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.)

         

         

           

Disciples 2009.

(29 November ’09)

            One of the patients admitted in the hospital wanted to get discharged in a big hurry. Satya Sai Baba was coming to town and he HAD to have darshan. He’d served the ‘swami’ for over two decades by looking after one of his institutions near his house. The billing was taking time and the gentleman was frantic that he’d miss his chance. Then he told me how the man wasn’t a man at all, but a god in guise. How did he know? He had cured so many people of so many illnesses, he said. Why, wondered my disbelieving mind, did he not give comfort to this same old man who was telling me this story? Why did he give him suffering that required him to get admitted every other month? But he spoke on and I listened. He told me of a huge hospital near Bangalore which Baba’s devotees had set up, which had multi-specialty tertiary care given for free. Wonder number two: why was this man paying through his nose for treatment here, then? His wife pitched in: there were going to be over five lakh people flocking to their suburb to see him that evening. No police bandobast, no traffic jams, she said, the volunteers would be guiding everyone. Ideal targets for men with illegal arms, I guessed silently. Back to the old man: the volunteers, they do everything. Do you know, he added, no one keeps accounts of the thousands of crores that come into the coffers. Either the man was terribly naïve, or ignorant, or… have run out of vocabulary.

            The next day, we read about it in the papers. My friend’s parents, also ardent followers/worshipers of the Baba, had gone for a darshan since it was ages since the Big Man had come hereabouts and they were unlikely to ever go to his ashram. I asked my friend about the experience. He said, “No one knew what was happening, it was chaotic. There were different gates, and the crowd was packed tightly in the ground so one couldn’t go to the loo. The cops were there, but most of the devotees clearly weren’t law-abiding and all the whistling and waving had no effect on the drivers/owners of the cars/scooters. The noise level was awful. What saved us were the mobile phones. We aught to worship technology, you know.” Yes, they got to see the Baba, from a distance away, and the parents believed that he looked at them and into their eyes. Considering they were not next to each other, and that many others believed the same, it’s likely that the Baba dear has a problem focusing.

            Nothing new about this disciple stuff. When Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living teachers/promoters come by, I admire they tenacity. Do not give up is their motto. Don’t mind if someone says, “No I don’t want to join up your classes.” Pester them, gently of course, pester again, yet again, coax, cajole, bully, keep at it, don’t give up. No wonder many of them have flourishing businesses. They have the aptitude. And then, networking helps. You see the badge and you connect. Could be of Asaram Bapu or Anirudha Bapu or the Amrit Mother or Sadhu Vaswani, whoever.

            Thing is, all of them really do speak sense. I’ve heard them on Aastha Channel and some I’ve witnessed live. I’ve read much material written about and by them. There’s no doubt their oratory skills and leadership qualities, the way they can organize events and market them, are phenomenal. Wonder whether any management school studies their strategies and models. Maybe they do. The breathing exercises do good, the medicines do good, and the psychological tricks also do good. But they’re not flawless. Not the men, not their methods or medicines, and certainly they’re not gods. But none of the followers will agree. ‘It’s a matter of faith’, claim most. To paste paper posters all over? No consideration for forests, aesthetics or other people’s property. All those volunteers who go around ‘spreading the word’ could channel their energies in many better ways. A dirty country like ours could benefit if each one just picked up a broom and swept the fronts AND backs of our homes, the roads AND pavements beside it, and managed our own garbage. No Swami(ni) will get his/her hands dirty, nor would want his/her disciples to. Leave that to the government, the municipality whilst they breathe-in, breathe-out, and meditate on matters spiritual. In a hospital, some of these volunteers come to help ‘destress’ the patients. No one volunteers to give bedpans or clean the dirty utensils room.

            Not to say that dirty jobs are to be glorified.

            To get back to the old gentleman I mentioned in the beginning. What interested me was the way he treated the lower staff: badly. He called the clerks all sorts of names, the threw important ‘contacts’ at us, he made sure he went all the way up to the CE to get his work done before the others. Forget the queue, forget everything else, I must have the darshan. Attitude, focus, perseverance, he had it all…. all that I lacked.

