You can't come and go at will. But at least you can laugh at will!

After my dad’s demise I was thinking about my next 21 years. Why 21? I had asked for a Life Insurance Policy a few months ago. After checking out my health condition, habits and some questions on parents’ health, the agent deduced my life expectancy and gave me 21 years. I should believe him since he is literally betting money on it – selling me an insurance policy.

But sometime back when I came across a self-testing quiz with a title that made it impossible to ignore – “How long will you live?” – I found that, according to the test, I died a year ago. This was after checking out many personal facts and lifestyle status. Longevity of my grand parents / parents, health of my parents, how much I smoked, drank, slept, exercised, weighed etc.. etc. When I shared this info with my friend he said, “Nonsense. Only the good die young.”

Anyway I do not believe in these quizzes and ignore them mostly. They are mostly titled “How happy are you?” or “Are you prone to heart attack?” or “Will you succeed in your love life?” When you add up the points based on the answers and look at the result, it will say something like “You are a very sad person and you will soon head towards the railway tracks to end your life” or “You will not only have a heart attack but also paralysis, stroke and hemorrhage”

So let me go by what the insurance fellow said… 21 years. Also the prediction in my 'Naadi' (the palm leaf script written by rishis and saints) corroborates this - I will live up to 75. Ok. Now I have to gear myself up to face this excruciating, painful 21 years. Why excruciating and painful? Because I'm graying, getting overweight (in spite of walking / jogging for an hour everyday and doing yoga for more than 15 mins) and almost 55. Because I'm slowing down, and time is speeding up. Because aches and pains aren't much fun. Because getting wrinkles along with a bigger belly (in spite of blah… blah… blah…) isn't much of a laugh either. Because I make a shopping list knowing that I can't trust my memory. And because, those mirrors are getting downright vicious everyday!

Consider this birthday card I received 4 years ago with the message: “Don't worry, 50 is just a number...and the Titanic was just a boat...and World War II was just a misunderstanding.” A subtle way of reminding me that I am going down the hill. And surprisingly I laughed rather than worrying.

So other than avoiding mirrors and carrying the grocery list in my pocket, I decided that the best way to cope with the aging dilemma is to retain my sense of humour. So I started collecting some funny quotes on aging.

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature." Dave Barry (1947-) American humorist

"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." Lucille Ball (1911-1989) American actress

"By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it." George Burns (1896-1996) American comedian and actor

"Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read." George Burns

"If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old." Edgar Watson Howe (1853-1937) American journalist

"He is so old that his blood type was discontinued." Bill Dana (1924- ) American comedian, actor and screenwriter

"I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table." Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004) American comedian and actor

(If you are under eighteen, please skip the next two paragraphs)

Talking about old age sex, my friend Nataraj shared a joke this morning. An 80 year old man asks for Viagra and requests that be split into 4 pieces. The pharmacist hesitantly explains that the effect will be minimal for which the old man says “Otherwise when I pee it drips on my shoes.”

On similar lines I have this following joke to share. A 90-year-old man was getting a pre-marital check-up and told his doctor he was preparing for his marriage to a beautiful 19-year-old girl. After an extensive exam, the doctor shook his head and said to the man, "I'm not sure this is such a good idea. It could prove fatal," to which the man replied, "Well, if she dies, she dies."

After a few inspiring words from George Burns or Edgar Watson Howe, and after developing that sense of humour in life, even that old buzzard I see in the mirror is starting to look chirpier. So hurrah… I don’t have to avoid the vicious mirror anymore. Can anyone suggest a solution to the grocery list problem?

Requiem for My Dad

I lost my father last Saturday. I'd like to dedicate this blog by offering some personal THANK YOUs to my Dad, as if he was here, listening. I would have written a song or hymn about him but I realised that I lack that talent.

THANK YOU for being my Dad, and for putting up with me when I was obnoxious, as I surely must have been, as an immature child without understanding you (sometimes I feel that I didn’t understand you even in your last days).

THANK YOU for being my first rhyme teacher, my first writing teacher, and my first teacher in the art of living with passion (enjoying food, dressing etc. and leading a superb lifestyle).

THANK YOU for being a perfectionist and an experimenter – who can forget that you employed an architect way back in 1970 to build your bungalow or insisted on having a Bay window when the concept itself was unheard of or placing a hatch from the kitchen to the dining hall or putting up a sand pit for children to play.

THANK YOU for sharing your love of music and violin playing and for being instrumental in me learning this great art and for exposing me to western hobbies like gardening and mushroom cultivation.

THANK YOU for being the one in our family who didn't criticize or ridicule other family members behind their backs (in spite of having to shuttle between different homes at a very ripe age, I had never seen you complaining about the food others made or the way they treated you).

THANK YOU for teaching me to be myself by being yourself.

