So What is Your Attitude ?

ATTITUDE, that is what matters is what many people would like us to believe; especially youngsters. They give a long explanation about how "Hard Work", "Knowledge" and "Intelligence" don't become 100% when we add their numerical values of alphabets. But "Attitude" they say adds up to exactly 100. Some "Intelligence" "Knowledge" and "Hard work" has gone into this "Attitude" !

Click on the picture to magnify !

What is "Attitude" ? I see a lot of trolling on Facebook, flaunting "Attitude". Some say, "If you have problem with my attitude, that is your problem, not mine. Get yourself corrected". Some go further and say, "I don't have an attitude problem. It is the problem with people about how they look at me".

So what is "Attitude" again ? Is it walking with a swagger with a couple of oranges tucked in the armpits ? Vivian Richards did that all his life. He murdered bowlers with that swagger. But his swagger didn't desert him in failure. Is it what Salman Khan flaunts in movie after movie after movie ?

Or is it what we see on a third of those Facebook profiles ? Youngsters with no qualification, no education, no physical attributes or anything significant to boast of, boast of "My Attitude". To me that is arrogance or simply obnoxious nature !

Wikipedia tells us that "Attitude" is an expression of favor or disfavor toward a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object). Prominent psychologist Gordon Allport once described attitudes "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology.

Wikipedia continues to say, "An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about anything in your environment, but there is debate about precise definitions". Whether attitudes are explicit (deliberately formed) versus implicit (subconscious) has been a topic of considerable research.

Without further quoting Wiki, I would like to add, "The definition people have given to attitude doesn't match what has been described in dictionaries". Well, some people might say, "We don't go by any dictionary meanings. We form our own meaning and that is our attitude". Blah !

Attitude to me is what I have seen in some of these people. If a picture can speak a thousand words, I would like to do it with pictures ! To me...

This is "Attitude"

And this is "Attitude"

And then this is "Attitude"

Sincerely, I hope to imbibe "Attitude" from these people !



Dr. Punned-it

Small things that make a BIG difference !

Aamir Khan's "Satyameva Jayate" has evoked sharp reactions from people. People are talking about social evils. Female infanticide has become a topic of heated debate on Facebook and other social media. Some admire Aamir for his concern and some say, he is doing all this for money. I don't know the truth.

I was too 'small' to understand why my late Grandfather insisted upon putting off the oil wick in our pooja room every night. Later as a grown up, I realized it was not miserly behavior but just a precaution by an extremely wise man who cared for his home and family. We had a lot of rats in our large ancestral home and they could have easily put the house on fire at night if we were to leave the wick burning.

When in high-school, we had a lesson, "A spark neglected, burns the house". A small misunderstanding between two friends Ivan and Gabriel ends up ruining both the families before they could realize what had happened. This story actually helped me to understand the great old man better !

Four decades later, I look at people around me and often get frustrated by the absolute lack of care for public property, water, electricity and such things and most importantly the time. Every walk of like, we overlook the small things that will finally make a big difference. But we seldom realize them, give importance to them or do something to change them.

Leaking Pipes: Every place I have visited has a leaking pipe or a pipe that has been left open by someone who just doesn't care. We just don't care, do we ? Thousands of liters of purified chlorinated water is lost every day. We see a lot of places in our country thirsting for water and we see absolute lack of remorse while wasting water.

Every drop of water we are wasting is taking us one step towards a universal drought some day ! Can't we see this and understand this ? Can't we take the small step to change this to avert a disaster ?

Electricity:  Most of us rarely forget to switch off lights, fans and air-conditioners in our own homes. But we seldom care when we are at office or in public places. When it is in the office or a public place, nobody bothers to switch off a light or a fan when not in use. It isn't our property and hence not our duty or not our bother is the attitude. But is it true ?

WE are footing the 'Bill' for all this wastage. The public lights are lit with the taxes we pay. Should we waste it ? I shot this 'day-light robbery' of tax-payer's money on an evening on my way back home. This street lamp was lit at 4:10 PM as we can see bright day light behind the lamp. This wasn't the single lamp. Every single lamp along the road was lit.

We can ill-afford this, but this is what is happening in every state, every place and every nook and corner of our country. When I pointed this out, the general reaction was, "This is nothing. It happens everywhere". My question is, "But why ? Why does this happen everywhere ? Why should it happen at all ?" This happens because, "We just don't care !"

Day Light Robbery of Electricity !

Bad Roads: How a small hole unfilled in time becomes a POTHOLE is known to all of us. Yet our administration has mostly remained completely oblivious and that is how we have so many potholes littering our roads soon after every monsoon. "A Stitch in times saves nine". We have learned. But we some how prefer to wait till 9 and even 99 are necessitated.

