Word...

My titles are mostly one word. So are many of my Facebook statuses. People ask me why. So...

The thought behind the Facebook status is, "What's on Your Mind?" Have you ever tried saying that in one word? And actually made someone understand? It's not only challenging but exciting! Even fulfilling...

And then of course there is word play. Every time I post a one word status, my faithful Facebook friends add something to it in the form of comments which lead to a creative assortment of expressions - synonyms, antonyms, compound words, idioms and even an array of lateral thoughts. It's fun...

No wonder then that I have stretched this habit! Every picture I post, every song I play and every piece I write, I'm trying to see if I can sum it up in one word. It's not easy. But I'm trying...

I've gone wrong many times. I've been way off in some cases. Like a piece I wrote last year. When I first put it on Facebook, I got very few hits for it. It was a good piece, I wondered what went wrong. And then I re-posted it with a different title and it got significantly higher attention. Go figure...

There's a benefit to brevity too. You can't go wrong by saying a single word. It's mostly simple and can cause no hurt...

Because, no matter how you say it, if a lot of words is all you got, in the end, you're always going to say something stupid...

Pick...

I saw her first thing as I entered the grocery store!

Not that she was strikingly beautiful or even particularly good looking. But she was the first person in the first aisle of the store and I couldn't help notice that she was picking the okra (now that was good looking!) delicately, carefully, one by one...

I wanted some of that okra! So while I waited for the First Lady to be done with it, I found my cart a safe parking spot (stuffing my jacket in it so no one would walk away with it) and armed myself with a plastic bag to gather my loot in...

Given the First Lady had moved to the second stall and given free access to fresh okra, I dug in. I thrust my right hand in, scooped out handfuls and gathered them in the bag until my left hand, holding the bag, started moving south, the gravitational force due to the weight of the okra defeating the resistance my arm offered...

Satisfied with my okra loot, I knotted the bag and gently looked over at what First Lady was picking at stall 2. Vegetable K, (I will call it for the purpose of this story as I don't know what it's called in English and in Tamil, it starts with a "K"), looked good too. First Lady or not, she certainly seemed to have fine taste...

Now I wanted some of that too but it didn't look like she was moving past it anytime soon. So I decided to come around and start picking Vegetable K from the other side. Kinda like from aisle zero...

Armed with another bag, I was ready to thrust my hand into K too, but something stopped me. It was the First Lady. She seemed to have made the chore of picking vegetables into an art. She picked one K at a time, gently pressed it to see how it was. She neither wanted it hard nor squishy. She wanted it soft and fresh but firm. Every time she found a bad one, she would patiently drop it to one side and pick another one. On and on she went...

After the brief moment of admiration of her art I looked down to see what my own hand was doing. Lo and behold! I was doing the same too. I didn't know what had come over me but I was picking Vegetable K, one by one! For someone who couldn't tell a good K from bad, I couldn't fathom why I was doing this. Frankly I think I was just embarrassed to thrust my hand and scoop it out as I stood right across the stall from the First Lady...

Another gentleman joined us soon. As though this was some kind of programmed act, he started picking them one by one too! I at once looked up at him. He didn't seem any different than me. Well, I'm not judging him, but he definitely didn't look like he knew a bad K from good. If I was embarrassed, I guess he was in entrapment. He had joined a code of conduct that was sacred, not to be broken...

None of us spoke or even looked at each other, we just continued cherry picking Vegetable K as though there was nothing else we'd rather be doing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon...

We might have gone on and on long into the evening but as though the proof that all good things must some time end, soon a woman, slightly older and clearly the norm, joined us on the vacant fourth side of the Vegetable K stall and before we knew it, thrust her right hand in...

Coffee...

I turn over! It's still warm and cozy but something's not right. I'm awake...

"What time is it?", I reach for my phone under my pillow. It's 7 am. "It's 7 am, wait what day is it?" The haze clears and the head processes the answer to that question. "It's Saturday! Ahh! It's only 7 am". Only a subtle difference...

