eat them as soon as the prices fall. Presently, twelve small malcuraad are at eight hundred and medium-sized haphoos at five in the Panaji market. I’ll wait.

We Goans are a warm people. In summer, literally.

On a Goan television program, I saw a weighty woman presenting/watching something that a cook was sweating over. Obviously not a kitchen person, she hissed “ssss….”, ineffectively fanning her face with her fingers, occasionally breaking the monotony with “hooosh… hooosh”. And wiping her face and neck with a tiny, limp hanky.

So-o typically a Goan thing to do when ‘feeling hot-hot-hot’ (temperature-wise, this time.)

         

         

           

Bachelors and Managers

         If your child’s a Board (pun unintended) student, this one’s for you.

Once, there was B.A., B. Com. and B.Sc. If you were a girl, you could do Home Science. If you were ‘differently talented’ (in those politically incorrect times we said ‘failed’) in academics, you did Commercial Art or an ITI diploma. Graphic Designers, Culinary Specialists and Art Historians were decades away. The more skill your qualification required and the years of training to get mastery in it, the better you were paid and respected.

You could specialize in sub-subjects. For example if you did B. Sc. (Zoology), you could do M. Sc. in cytology, embryology, anatomy, and other tongue-twisters.        

Sometime after the 11 standard SSC became 10 plus 2, these departments sprouted: Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Biophysics. The other streams had already caught up. Doctors had suffixes besides MBBS and Ph.D: BHM, BAM, BUM (for Bachelor of Unani Medicine. Honest).

Now we have MDs in Medicine Alternativa who cure you holistically. Acupuncturists and Reiki certificate-holders sniff down at the Naturopaths, Gemmologists, Numerologists, Chiropractors and Astrologists. You don’t even need to be ill to visit one of those. If you’re feeling down in the dumps, eat sprouts. If you’ve had a quarrel with your neighbour, throw a karela juice party. Bugged by the traffic jam? Sms your horoscope to your fave ‘reader’.

I’ve learned that BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies) is different from a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration). Does the difference lie in fee structure? Don’t know.  

In these days of gender neutral vocabulary, unusual that we’re still talking of Bachelors and Masters. There are Bachelors of/in Mass Media, Computer Applications, Insurance Management,  Actuaries, Event Management and more.

Some old BAs are dead: like BA (Pali). Pali- an ancient language in which Buddhist texts were written. I don’t know what the ‘Pali graduates’ did with their knowledge except teach others what they knew.  

But I stray…

The MBA sneaked into academia in the ‘sixties, to creep and crawl into every cranny of career-driven youths’ lives. And of their parents. Don’t have the high IQ or slogging power to get into an IIM?. Don’t worry.

One can get an MBA from a corner grocery shop (CGS) these days. Who or what the ‘graduates’ from these institutions are managing is something I can’t guess. For the entrance exams to get into these CGS MBA courses, there are private coaching classes….. business begets business.

Then there’s the MHA= Masters in Hospital Administration. Or DHA= Diploma in the same stuff. You don’t need to be a doctor to do them and you can tag ‘hospital’ alongside your name and romp around impressing people. You can do it (the course, not the romping) full time, part time, half time and through ‘distance’ (the word ‘correspondence’ is defunct; like ‘cookies’ killed biscuits and ‘apartments’ killed flats).

Next arrived the M in PA (Pharmaceutical Administration) and MT (Medical Tourism). Is Hospital Admin different from Healthcare Admin? Dunno: both are MHAs. And a new one: Book-keeping Management Administration.

Some slow-to-change who believe that HRM, alongside Finance and Systems, is the route to the top, have grudgingly begun to consider other courses for their wards. Like Master of Disaster Management. I don’t understand … does MDM teach you to make a perfect calamity? To create emergencies? Are terrorists Masters of DM? Ignorama Blissus, that’s me.

There are less advertised courses specializing in managing museums, aquaria, circuses (ok, I made up the last two).

Many of these Biz Mgt types slog and slave for non MBAs for a salary. Projects of Time Motion Studies and data entries, reports generation don’t require originality of thought, creativity, or enterprise. Their work could be done by very bright clerks. For good money and glory, I must add.