THANK YOU for your tenderness, your toughness, your brilliance, your gentleness, your wisdom, your outrageousness, your courage, your intensity, your contradictions, your humor, sometimes your unreasonableness (all these seasoned me in life) and your unquenchable sense of trying out new things.

THANK YOU for taking care of yourself, even though it sometimes was misconstrued for selfishness by me, because taking care of yourself is the best gift you could have ever given me.

And now on death. Someone said "A painless exit is an index of how moral and helpful your earthly life has been." If I go by that both my parents had led an exemplary life.

Death makes you dive deep into parts of your soul where you don’t tread much. My father must have intuited his death timing. Which is why, according to my sister, he was talking a lot (a day earlier to his death) about many happenings in his life.

In the years before this day, due to a razor sharp mind in a fragile body, he had often asked if there was any way we could help him to live longer. He often suffered other health problems as a side effect of Parkinson’s disease. However, he was a happy and friendly man, who still enjoyed life’s good moments, family events, parties etc. He lived life to the full. When he went to a party, he exhausted himself so much he often had to “pay” for days afterwards.

I am sure he at one time had feared the anticipation of this great last step in life, but he died in peace, happy and content and grateful.

I hope I will one day be able to die up to his and my mother’s standards, in dignity. I hope my family will remember me for a few good things I did to them. A good death is like the final chapter of a good book: it wraps up the story of ‘life’ with panache, is physically, emotionally and spiritually satisfying to the author (the deceased) and the reader (kith and kin), and leaves no loose ends to be explained in a sequel.

If I go by this analogy of life to a book, I would like to read the last chapter of my book now. I would like to know when and where the chapter ends (though it is my book, someone is writing it!) and probably what the readers think about the book… my life. I know that predicting when and where of my death is impossible. A couple of years back I read the following.

“We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue.”

Any comment on this is really superfluous.

But I would welcome some Epitaphs from the readers of my book. It would be great to know what people think of you when you die, when you are living!! If this sounds outrageous to you, that's okay. It is outrageous, especially when you consider our culture's pervasive denial of death.

Life is outrageous, and death is part of life. So some Epitaphs please!

GDP - Gross Domestic PROBLEM

A week back the paper said that Gross Domestic Product is under control and rising. Also there was a mention of GDP crossing 6 points in 2010. It said that last month's CPI(UNME) for all items, less food and energy, was up. I was ecstatic, even though I had no clue what CPI(UNME) meant. It sounded like some pill that I have to take for my HDL and LDL/ VLDL ratio control. (If you are wondering what this gibberish is, please refer to my earlier blog titled Medi‘SIN’.) In any case, I later found out that CPI(UNME) meant Consumer Price Index for Urban Non-Manual Employees.

What do all these mean? It means that the economy is back on rails. But that worries my wife. She would always buy only stuff that was on sale. When recession was showing its ugly teeth, only one soul was jumping in joy. That’s my wife. She saw the doors swing open to a discounted world. Everywhere the sale was happening. The speed with which she accumulated things (I would term them crap or trash) was amazing. Did you know there's a Plantain Fruit peeler that was available just for Rs 100? And would you believe that it's easy to find something like that on sale?

During recession every shop was putting up a sale. Buy ONE. Get FIVE… Buy a pressure cooker and get a HOUSE free! (yah… why not? With all the accumulation of junk, you sure require a separate house!)… Buy FOUR tyres and the CAR is free! … Buy a car and the petrol is free for lifetime!

One such deal that my wife couldn't pass up was FREE tickets for a Consumer Exhibition that was happening some 50 kms away from the city one weekend. So we woke up early on Saturday and drove down to the exhibition. Of course, a ticket normally costs Rs 50 per head. And after saving our Rs 100 in tickets, we spent Rs 3,000 on what I call junk and probably Rs 500 on petrol. And now you know where that Plantain Fruit Peeler came from. I do not know what a Veg-Gratero-Choppero-Scrapero is, but I am relatively certain we did not need it… that too when it costs 400 rupees. She even actually got to buy a cream at a 90% discount that can set a man’s hair to give that fashionable wet look. She bought it for me. She still owns that product, with the vague hope of me growing my hair back. (Incidentally people who know me well know that I sport a clean tonsured head for the last 3 years!)

But with the receding recession, the Off Sales are off. Durable-goods discounted sales are off (but now tell me what constitutes a durable good? And is a durable good the opposite of a perishable evil?) O.k... O.k.… I am digressing. The fact of the matter is that all products henceforth will be available without offers… at their normal undiscounted prices. SN(FWF). But GN(FMF)... Sad News (For Women Folk)… But...

