Each of us, at a point in our lives, think about its end. The thought arrives without warning, usually as an after effect of an event that may not appear to be significant at that particular time. You witness an accident on your way to office, the images play over and over in your head through the day, you wonder what the family of the victims will feel, and you wonder what would happen if you were involved in a similar situation yourself. You hear of a team members problems in the family, and you thank the powers that be for not having to relate the story yourself.
And then there are less morbid situations, where you watch yourself on a video recording. This is what I'm going to talk about - less morbid, but amazingly almost as depressing. I'm 36 now, and for some time, not many people have commented on how young I look. They used to, you see, and now that they don't, I have started wondering if that is because I don't anymore. You notice the signs of course - the panting after a couple of fast-er steps, the near collapse after an attempt to jog a 100 mtrs, the funny aches and pains you have absolutely no clue of origin of or reason for, but just complain of in the morning.
But there's nothing that destroys every pretense of fitness and youth than watching yourself performing an activity of the sporting persuasion. Till then, the prevailing thought is that you're not doing bad for someone your age. When you see the video, you realise, you know what you are as bad as your age demands.
Last week I sprained my ankle in one of our weekend football games. Now this is nothing less in importance than a battlefield injury, so I was quite pleased about it. I almost glowed as I showed off the still-swelling foot. Quite a take-home article too, and if the family members needed proof that I actually did more than just drive the car out every Saturday morning in my shorts and other sporty wear, nothing put that doubt to rest than a limp and a bruise or two. The regret at not being able to play for a couple of weeks is relatively less active in my mind as I milk reactions from onlookers about my well-strapped ankle, and the fact that I now wear sandals to work.
To get back to the moot point of this passage, the first sign of trouble in paradise came when my doctor looked at the ankle, then asked 'what the dickens were you doing playing football at your age?'. Not in those exact words, but if tone could be translated into language, that was exactly what he said. I mumbled something to the effect that I was not that old, but in my mind the doubts had found a voice. Was this a call to end all association with the physical side of the game? Did this question from the doc give credibility to what most of my family felt but rarely said? Cos I really loved that hour or two on Saturday when we played our country version of football, revelled in the thought that at least in this restricted group of company colleagues, I could hold up my own. Sure, I could not run for very long, or very far, I had little or no skill in dribbling, and the only way I would head the ball was if the ball hit the head on its way elsewhere. But I had a mean passing sense, and shots off my boots could make the ball travel a fair distance, generally in the direction I and meant it to go. Surely I can continue to do that for a while? The never-say-stop part of the brain told me, as it had on several occasions on this very subject, that I could. Then came the merciless video.
The video was a recording of one of our inter-company matches, one that I took special pride in as the first that we actually took something away from. The match was a draw, 3-3, and I thought our team dominated large portions of the game. If I was disappointed, it was with the feeling that we should have won the game. So when a team mate circulated the video file, I was quite eager to see how it went. A few minutes into the viewing though, the merciless part hit me - pretty hard. The game itself was quite scrappy, as you might expect. School-boyish was how one of my team mates called it, and I might have agreed, had I found the need to defame and belittle school football. But I did not have any delusions about how good or bad we played. Despite this, watching the 22 of us fluttering over the field was a revelation. Most of our endeavours involved flapping every available limb frantically to get to the ball and then hovering over it in a ponderous fashion, trying to foil the interest of the opponent, thinking about the next move, while the said interested opponent calmly footed the ball away.
All this, though an eye-opener, did not nearly have the same effect as watching self in action. Self was, thankfully, worth very little screen time as the I did not have too much of an interaction with the ball that day. But in whatever I saw, I was not pleased. A more lenient critic may in his generosity feel that with very little to observe, not much could be judged about the quality and skill on display. Unfortunately for someone whose self image was a lot different, this was a revelation of catastrophic proportion. It would seem to my seemingly biased eyes that I barely moved during the few minutes the ball appeared in my vicinity. And when the movement did happen, it was ungainly and frankly quite embarrassing. I discovered aspects of my game I never knew existed, and none of them was flattering. For one, I was far too lardy in the middle. The over sized jersey only made things worse. That everything else was thin was of no consolation at all. If I had to be drawn as a stick figure, there would be a circle in the middle. At some level, I knew this, but now I could no longer hide behind the phrase "A photograph puts pounds on you" any more.