POTHOLE in the making...

POTHOLES Family !

If we the people begin to question government, the rulers will have to answer and behave. Else we have the power to change them in the next elections and teach them a lesson. It is another matter that many of us don't even bother.

But before we exercise our powers, let us ask ourselves, "Are we doing our duties as citizens ? Are we doing the small things that matter ?"

Let us do the small things right. It is never too late to learn, reform and work for a better tomorrow !


Dr. Punned-it

Chair Up and other tales of a Chair that refused to budge !

My Clinic

Apart from blogging, pretending to be singing on the Youtube and whiling away my time on the Facebook, I also work as a Doctor in my spare time. I work with a modest private hospital during day time and run an even more modest Clinic close to my home in the evenings. Since I am allergic to hard-work, I limit my working hours to 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM at hospital and 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM in my Clinic.

I refuse to entertain people after 8:00 PM simply because I believe in spending some time with my family when I am alive. This has earned me the wrath of some people and some of them have branded me arrogant and rude. I think I have to live with that. I can't risk being a guilt laden 75 year-old with pots of money, a lot of illnesses and repentance about not having spent enough time with my loved ones.

This story isn't about me, it is about that black chair in the corner in my Clinic. This place is very small and a little over-crowded with unavoidable furniture. There is the examination table that also doubles up as a cup-board to keep my books. The black chair to seat the patient [henceforth referred to as client]. The blue chair is obviously mine and the table. Apart from these, there is a large Almira in the opposite corner and another plastic chair to seat the bystander.

It is necessary to give this long description because the place where the black chair sits becomes the crux of the matter. I make the clients sit on the black chair, so that I can check the vitals like Blood Pressure and do a clinical examination of the upper part of the body. If a complete examination is required, I use the examination table right next to the chair.

The place where I keep the chair is exactly the place from where the client can extend the arm and rest it on the table to record the BP. I can move to and fro to do the examination. This is the most ideal place in the given scenario. But somehow, people have different ideas and this is where the real story begins.

In the early days, the clients coming in would first pull the black chair almost into the gap between the writing table and the examination table and make the proceedings really difficult. This was becoming a real nuisance for me. It put added burden on my back and even made them uncomfortable. But somehow people have their own point of view and they have to change things according to that.

Most of the times, I used to politely request the client to get up, keep the chair back in the corner and proceed with my job. But the same exercise can get on your nerves, especially when repeated several  times on a given day or when the same person repeats the same act every time.

Gradually my patience began to wear thin. I started asking people not to move the chair, but to sit where the chair was placed. Often they would sit through the examination and as soon as I began writing the notes and prescription, they would immediately move the chair to their favored destination. This became exasperating and I had to force people to go back to the corner.

Sometimes, I would jokingly ask people, "From where do you come ?". The answer could be any place. My next quip would be this, "You come from almost 6 km distance. Coming this far and then walking from the gate, can't you cover this small distance between this table and the chair ? Why do you want to move it ? Why can't you come and sit where it is ?".

With younger people I have a slightly different way. I tell them, "Don't you dare to pull the chair. It has a mind of its own and it will get extremely angry if you pull it around. It can even bite you if you provoke it. So let it be where it is. You just sit there".

At some point, I came to understand why the people moved the chair around. The truth is, nobody likes to be cornered. People perhaps felt as if they were being pinned down to a chair at gun point. But unfortunately, I couldn't help in any way. I just don't have the space to make people feel they were centered. That is when I discovered a better way to keep the chair from moving. I kept the front right leg of the chair pressed firmly with my left leg to prevent people from dragging it. This is how the next level of fun began.

A middle aged lady came in one day and as usual, pulled the chair. Since I  had firmly pinned it to the corner, it didn't budge. But this was a stubborn lady and she pulled it with all the power and it still didn't move. She looked furious and asked, "Why isn't this chair moving ? Where am I going to sit ?"  I calmly told her, "Why don't you sit where the chair is ? I haven't asked for any help to move my furniture here". She was sheepish but still had not understood how it became immobile and asked, "But why isn't it moving ?". Some diehard that was !

Another man tried the same thing. Since the chair was not moving, he asked me, "Doctor, get up and move from there. This chair isn't moving. Let me fix it !". My goodness, how I kept myself from falling off the chair is still a mystery to me. I told him, "Let it remain that way. What is the need to move it ? It is convenient for me to examine you if you could make yourself comfortable here". He nodded and said, "Oh, yes. That is true" and promptly pulled the chair to the gap between two tables because I had for a moment left it unguarded !

