Guilty consciences!

I wrote a post called Hospitals and banks, the way things work in the other blog a while ago. Very recently I saw a billboard at City Centre whose photograph is pasted below.

Why do you think hospitals are feeling the need to advertize like this?

Freudian slip?

I hadn't posted anything on this blog for some time. Under the circumstances, there wasn't much to post. My father passed away four days ago after a long and painful illness.

My daughter asked today whether I had taken a dose of Milk of Amnesia. I thought that deserved a blogpost.

Ho ho ho

Here's someone who is either very wise or super-stupid; he's drawn up a list of five widely used things (such as cash) that are sure to vanish by 2021. 

I have a long memory, and so, I hope, do some of my readers, at least. We shall check, shall we?

Eat your pencil?

Lots of people have become serendipitous inventors, and if and when their brainwaves have found big markets, they have sometimes become suddenly and enormously rich. I refuse to believe that all of them deserve particular admiration for being talented - think of the inventors of chewing gum and cellotape and hair dye. 

Not everyone has the inclination for it, either. I have had brainwaves over and over again, but never bothered to run to the Patent Office. Here's one such for public consumption. Watching my pupils chewing or sucking away at their pencils and pens, it has struck me that someone could make a killing by manufacturing edible writing instruments. They could come in a variety of flavours, too. I have seen pencils with scented erasers stuck to their behinds, I have seen pen-pencil combos, but I haven't seen ones that can be eaten. Has any reader come across such things? If not, and if someone does manage to make a big hit by launching such a line, s/he might remember that it was my idea, and at least acknowledge the debt. I wouldn't mind if I got paid, either :)

High five for Babul Supriyo

When a politician says something both true and important, I try to applaud without regard to his political colour. So here is Babul Supriyo, BJP MP from Asansol, complaining that the public come to him (and politicos in general) by and large with requests for out of turn or even absolutely illegal favours – get me off the hook in this police case, get my undeserving son a job, get my daughter with hopeless examination scores into a good college, get me a flat though I didn’t make it through the lottery. He went so far as to observe ruefully that the very same people walk out and then condemn the same politicians for being ‘corrupt’. All I can say is ‘Hear, hear!’

I have always maintained that in this country the man in the street has no right to call politicians names without taking a good hard look at himself first. As I see it, we call a politician corrupt if he gives undue favours to someone I don’t know or dislike. Also, if I take bribes in hundreds or thousands, I am honest, but he takes them in millions, so he is corrupt.

Drama-baazi is not good for you

Watch this video - and don't look away till the last second.

Thanks again, Lavona.

Where's the damn rain?

Climate change is a weird and complex thing. Let me just put on record what has been happening lately in my town, at least. It has been cloudy ever since early morning today, and I learnt that it was raining heavily in Kolkata, but as far as Durgapur is concerned, it hasn’t rained once since September last. And yet it has been the longest winter in living memory: it became pleasantly cool in mid-November, and even today, after the first week of March, it is still chilly enough to wonder whether I should put on something warm if I go riding on my two-wheeler early in the morning or late in the evening. When is summer going to set in finally, and how bad is it going to be this time?

P.S.: Just a few drops fell in the evening, barely enough to wet the dust. Deeply disappointed.

P.P.S., March 10: I guess even the gods are embarrassed by cursing sometimes. It rained a bit yesterday evening, and then again, torrentially today - for the first time in six months!

Teachers' angst

The January 2017 issue of Reader's Digest carried an article after my own heart: a collection of acid quips from long-suffering schoolteachers, titled Talking out of School, by Patrick Romain (pp. 86-89). Do look it up. Here are a few of my choice quotes - I hope the RD editors won't mind my using them:

1) His parents are professionally unemployed and have promised to make their kid work.

2) I didn't realize it, but according to the parents, I have two Einsteins, five Marie Curies and eight Leonardo da Vincis in my class.

3) The mother asked me more questions in five minutes than her daughter did in a whole term.

4) It's not in my class that Rodin would have found a model for his Thinker.

5) I was lured with the promise of becoming a teacher and ended up becoming a zookeeper.

6) This pupil has two saviours: the school bell and Wikipedia.

7) Is education getting better because pupils are getting worse, or is it the other way round?

8) In high places they talk about dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysorthographia and dyscalculia. In the meantime, discipline is my problem.

After 36 years at it, I can only say 'Hear, hear!' And I am thankful that my long-nurtured reputation as an ogre has saved me from the last problem, at least. I can always terrify them and throw a particularly noxious brat out.