There were other curious aspects as well. I discovered that I ran around with a shuffling gait, hands firmlt and at all times aimed at the ground, heels barely leaving the surface. I might have done a better job if I had walked around the pitch, for all the ground I was making. I actually had to run the movie a couple of times to check if the damn thing had been set for slow motion. It wasn't, to my great and absolute horror.
And it is thus with great humility and mortified humility at that, that I now consider removing myself from the roster of the still-playing-football bravehearts. There is at least one doctor I know that will smile knowingly at that announcement, should it ever be made.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
it will rattle
Ever laugh at a joke you don't get? Or worse, one that you do get, and don't think is that funny? Well, if your conscience chided you on being such a wuss, don't worry - you are not alone. I somehow think that 80%(just a guesstimate, no statistical data to back this up) of the people rolling down the aisles holding their guts for fear of them spilling out, do so out of some fear perception. The fear of course is that someone would accuse you of being dense. Naturally some of these times, you really haven't got it, and are really dense, and that's OK really. It the other situation that makes me go all pukey inside.
A situation like the one that I'm about to describe is common enough for me to suspect that all of us have gone through it at least once in a lifetime. Our division head was making an appearance in town, one of his regular-checkin-on-ya-know-ya-exist visits. This usually means the sacrifice of a weekend to the altar of strategic kowtow. So, the overwhelming feeling that dominated that morning is one of deep resentment. I've always said its easier to work on a 6-day week if you didn't know its brother - the 5-day week. Once acquainted with the latter, a few changes to the mentalities of the labor force have been noted, even documented. Fridays become a lot more cheerful and bearable, Mondays a lot more harder to accept, and attendance on Mondays takes a dive. And when the odd Saturday puts you to work, most people just curl up and scowl. If you're in a company that offers the mandatory peace offering in the form of compensatory day off, another curious fact...a working Saturday rarely ever amounts to an 8 hour day. You'd be lucky to get 4. The compensation though is of an entire day.
But I digress. So, like the man-eater that has tasted blood, and doesn't like that its not served one day, the group of us trudged in to work that day. After the rudimentary custom of settling down, our man from overseas got cracking...well not immediately, and that is where the nub of the matter lies. Any meeting, like a relationship, needs an ice-breaker. So for a few minutes we heard some really smart comments, funny too, and there was some aisle rolling. Now most of the time, the jokes were good, and you could really have a nice laugh. But nice was not the adjective I could assign to the guffaws that emanated through the conference room. I don't know if it was a sign of nervousness or some one's cruel idea of payback, but the decibel levels were not what one desires on a day when one would normally be curled up under some warm blankets.
But all this is expected. When people from different cultures meet, it is often easy to misunderstand, or not understand, every spoken word. Humor is relative to circumstance, and in this case geographical origin. So if the white man can laugh about the presence of a cow on the same street that his car is ambling along, the brown man will smile knowingly. And if a brown man can still use the word Negro without malice, the white man would go pink at even the mention of the N word. So humour is a sensitive issue, and usually it helps for the joke administerer(if that's a word and I suspect it's not) to laugh when the punch-line is delivered. Dead panning it is definitely not the way to get some laughs. Embarrassment is the prevalent emotion felt by the man with the face that does not betray any other.
Well, our man was no dead-panner, so his little nuggets of wit were accompanied by the sly wink, and the broad smile. It also helped that some of the jokes were actually easy to understand. The trouble was that some elements in the audience didn't know when to let go. When faced with a little side joke, some of us felt the need to add on our own rejoinders. Sometimes they worked, and were received well by the chief narrator, leading to more merriment. But sometimes, they were just received with a brief blank stare, and then the absent nod. All the while, the broad smile stayed in place. Usually, the boss found this as a good time to change topic, gear or position, as the situation would allow. One such interlude though remains etched in my memory...and I laughed heartily...to myself of course, it would never have done to actually do the rolling-aisle-holding-gut thing. That would have had long-term implications to the career, one would think.
So how did this gem come to be? Well it was nearly half-way through the meeting when the esteemed visitor started narrating his experience with a rather noisy co-passenger. After a bit of rolling of the eyes, and the exaggerated arm movements, you kinda got the gist of his discomfort. Up until that point, everyone was enjoying the joke, one which no doubt everyone in the room identified with. There was no punch line, but as part of the enactment of his reaction, our visitor said, "And man, i was like, just about ready to explode. I had half a mind to set one of the dinner trays across his face"...."Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "It will rattle, ha ha"....