            I thought: he’s got what we need in corporate life: but he’s pointed in a different direction.

Doctors’ Instinct

          Our friend fell down some steps, then couldn’t move because the pain in his hip was terrible. His wife took him by public ambulance to the closest, very new hospital, partly owned by a semi-retired orthopaedic surgeon. He gave the friend a pain-killing shot and took an x-ray. Later, the wife found him (doctor, not friend) poring over the film, palm on forehead, mumbling, “… the neck should be broken, must be broken..” She wondered whether the semi-retired doctor was also semi-stupid.

“How was I to know,” she told me later, “that he meant neck of femur (thigh bone)? To me, a neck is something that attached one’s head to one’s shoulders.”

The only way to prove the neck-was-broken was by doing a CT-scan. The closest CT machine, this was in Noida, UP, was some kilometres away, even in an ambulance an agonizing ride. Friend’s wife did some sms homework and was assured that doctor had a good ‘hand’. So without ‘photographic’ evidence, she signed the consent for the surgery. In a couple of days, the friend’s hip was fixed and functioning. Opinion-based diagnosis had saved the day.

During my recent back-pain episode, my Goan doctor DB, sensing agony in my phone-distilled voice, recommended: “Complete bed-rest.” The Mumbai consultant who saw my MRI via Picture Archiving and Communication System on Everest Base Camp, sent realtime instructions via smartphone to his registrar sitting by my bedside: “Complete bed-rest.”

When I mentioned opinion-based versus evidence-based practice to someone, this is what he said: “Without doubt, evidence-based. How can anyone say I think the patient has fever? You check the thermometer, read the value and you have proof of temperature.” (Healthcare professionals reading this, hold your giggles; that’s how lay people perceive it.)

Even the brightest physicians are thankful to ultra-sound inputs to pass judgement on ‘pottanth khubba dukhtaan’. Who might be responsible for the painful crime: gall-bladder stone/ renal colic/ appendix/ secret tumour?

Experience versus modern technology, that’s the debate. Can skills (l)earned over 18 hrs/day x 11 months/year x 25 years of practice be superior to blood tests done in a laboratory? There are times when an opinion-based practitioner won’t wait for a typhoid result, but start treatment pronto, not wanting to waste time/ lose patient.

But… in evidence-based practice there is no guesswork. Therefore less chances of making mistakes when one depends on lab-tests. Think blood-sugar levels, typhoid/ dengue detectors.

There are those who don’t believe in modern technology, who believe that doctors must use their heads and hands alone. But should the doctor made a mistake, they say: aaj-kaal beshta suvidhaa aastana kitya upyog karap na. Would they include stethoscopes and blood-pressure checking gadgets as ‘modern’ things?

(I know people who believe landline phones are acceptable technology, but mobile phones are not. It’s ok to have a fridge, but no micro-wave. No one complains about cars, air-conditioners and electricity. No one even realizes that technology goes into the manufacture of office-chairs, sliding-windows and shaving-gear. Where does one draw a line regarding ‘modern’?) 

When it comes to curing our ailments, we want both, experienced doctors with great instinct plus state-of-art technology.

Experience crawls. Young doctors lack it and benefit with the evidence-based method. What doctors of my age learned through their MBBS and PG years, the youngsters cram into a short period because the amount of knowledge they need to know is more.  Cutting-edge stuff is cold, distant, without the human touch. And expensive. If we were to depend only on it, we’d need diagnostic centres next to every other biscuit stall and even then we’d have long queues, so dense is our population.

Leave aside serious road traffic accident cases or those with bleeding in the brain, where no surgeon would touch a scalpel without following the protocol of checking on blood-clotting time, exact location of ‘trouble’, etc, there are many illnesses that can be prevented by modern methods. Dyes injected through arteries and the presence of higher-than-normal levels of creatinine in the blood can detect heart/kidney troubles. Same with some kinds of cancer.

