CAUGHT ON THE WRONG FOOT

CAUGHT ON THE WRONG FOOT

You can distinguish the tick of a pendulum from its tock

But can you distinguish a left sock from a right sock?

**

Mismatched socks are alright, I suppose, even proudly worn nowadays, given the current fashion trends rippling thru the footwear segment, but socks caught on the wrong feet are something else. 

Let me explain. A confusing thing about a sock, any sock, is its orientation, that is to say, which foot it is knitted to go on. I mean to say, when they make a pair of socks, do they just make two of the same thing or do they make one each of left and right? If you haven't thought about it, just think about it. Pick up a sock and look at it dispassionately from top to toe. What do you see? You see a length of tubular knitted fabric, open at one end, closed at the other, and bent at close to right angles in the middle. So far so good. Now multiply it by two and what do you have? No, no, it doesn't give you your age. You have a pair of socks. But do you see any clue as to their orientation? None. Do you see any sign telling you which one is meant to adorn the left foot and which one the right? Not a one. Any one could be either. Or neither, or both. 

I have seen many a punctual office-goer (I would include myself but then I have never seen myself, if you know what I mean), getting ready for the morning dash to work, reduced to tears just trying to decide whether he should insert his left foot or his right into the blessed sock he is holding in his hands without committing a foot fault.

It is time to take matters into your own hands. Whenever you go out to the sock store (you could call it a "sock kadai" but if you speak Tamil, don't) and buy a pair of socks, make sure to identify the left and the right and mark them LEFT and RIGHT with indelible (not inedible) ink while they are still new. If you are not sure which language to use, go for colour coding, but remember to use red for left and green for right, like they do for the port and starboard navigation lights of oceangoing vessels and airliners. You may use blue and yellow if you wish to be different and don't wish to follow international conventions. Of course, if you are colour blind, it is best to use white ink, except when the socks are themselves white, in which case it is advisable to go for black. 

Just imagine stepping out with your left and right socks interchanged! You wouldn't be able to walk properly and your feet would be constantly getting in the way of one another, causing much entanglement. Or leading away from one another, resulting in what my good friend from Patna would call "bahut lar-bar".

On an aside, we have a tenant at one of our organisation's properties who asked me at the very start of his tenancy to remove all low level footstools from the premises. A gangling sort of a man, he told me that he suffered from a problem of wayward feet and there had been quite a few occasions when he had had painful collisions with low lying furniture in his path. Thinking about it now, I wonder if he habitually wore his socks wrong.

Remember, socks are not like pendulums that go tick tock. It is easy to distinguish between a pendulum's tick from its tock, but it is quite another thing to differentiate a left sock from a right sock.

- © Shiva Kumar, 21 April 2020

A GULMOHAR BRINGS CHEER

A GULMOHAR BRINGS CHEER

Early this morning, as I came out of my house for a breath of the fresh, crisp summer morning air after a particularly strenuous yoga session involving quite a bit of breathing in and, hold your breath, breathing out, I saw this pretty red blossom fallen on the road outside my house. It was the typical Gulmohar or Flame of the Forest, with four spoon-like petals but of a beautiful darker shade of red instead the usual bright orange-red, one upright white petal with streaky yellow and red spots, and the other paraphernalia of sepals, stamens and all.

Bengaluru has many flowering trees and looks very colourful at this time of the year, presenting a pretty picture early in the morning, the roads carpeted with colourful red, orange, yellow and pink blossoms, before the traffic starts to build up and they are crushed under the wheels or blown to the sides and the BBMP appointed karmacharis appear on the scene to sweep them up.

There are no Gulmohar trees on my street so my guess is that some morning walker must have picked it up somewhere else while on her or his rounds and carried it along for some time before dropping it in front of my house. I wondered what made the walker do this.

I imagined the walker, who shall remain nameless, for I have no clue yet as to who he or she is, in shorts and tees, masked up and sneakered, out in the crisp morning air, walking the walk, maintaining a steady one-two-one-two, eyes focussed on the ground in front of the marching feet, almost in a trance, intent on burning off the calories imbibed or devoured last night. He (or she, as the case may be though, for the sake of making it easier for me to report, I shall for the time being assume it is a he) is sweating profusely as he completes two laps of his regular route covering the main and cross roads circuiting his house.

As the walker passes under the flowering Gulmohar on the third lap of his weekend walk, the majestic tree, pleased with his dedication, blesses him by bending its boughs slightly and dropping a blossom on his head. The 'ploink' of the stalk hitting his scalp causes the walker to break step and come out of his trance. 