Erm, what was that? My back was turned to the guy who wanted to be an anomaly at this time, so he couldn't really see my face furiously trying to work out what was being said, and how I should react. As for the main speaker, the smile never changed, but the luminosity reduced rapidly to a level that it soon took on grimace-like proportions. It was clear that one part of his face, like all of mine, was trying to really enjoy the rejoinder.
Now if this was followed by an awkward silence, that usually accompanies a badly delivered joke, or in this case, a non-joke, it would have been quickly brushed away. Amazingly though, this was accompanied by a second stream of laughter. my face now betrayed a sense of incredulity - Really??? you found that funny?? Did I not get it?? Apparently not, cos the laughing continued for some time. Till we went on to the next topic on the agenda.
For the next 10 to 15 minutes, I turned those 3 words in my head. It - Will - Rattle...and then I thought about the guffaws...and the mind boggled.
I don't want to rationalise the group's behaviour. Everyone reacts to an event in a way unique to the composition of the person's mind makeup. So everyone else tittered at what seemed like a very poor joke. So what? Hadn't I said something as non-funny as this in the past? And had I not kicked myself the next second fro having said it? Then why was this situation so irksome? No rationale for that either. But yeah it bugged me to no end that someone could first give voice to this rare nugget, then grinned broadly enough to indicate to all that something monumentally clever had been said, and needed recognition. Which promptly came in the form of raucous head-tossing giggling from the audience.
So that must make me a snob, then, eh? Maybe, but I'm not sure I prefer being the one that joined in...laughter is infectious, and inane laughter even more so, but may I please be allowed to draw a line at this level? I promise to give my best guffaw to everything that is marginally above this particular strata of unfunniness.
Thus endeth my rant..
A situation like the one that I'm about to describe is common enough for me to suspect that all of us have gone through it at least once in a lifetime. Our division head was making an appearance in town, one of his regular-checkin-on-ya-know-ya-exist visits. This usually means the sacrifice of a weekend to the altar of strategic kowtow. So, the overwhelming feeling that dominated that morning is one of deep resentment. I've always said its easier to work on a 6-day week if you didn't know its brother - the 5-day week. Once acquainted with the latter, a few changes to the mentalities of the labor force have been noted, even documented. Fridays become a lot more cheerful and bearable, Mondays a lot more harder to accept, and attendance on Mondays takes a dive. And when the odd Saturday puts you to work, most people just curl up and scowl. If you're in a company that offers the mandatory peace offering in the form of compensatory day off, another curious fact...a working Saturday rarely ever amounts to an 8 hour day. You'd be lucky to get 4. The compensation though is of an entire day.
But I digress. So, like the man-eater that has tasted blood, and doesn't like that its not served one day, the group of us trudged in to work that day. After the rudimentary custom of settling down, our man from overseas got cracking...well not immediately, and that is where the nub of the matter lies. Any meeting, like a relationship, needs an ice-breaker. So for a few minutes we heard some really smart comments, funny too, and there was some aisle rolling. Now most of the time, the jokes were good, and you could really have a nice laugh. But nice was not the adjective I could assign to the guffaws that emanated through the conference room. I don't know if it was a sign of nervousness or some one's cruel idea of payback, but the decibel levels were not what one desires on a day when one would normally be curled up under some warm blankets.
But all this is expected. When people from different cultures meet, it is often easy to misunderstand, or not understand, every spoken word. Humor is relative to circumstance, and in this case geographical origin. So if the white man can laugh about the presence of a cow on the same street that his car is ambling along, the brown man will smile knowingly. And if a brown man can still use the word Negro without malice, the white man would go pink at even the mention of the N word. So humour is a sensitive issue, and usually it helps for the joke administerer(if that's a word and I suspect it's not) to laugh when the punch-line is delivered. Dead panning it is definitely not the way to get some laughs. Embarrassment is the prevalent emotion felt by the man with the face that does not betray any other.
Well, our man was no dead-panner, so his little nuggets of wit were accompanied by the sly wink, and the broad smile. It also helped that some of the jokes were actually easy to understand. The trouble was that some elements in the audience didn't know when to let go. When faced with a little side joke, some of us felt the need to add on our own rejoinders. Sometimes they worked, and were received well by the chief narrator, leading to more merriment. But sometimes, they were just received with a brief blank stare, and then the absent nod. All the while, the broad smile stayed in place. Usually, the boss found this as a good time to change topic, gear or position, as the situation would allow. One such interlude though remains etched in my memory...and I laughed heartily...to myself of course, it would never have done to actually do the rolling-aisle-holding-gut thing. That would have had long-term implications to the career, one would think.