A young but hefty lady is the next in this saga. She went on pulling the chair even as I asked her to sit down right there. A momentary lapse in my concentration and the chair had escaped from the trap. What I saw next was the lady was flat on the the examination table with the chair in her hand with one of its legs precariously close to my right eye. And her own left leg was on my writing table. To make matters worse, my nurse was absconding that day. I leave it to the imagination of people to decide what a task it must have been to untangle a young lady weighing above 70 kilos from that situation.

One of the funniest characters ever sat on the chair without any complaint. But when I asked him to turn around to examine his back, he promptly did so. But he did so not before turning the chair along with him. This left me with the really daunting task of examining the back-rest of the chair.

Still crazier was another young lady. When I asked her to turn around, she actually turned to her right. Now take a look at the picture and imagine how she could have turned to her right and what she would have done to me. She was wearing saree but had no inhibition in lifting her right leg over my left thigh and in seconds, she was sitting with my left knee between her legs. Sindhu, my nurse couldn't forget that spectacle and kept winking off and on for quite a few days.

One of the problems of narrating real life incidents on blog is the fun is often diluted in scripting and most of the dialogues get lost in translation. Before it becomes totally impossible for the reader to sit through this, let me call it a day for this 'Saga' !


Dr. Punned-it

An Emotional Journey !

I updated my Facebook Status last night to...

A lot of work on hand. My better-half is doing a lot of running around. I sincerely felt I had to do something. So I told her, "Please tell me if there is any work, where I can help. I shall do my best and delegate someone to do it".

Can a husband be any more helpful ?

I got into my 'Santro' this morning to drive to hospital. As I was around the bend from my home, my little friend Asha gestured to me "You can't go, it is totally water-logged". I ignored her and went ahead. But coming in front of what looked like a huge ocean, I had to stop and turn back.

For the first time since I bought my little Santro in 2006, I had turned my back on a water-logged road. Why ? Here is one of the reasons and the Second reason. And finally because my car isn't young anymore.

As I was turning my car back, I suddenly heard, "Hey why are you going back ? You are so confident and rash. All of a sudden what happened to you ?". I was startled. Looking around and back I saw no one; not a soul nearby. I was mildly perspiring in the air-conditioned car with the rains pouring outside.

I asked, "Who is this ? I Can't see anyone. Where is the voice coming from ?". I heard again, "You shameless soul, after abusing me for over 4 years, you can't even recognize me. I deserve this because I suffered your rudeness without complaining. After all I am a 'Thing' for you".

My patience was running out and I snapped, "Without any more of this drama and dialogues, can you bloody now, tell me who you are ? I have to go to hospital and have a job on hand". Suddenly there was a huge jerk and the car came to a screeching halt and it screamed, "You jerk, it is me, your Santro. You are such a pest. I am the one talking to you"

I was chuckling, "A talking car, Wow ! All I need now is a Hindi Movie Style Girlfriend. I wonder what my Mom added to my morning cup of tea and breakfast". I must be hallucinating. As I turned the ignition on again, the Car was talking again, "Don't you underestimate me. When extremely hurt, even stones can talk. I am a Car and have served you so faithfully all these days".

Now I was confident something spooky was on. I didn't want a revenge seeking soul to assassinate me and asked with a mellowed voice, "Okey, I understand 'You' are my car. But who is talking from inside you ?". Pat came the reply, "Don't think I am some ghost or something like that. That happens only in movies. I am your Car, whole Car and nothing but Car".

I had no other choice but to continue, "Well, can we make a move ? Can we drive along and 'Walk the talk' ? I am getting late". Wroom ! the car was moving now. I heard, "You think you are funny and write nonsense about your wife on Facebook and blog. You disguise all your meanness in so called humor. But somehow people are nice to you and have tolerated you. But I think I have reached the dead-end of my patience".

I asked with mock politeness, "Can you enlighten me the reason for your bitterness ?".

Santro: See even now you are acting smart. First answer me, when was the last time you gave a wash to me ?

Me: Mmmmm, I got Amar to give you a thorough wash only 2 weeks ago.

Santro: No, when was the last time 'YOU' gave me a wash ?

Me: What the heck ? What difference does it make ? Someone is giving you a wash. I have paid him. I have got all your service record updated. I even got two paid services done.

Santro: But my question is, when did you ? You can't even remember when you gave me a wash. My number plate got crushed long ago and you have not repaired it. You can't bother about anything other than 'Petrol' and 'Money'. Your friend Murli is right.

Me: See Mr. Car, I just can't take this nonsense. Do you expect me to wash you, cuddle you and love you ? You are not my wife, neither are you my girlfriend.