The walker looks at the beautiful flower fallen at his feet. Wow! As he gazes up at the orange-red and green canopy above his head in wonderment, he is surprised he has not noticed this tree before on his walks. He must remember to come back and take a few pictures to post on his Facebook and WhatsApp groups. No point interrupting his walk now. And, before doing that, he must find out what it is called, google it and read up a bit on it. Nature can be so beautiful, he thinks. He picks up the flower and looks at it this way and that as he holds it in one hand and continues his walk.

But his walk is not the same now. The flower has caused him to slow the swing of his arms. The breezy, swinging follow through is missing and the rhythm of his walk has been upset. The step monitor, or whatever it is these electronic gizmos are called, strapped to his wrist, beeps a warning. The walker looks at it in alarm. Gosh! He has walked ten steps less in the last three minutes, so he has burned nearly half a calorie less. Drat! He should be more careful. 

He takes a last wistful look at the flower before dropping it in front of my house as he continues on his walk.

And that is how I think that Gulmohar landed in front of my house. I must take a walk around to see if I can spot that tree.

~ © Shiva Kumar

    (or, should I say, Shiva Ku-Mohar?)

    Saturday, 10 April 2021

VACCINATED!

VACCINATED!

I got myself vaccinated on the last day of the last financial year.

As vaccinations go, there was nothing special or extraordinary about the event itself. It came and went. I am told that a good third of the nation is well on the way to getting vaccinated even as I write this..

A few days back, during a routine consultation, my doctor had mildly castigated me for not getting it done earlier. So, when a school classmate suggested that I enquire with the neighbourhood hospital as he had heard that the crowds were less there, I called immediately, only to be told that they had exhausted their stocks of the vaccine. The lady who spoke to me took my number and promised to call me as soon as they received fresh stocks.

I was surprised when she called me back within an hour to inform me that fresh stocks had arrived and she was adding my name to the hit list. Yay! I was allotted token numbers eleven, twelve and thirteen for self, wife and mother respectively, and told that we should reach the hospital by 10 sharp the next morning.

I spent some time reading up on the subject and meditating afterwards. I reminded myself that we must eat well before leaving, wear our masks, and keep ourselves well hydrated.

We reached there at 10 sharp, as sharp as the needles they were going to use on us, smiling behind our masks. An elderly guard directed me to a shamiana covered enclosure nearby. It was a largish space with plastic chairs placed in rows. About half of them were occupied and there was a subdued hum of excitement in the atmosphere.

The place seemed full of senior citizens, of course because vaccination was open only for that age group. There were several couples among them, some milling around a counter, some sitting, busily filling up some kind of form. I noticed one gent who sat, looking up and counting something on the fingers of his hand. When he caught me looking at him, he smiled sheepishly and said “year of birth”. I quickly made my own calculations and stored them in separate slots numbered 11,12 and 13, in a corner of my mind.

A few persons were sitting with the blank forms in their hands, looking hopefully at others just walking in. I could guess what was going to come and quickly hid my pen in my trouser pocket. I went off to find forms to fill.

I sat in one of the plastic chairs and filled in the forms with alacrity. I was then directed by the guard to stand in a line, forms in one hand, Aadhaar cards in the other while the lady at the desk attended to each person, checking and cross-checking details and feeding them into an app in her phone.

This done, I was made to stand in another line, this time for another lady to verify that we were indeed who we said we were on our forms. After unmasking and photographing us for the app, we were sent into a room with curtained enclosures. Ah! Finally. I went into one enclosure where a uniformed nurse with somewhat stern eyes and sleeves rolled up was waiting. She made me pull down my shirt and stabbed me in my biceps with a needle.

"There!" she pronounced and pointed to a common seating area. "You are done. Now go and sit there for half an hour." She reminded me of 'Pachamma Ayah', the formidable nanny who carried my bag and drove me and other kids to school with a stick in her hand, back when I was too small to retaliate.

I went and sat there quietly, in a perforated steel chair without cushions or headrest with about twenty three other blank looking citizens while a formidable looking officer of the guard stood to one side with his arms folded and "observed" us all for half an hour. A coated gent, who was obviously some kind of certifying authority, called out our names a little too loudly, handed us our certificates of vaccination and let us go with a magnanimous wave of his hand.

By half past twelve we were back and by three I was back at work!

Afterwards, I heard some people say that I would experience some pain at the vaccination spot. I think this is a baseless rumour. I pass that spot every day on my way to work and I don’t experience any pain or anything any time.

There might have been a little bit of tiredness, wiredness and all that, but I think that is allowed in a senior citizen who is running around and feels for his countrymen undergoing such hardship and all.

So go and get yours!

~ © Shivaccinated Kumar