When I see the numbers of ‘M’s in different kinds of Administration and then see the small but focused lot of students who are taking up pure science (India’s doing pretty well in the Maths/Physics/Bio Olympiads), and geography, I know that things are a-changing.  

When children choose not to do the regular grind of computer/medical stuff and ignore acquaintances which do the ‘poor thing’ ritual with parents, they prosper.

In Goa we have examples of those who’ve done well in unusual subjects. One, studying reptiles (Aaron Lobo and Rahul Alvares).

It’s the quest for knowledge and consistency in effort that makes the difference. Not the label.

Back to the young managers… they’re busy learning how to manage, not knowing what they want to manage. No school teaches that. That, Dear Parents, is where you step in.

This is the season of entrance exams: Good Luck all.

The Health Check.

I enjoy sharing my medical complaints with friends, relatives, neighbours, on Facebook, and trying out home remedies before any pain/ nausea rushes to a ‘real’ doctor (= at least MBBS). Drinking concoctions of tulsi leaves or dalchini twigs, meditating before dawn, sniffing crushed neem leaves, chewing raw turmeric or the inside of a banana stem, swallowing garlic cloves and sprouted methi seeds, anything that indicates ‘saamkey natoorall’ can only bring benefit, nee? If it’s gummy like steamed bhindi or bitter like karela juice, all the better.  

My contemporaries discuss flatulence, variations in blood pressures, medicines that go with them, ‘sugar’ and ‘kiten tein kull naa, punn jivaak borem dissa naa’ (=“don’t understand what it is, but makes me feel unwell”). That vague something a patient can’t describe, which gives ulcers to family physicians. Family physicians, also called general practitioners, are members of that getting-extinct breed which tells you bluntly that your ‘stomach-upset’ is just indigestion and not a heart attack. Contrary-wise, when you take an rash lightly, (s)he chides you for taking so long to ask for help.

Kind ex-colleagues and worrying advertisements nudged me to do a preventive screening of detectable medical ailments. I am, after all, in the teatime of my life.

Going for a Health-Check is like planning a cruise to Alaska. Cheaper. I thumbed through several glossy brochures/pamphlets to choose a hospital. I had to choose the package depending on age and tests. They (the packages, not the tests) had names like Pearl, Ruby, Diamond in one and Basic, Basic Plus, Special and Comprehensive in another. I had to decide which of the tests I wanted done. Tension saamken. Suppose I chose a ‘basic’. The first test read ‘Blood Group’. Now if I were to do the same package annually (as recommended), why would I want to find out my Blood Group over again? Would I get a discount if I said I didn’t want it done multiple times?

Liver function, heart function, kidney function, bones, eyes, ears, skin, teeth, ovary: what did I want checked? Should I tick them all? The headache vanished when I decided to go by the price instead.   

Overnight fasted, udok i piyun naa, I made myself hazir and stood in line with other yawning fellow health-conscious Goans. One woman (I refuse to call an adult female ‘lady’ unless she proves herself to be one, irrespective of what the toilet labels her to be) told me she had opted for a superior package: “It has a bone density test. One thing I don’t want to get is osteoporosis.” What was the illness she did want to get? I wondered, but held my tongue. She and her companion were from Mumbai. Goans from Mumbai, they nodded at me, lest I had any doubt. I’m used to such introductions on the Mandovi Express. I nodded back understandingly: there’s an unspoken bond of sisterhood that explains “it’s cheaper to get these things done here, you know”. They hadn’t included taxi fares in their maths, I giggled inwardly, and continued (admirably for me) to hold my tongue.

We watched each other getting pricked in the elbow, our blood being whisked away in small tubes to some mysterious place. We shared time outside the ultra-sonography room, our bladders competitively waiting, hoping that the other would not fill up first.

“Doctor,” I overheard someone say, “I want a cancer test done.”

“For which cancer?”

“Means? Cancer is cancer, no? I want a test to see if I have cancer.”

“There are different tests for different cancers: breast, uterine, ovarian, cervical. We do them all.”