Santro: You take a shower twice and even thrice a day. You insist upon your wife and daughter doing the same. And you get someone to wash me once in a blue moon. It hurts to be your loyalist. And by the way, I am not a Mister. I am a Lady. No 'Man' will ever allow anyone to drive him.

Me: I will buy your argument. So you are a Lady. So why can't you go and take a bath yourself. I don't bathe my wife or daughter. If you are so intelligent, can talk so much and want to be clean, you should wash yourself.

Santro: My movements are controlled by that damned remote key in your hand. Only my thoughts and words are in my control. That is why I am servile to you and expect a better treatment. And you must remember you don't ask Amar to give bath to your wife or daughter.

Me: Hey, hey... That is being mean. I might have been a bit rash in driving, but never abused you. You can't be talking like this about my wife and daughter. No !

Santro: Look how it hurts. I have thought of you as my master and my love ever since you drove me with all the care on August 28 in 2006. As days passed, your attitude went from bad to worse. The way you have ignored my needs has made me so depressed. I even contemplated suicide many a times. But with that damned thing in your control, I can't even die.

Me: What on earth are you thinking ? I don't have the kind of time and energy to give enough attention to you. But I have never let you down. Do you know my wife doesn't like you ? She feels you are stupid and a fuel guzzling monster.

Santro: No wife will ever love the Car. She will consider me her rival. I have been nice to her, but she just uses me for her needs. I never expect anything from her. It is you who brought me here with all the pomp and it is you who has let me down. But I love your Mom, Dad and Daughter. Mom loves me, Dad always decorates me with a flower and Babe is fond of me.

Me: You see, there is an old quote, "There are two kind of men in the world. First who love the Wife more than the car and the second who love the Car more than the wife. I belong to the First category. You should have no grouse. Wife is a Wife is a WIFE !"

Santro: I have no issues with your wife. But now you want to dump me and that is why I am sad. You openly call me 'fuel guzzling monster'. It never mattered to you when all you could afford was poor little me. I know what are your new 'Dzires'.

Me: Wow... Now there you go. So this is jealousy. What if I desire and Dzire ? It isn't as if I am going to sell you. You will be with me even if Dzire comes. And I don't even know when that is going to happen. If this is the reason for your grouse, calm down. You will be with me because I can't drive a bigger car in Kochi town.

Santro: Look at it. For the bad roads and rude traffic you need me. You have practically flown me over those gutters of Kochi. I have waded through thigh high water without even wetting your socks. Have I even left you stranded ?

Me: No Yaar, you are like my wife. You will remain with me for all my day to day drives. It is only for longer drives and picnics that I might need Dzire. Why do you act like a jealous wife ?

Santro: Try telling your wife, "You are my Wife Yaar. You will remain with me for all day to day life. It is only for long drives and picnics that I might need Her". Your Orthopedician will need 3 months to repair you !

Me: Ha Ha, you sure have a sense of humor. I love that !

Santro: After being with you lousy fellow, it has rubbed on me. But humor apart, we are talking serious business here. What is your decision, Me or your Dzire ?

Me: I told you, YOU are my first choice. Just like I admire Aishwariya, Katrina and Shilpa; I admire Dzire. Nothing more, nothing less.

Santro: Your wife probably knows you adore these women but can live happily with the knowledge that you can never afford them. You can only salivate imagining them, but can't even touch them. But you can like hell afford a Dzire. There lies the tragedy of my life !

We had reached the basement of my hospital where I park her. As I adjusted her in the parking slot,  she quipped, "I know I have no choice if you choose to enjoy your Dzire. But never ignore me and never ill-treat me. I don't mind Amar washing me. I wouldn't complain about your rash driving. Neither will I envy your long drives. But please keep me with you"

I felt a lump in the throat and said with all the love at my command, "Oh, never even think like that. I will keep you as long as you are alive and kicking. You will remain in family if you outlive me. I will get you a face lift and even a Botox if necessary. As soon as the monsoon is over, I will get you a complete service. I never knew you loved me so much"

Relieved that I have solved a grievous issue I stepped out of the Car. As I pulled out my bag from the aisle, the Santro gave the parting shot, "Don't you live under any illusion. I used to adore you before, not anymore. Your infidelity is hurting enough, but your sympathy is worse. I don't deserve this after all the donkey's service I have rendered you. I don't want you to sell me because I don't know what kind of a sloth is going to buy me. I am used to all your abuse. I will manage to live with that. My thinking is guided by the adage, Known Devil is better than Unknown Gods !"


Dr. Pun-dit