So how did this gem come to be? Well it was nearly half-way through the meeting when the esteemed visitor started narrating his experience with a rather noisy co-passenger. After a bit of rolling of the eyes, and the exaggerated arm movements, you kinda got the gist of his discomfort. Up until that point, everyone was enjoying the joke, one which no doubt everyone in the room identified with. There was no punch line, but as part of the enactment of his reaction, our visitor said, "And man, i was like, just about ready to explode. I had half a mind to set one of the dinner trays across his face"...."Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "It will rattle, ha ha"....
Erm, what was that? My back was turned to the guy who wanted to be an anomaly at this time, so he couldn't really see my face furiously trying to work out what was being said, and how I should react. As for the main speaker, the smile never changed, but the luminosity reduced rapidly to a level that it soon took on grimace-like proportions. It was clear that one part of his face, like all of mine, was trying to really enjoy the rejoinder.
Now if this was followed by an awkward silence, that usually accompanies a badly delivered joke, or in this case, a non-joke, it would have been quickly brushed away. Amazingly though, this was accompanied by a second stream of laughter. my face now betrayed a sense of incredulity - Really??? you found that funny?? Did I not get it?? Apparently not, cos the laughing continued for some time. Till we went on to the next topic on the agenda.
For the next 10 to 15 minutes, I turned those 3 words in my head. It - Will - Rattle...and then I thought about the guffaws...and the mind boggled.
I don't want to rationalise the group's behaviour. Everyone reacts to an event in a way unique to the composition of the person's mind makeup. So everyone else tittered at what seemed like a very poor joke. So what? Hadn't I said something as non-funny as this in the past? And had I not kicked myself the next second fro having said it? Then why was this situation so irksome? No rationale for that either. But yeah it bugged me to no end that someone could first give voice to this rare nugget, then grinned broadly enough to indicate to all that something monumentally clever had been said, and needed recognition. Which promptly came in the form of raucous head-tossing giggling from the audience.
So that must make me a snob, then, eh? Maybe, but I'm not sure I prefer being the one that joined in...laughter is infectious, and inane laughter even more so, but may I please be allowed to draw a line at this level? I promise to give my best guffaw to everything that is marginally above this particular strata of unfunniness.
Thus endeth my rant..
Sunday, January 31, 2010
tabula rasa
New beginnings have a way of reminding you of the previous several attempts to make one. Hopefully this will not end up as just another beginning. I can't say I know for certain how I'm going to do this, but this time the need for fruition will hopefully drive this effort to write...or post as the case may be.
The intent for now is to post whenever something strikes the mind. Random thoughts can appear to be brilliant when you have then, but if un-recorded tend to fade away like the dreams we all have had, dreams that linger on for the first few minutes of your morning, then just vanish as if never there. So, the next time I have a thought interesting enough to make me think, I hope to jot it down here. The thought will not be governed by its uniqueness, in fact it will probably reflect something seen or heard in a normal mundane day. The difference - I hope - will be in the expression of the perceived event or occurrence. Like every film director worth his salt, the 'treatment' will be different.
I'm tempted to say that this blog is about nothing, but I'm no Seinfeld. So I'll just say that this is my humble attempt to capture the thoughts of an average, ordinary person, in a way that I hope will make them readable.
wish me luck..
The intent for now is to post whenever something strikes the mind. Random thoughts can appear to be brilliant when you have then, but if un-recorded tend to fade away like the dreams we all have had, dreams that linger on for the first few minutes of your morning, then just vanish as if never there. So, the next time I have a thought interesting enough to make me think, I hope to jot it down here. The thought will not be governed by its uniqueness, in fact it will probably reflect something seen or heard in a normal mundane day. The difference - I hope - will be in the expression of the perceived event or occurrence. Like every film director worth his salt, the 'treatment' will be different.
I'm tempted to say that this blog is about nothing, but I'm no Seinfeld. So I'll just say that this is my humble attempt to capture the thoughts of an average, ordinary person, in a way that I hope will make them readable.
wish me luck..
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