“No one test?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The sound I heard next, I believe, is of hair being torn off a scalp. This must have been the umpteenth ‘why’ question the patient (if pun, then unintended) doctor must have heard that morning. “Why do you need to do an ecg if you’re doing a stress test?” “Why can’t you directly do a CT scan if the x-ray isn’t showing you all the details?” “Why do I have to wait so long for a report?” “Why is this blood test more expensive than that?” “Don’t you have a buy one get one free scheme for consultations? Why not?”

At the end of the ‘package’, each had found some anomaly. Except me. As we bid each other warm and loving ‘byes, one of them comfortingly said to me: “Never mind. Health is wealth, they say. You may have better luck next time.”

For the third time, haanve kaany mhanoom na.

Un-fare

          I waited two years for the government to take a call on the Regional Plan. Didn’t happen. Our house-to-be built was dependent on it. We had to change our plans. The architect had to redesign the whole thing, we had to resubmit several sets of files to various departments and lagao chuckkers again. The day one of the offices was sending an inspector to ‘the site’ (hate to call my little slice of planet by that name), the taxis went on strike. Since the officials don’t have official transport available, ever, tax-paying non-car-owning/driving creatures have to make arrangements for a vehicle for every visit. I couldn’t get a taxi thanks to the strike and had to make do with an autorickshaw whose driver kindly consented not to overcharge. So-o nice of him to do me this favour. He didn’t/doesn’t have a clue that he and his taxi-driving brethren and pilot-cousins are overcharging, have been overcharging, had over-charged and will continue to do so unless something drastic is done.

          Not many people believe that Goa has black and yellow cabs. No one who comes from anywhere believes that we pay over a hundred rupees for a kilometre’s ride by taxi. The most expensive public transport in the world? Perhaps. Definitely the most expensive in India. In fact, all the time we have to pay for both ways, even if we’re going only one way and at terribly high rates. The taxi chaps in the meanwhile, get a customer to take back, so double-double money.

          Why then do they charge so much? The taxi driver-owners I spoke to gave me reasons like: the Tourism Department agreed to these fares, we’re not charging anything extra. Or it costs (them) Rs 180 to repair a puncture… how many punctures do these guys get in year?

          The taxi people have an association, the bike-renters have another, the bus lobby is strong enough to topple a government, the ‘pilots’ and auto-rickshaw chaps can twist sarkari arms. I have no idea why metre is a bad word in Goa. Metres work fine in Mumbai, Delhi, now even in Chennai.

          The auto-driver who helped me out on the strike day said, ‘… when the rent-a-bike started, too, we had a problem.’ I wasn’t in Goa then, so know little about any events that happened. ‘… but rent-a-bikes came to stay. Similarly, the new cabs will come and we’ll all have to adjust. After all, I can’t stop others from buying auto-rickshaws. If there are many of them on the road, my business suffers. But can I do anything? It’s the same with taxis. More will come, life will change.’

          Stone throwing, hurling abuses, stopping tourists, none of these things will get them any sympathy from customers. They can pat each other on the back and wipe each others’ tears, but when it comes to dhandha, in the long run, it’s the customer whose needs will guide profit.

          Goa has a long way to go regarding customer service. A few ‘supermarkets’ have taken good steps. One famous pharmacy in Panaji even has pharmaceutical counselling, a remarkable step taken. Even fancy chemists attached to five-star hospitals seldom take the trouble to provide this. Home delivery is rare except for white goods. Bread, milk, fish are the main consumables that come to the doorstep. Surprisingly, the fish-walas don’t include ‘cleaning/scaling/ cutting’ as part of the deal as is done in Mumbai. Even in the markets, one has to buy the product (fish) from a vendor and get it sliced, etc from another. The meat and poultry sellers sell and service under the same roof.

          In a little side-shop on CHOGM road, in the last couple of months, peeled garlic and peas have made their appearance. So far grated coconut, that can’t-do-without ingredient of Goan food is still not available on the shelves. Coconut milk is available in tetra-packs. As the change happens in other areas, so will it happen in the realm of public transport. Sooner rather than later, the earlier the owner-drivers of taxis/ autos/ buses realize it, the better. Otherwise, the next morcha might be of customers (passengers) and that’ll be the largest number the government has ever dealt with.

          We’re living through interesting times.