Evidence-based practice is here to stay. To prevent thoughtless prescriptions, to know how and when to use which tests, how to interpret the results correctly, doctors will have to fall back on Experience. Those who have insights through medical humanities, who recognize the importance of the natural history of a disease, will be more accurate in their dealings with different diseases/ ailments/ injuries/ illnesses. At the end of the day, opinion-based practice will still have higher value. Doctors’ instinct develops over time.

Cops and Tinted Windows.

          Read in the papers that police will now charge a fine for tinted glasses. Where they get these ideas from I don’t know. Solid 2000 rupees, men, all money-making business. It was ok when it was 100 bucks, like, we didn’t mind so much. In fact, if we were 3-4 friends in the car, we used to share the fine, 30-40 bucks each. Then we would pool in some more money and buy a new dark film to put on the window. Can’t stand the sun otherwise, re.

But now, 2000 bucks I will have to pay. I just put new-new glass windows on my car, nice dark brown colour and all.

What to tell you, I’ve also fitted a new number plate which I got written in Devnagri. It reads ‘dada’ from a distance. Actual number is 5151. Real fancy, borey poishe dilley tya manshaak, got it done from a graphic-artist. For that also they’re saying fine will be 2000 rupees. Which means I’ll have to have a new number plate. Someone said it’s not a new rule. Am I supposed to know all the rules?

Goa’s going to the dogs, I tell you.

First how it was, rules were there, but when the policebaab found out who you were, from his wife’s sister-in-law’s village, that you knew his cousins, he’d slap you on the back (not hard, haanh, just small tap) and laugh and say, “Potte kor naakaa” and we could move on. There was no trouble. Everybody was nice. No one really worried whether you wore a helmet, had a licence, drank alcohol. Accidents happened anyway… people die when their time comes, no? What can a helmet do against God’s will, tell me? Now there’s too much of… don’t do this, don’t do that.

Newspapers say less people are driving fast on Miramar stretch; now people are fast-riding on Siolim Bridge, papers say. How you can stop people from driving fast? Why should people not drive fast? If you are a walker and you feel it’s dangerous, you don’t walk near the road, go somewhere else. You feel it’s dangerous for me? What goes of your father if something happens to me? Is this a democracy or not? We drivers have our rights, no? What’s the connection between driving fast, tinted windows and fancy number-plates?

Don’t teach me what happens abroad. We’re in Goa, ok? We have our own culture here.  It’s because of the outsiders that things are changing.

Nowadays, people have become complaining types. In our village, some young boys stole someone’s pineapples and mangoes. That was bhurgem-ponnachee mastee. We knew who did it. In fact, they did this year after year to many people. But we never complained. Little bit bad things everybody does, what is there to complain? All these new people, some are Goans only, who have stayed outside the state, they go and make bowaall of small-small things. “Somebody scratched my car.” “Somebody took away my gold bangles.” First, the police used to say: “Why make fuss, you only find out from the village who did it and sort it out amongst yourselves.” Now they take everything seriously, men, write FIR and all.

Also, I don’t like it when papers give credit to bhailey ghaatis for everything. Our own village boys do smart robbery and some people say outsiders did it. I say, give credit where it’s due.

Coming back to the fines for tinted windows: I’ve heard they aren’t going to allow VIPs to put red lights on top of their cars. Then how will we know who’s a VIP? Tomorrow they’ll say, you can’t paint your car with spots, stars or stripes.

I want special status for Goa. The rules that apply to the rest of the country should not be forced on us. We’re different. I say first try the rules on the bhailley, then on the Goans. But who’s listening?

Things are really not like before. First we were told “don’t throw garbage here”, “don’t park there” and now this “don’t have tinted glass windows”, “don’t have fancy number plates”.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he said something about res-pawn-civility. He tried to explain that word to me (correct spelling res-pon-sibility). He is no longer my friend.

I went back to the shop to change the tinted glass and number-plate on my car. Guess what, the guy charged me double!! Any excuse to make a quick buck. We Goans are like that only.

At least it will save me the fines.

(feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in)