Now I know that Economic Uncertainty (polished word for recession) is the equivalent of existential angst for men folk like me! But after the lessons I have learnt this time I will refuse to be UNCERTAIN next time my wife calls me to accompany her for a sale. :)

Medi'SIN'

I just remembered an old Tamil movie in which Thengai Srinivasan says that we gobble up medicines like CroCIN, TerramyCIN, AnaCIN and GlycoCIN only because we have committed so many SINS in our life. If I agree, I am probably the worst SINNER in this world… or should I say that I am the best (don’t you think that in the sinner category the worst is the best or best is the worst?).

About a month back when I took the most advanced, latest HbA1C test to check my Diabetes level it showed NORMAL. I went to see my doc with glee but he insisted on me taking the regular Fasting sugar level and Postprandial Hyperglycemia. In that report there was some little skewing of those numbers. Now it was the Doc’s turn to be in glee. He is one of those who belong to the old school of thought in the medicine world. Phoo phooing the modern techniques he declared with triumph that I am a ‘Border Case’ diabetic… neither here nor there types. But nine years back I was a confirmed diabetic and thru’ regular exercises and strict diet I had managed to keep the disease at bay. But now the medico is saying I don’t belong anywhere. I am upset because I want to belong to one category. I don’t want to be like a member of the third gender… hijra… when it comes to diabetes. I’m sure that I don’t want to be abnormal.

Now let me come to the Cholesterol Test. The cholesterol ratio is normal… as per the report “accurately quantifying the HDL and LDL/ VLDL in 20uL serum in 96-well plate the HDL and LDL/VLDL assay, is in the normal range – less than 0.3.” Again the doc started with ‘BUT’. “But your individual HDL level – GOOD Cholesterol is low and it is a cause for concern.” I didn’t know what to say. Never knew that even cholesterol is categorized as GOOD and BAD just like human beings. Probably they also SIN to various levels to be classified like this.

As Martha Bolton said “you know you are getting old when… you start buying Geritol by the six-pack”. In my case it is GlycoSIN and AtorvastaSIN : )

Coffee, Tea, Me

It is 6.00 in the evening and I am having my fourth cup of coffee. Coffee as coffee. The reason why I am saying coffee as coffee is that it has become a much abused drink these days. Most of the parlours give you so called exotic varieties in coffee - espresso, cappuccino, mocha and so on. As Denis Leary said you can get every other flavour except coffee-flavoured coffee! For instance do you know the difference between a "Flat White and a Caffe Latte?" Honestly I don’t… even after drinking them :)

There are consumers who are always ordering mutant coffees with names like "mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette latte-espressacino"... beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products prepared from what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.

The reason why I need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes me alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun. Bob Irwin said "Decaffeinated coffee is kind of like kissing your sister." I agree and if it’s decaffeinated, I would settle for some other drug – opium, heroin…

I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups of this magic brew. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm writing this blog.) The Kumbakonam (City of Temples in Tamilnadu) Degree Coffee is the best. That too when it is served in Pithalai (Brass) Tumbler and Davaraa (saucer like). Some time back in one of the MNC offices I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and when I tried them individually they tasted pretty much the same. Abraham Lincoln is credited to have remarked “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee”.

This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a news item I read that there is an expensive coffee by the name Kopi Luwak. It states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" takes place, and the berry seeds -- the coffee beans -- come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs. I will be the last person on this planet who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract. In case any one of you readers have tasted this excreta coffee… ney… exotic coffee Luwak, please enlighten me about it!

Upgradeitism – Spreading new epidemic

Chikun Gunya, Swine Flu etc look pale compared to this new disease. The reason why I am writing about it is my son has recently caught this dreaded disease. The symptom is a burning need to spend money on a perceived better product and it is usually accompanied by feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction until this is achieved. Disappointment or dissatisfaction with ones current equipment coupled with envy over the new equipment of someone else is the reason for this epidemic. If treatment is delayed the results can be serious, often your brain ceases to work. Also sufferers sometimes subconsciously damage their existing gadget… they don't realize they are doing it… but the "well it's broken so I need another (better) one", often seems a plausible excuse. The only remedy to this disease is a medicine called Ostrichet – It requires that you keep your eyes closed when TV ads are on… that you don't read any ads in mags or paper… you don’t visit your friends or relatives who often seem to be catching this malady!

M‘AD’ WORLD

A few days earlier I started feeling a bit guilty about being in the ad industry for over 24 years now after seeing a blooper. Today I'm fully fledged. This is incredible. So called big agencies are big blundering. The first goof up was the Domex Toilet Cleaner TV Commercial. The sign off said something like “Kills all known germs dead”. I wasn’t clear whether they were making things doubly sure. My brother quipped that the agency was committing suicide by killing themselves! President Bush is quoted as saying, "I'd like to thank the Canadian people who came out to wave, with all five fingers, for their hospitality." Compared to the Domex ad sign off, Bush sounds very intelligent. Today I saw the Saint Juice TV Commercial. Again the sign off baffled me. ‘Juice - the way God wanted it to be’... I thought God intended only fruits to be there in this world!