The phone goes back under the pillow and the eyes automatically close. Silence, but something's still not right! The eyes open again. Hope is that vision can add sense to what does not feel quite right. "Hmm! That's the problem". The sun is streaking through the space between the 2 sets of shades that cover the window...

"Why did I even turn over"? The head buries itself under the pillow and the hands pull the sheets over the head. "Feels better"...

"It's Saturday! It's 7 am and the sun is shining. Seems like its going to be a beautiful day. Why bury myself under the sheets? Why not get up, shake off the slumber and get going". It takes very little for the grey cells to take over the body...

"What good could come of it?", a silent rumination. "Let's see. It's a bright and sunny day, I could go for a run. Or I could get some work done. Maybe even write or set the house straight. Call a faraway friend or catch the stock market trend. Meditate or vegetate. Stare out the window and watch the birds or look into myself and introspect"...

"Or", the hands throw the sheets back in a rush and the head pops out in an instant. "I could have a nice, hot cup of coffee"...

Not just Saturdays, that's how my every day begins...

First...

I started my life in advertising! I was taught a lot of lessons in my formative years, significant among them being the one on "First Response", otherwise called "Unaided Recall". It's an old technique in consumer research used to test whether a customer has top of the mind recall for a brand when asked a question like, "What's your favorite brand of toothpaste?" See, Toothpaste was the first thing that occurred to me when I thought of this question, so that's first response...

I moved on from advertising and the lessons I learnt soon got buried in the depths of my mind. Only to be awakened by a senior sales person I worked with very briefly at a software company. He had just joined the company and someone had told him about the sales support operation I ran. So true to his caliber, he left his offices on the top floor and walked down 4 floors to come talk to me about how my operation could help him...

"We will develop a list of target companies for your territory, identify the key decision makers in those companies, contact them, explain our services and set up appointments for you to go in and sell", I said in one breath, trying to impress him. "Oh that's good", he said, "you'll save me the effort of cold calling", he added, reducing my life's work to 2 insignificant words. My first response was the urge to hit him, but instead, I buried my face in a pillow that night and cried...

"It's great that you make these appointments, but do you classify them as Hot, Warm etc?", he asked. I requested him to explain that better (obviously we weren't doing that but admitting that was not going to be my first response)...

"So", he went on, "you call all these people and pitch our services and let's say, it takes you 5 calls before you can get an appointment with someone, then that person probably gave you the appointment just to get you out of his hair. Say you got the appointment in 3 calls, there's still a chance that he is just being nice to you, but there is an equal chance that he wants to hear you out. That contact is Warm. And then, there is that person, who gets your call from the cold, his ears perk up when you pitch him and he gives you an appointment, right there, after just a few questions, now that is Hot! That is the guy I want to go meet more than anyone"...

Enough said, this senior person didn't even stay in the company for long. Before we knew it, he didn't see eye to eye with the top brass and left. But he left such a great first impression on me that I have never forgotten him or that first meeting in many many years...

History repeats itself and this lesson was reinforced to me as recent as yesterday, in a sad way. An Uncle of mine had recently gone down with Parkinson's. I wasn't aware of this until I recently decided to pay him and my aunt a surprise visit. I was obviously disheartened to see him bed-ridden, unable to talk or even comprehend who I was. I have a particular fondness for him. When a few years ago, I went to seek his blessings as I was relocating to the US, he gave me a picture of Shankaracharya, the revered Hindu saint, which I framed and hung on a wall in my home...

I didn't have much time on hand that day but I promised my aunt I would come back and spend at least a couple of hours with him one day, soon. I never did and yesterday, he passed away. I was filled with regret for not having spent the time I promised to spend with him, but consoled myself that at least, his suffering was over and that the picture of the saint on the wall would serve me his memory for long...

I called my aunt right away. It was the least I could do. I don't know why but my heart began racing even as her phone rang. Her son picked up the phone. I told him how sorry I was and he told me that this was best for all as my uncle had suffered enough. I felt a little better. Then he asked me if I wanted to speak to my aunt and I said yes. My heart went still for the few seconds as he called out to her and told her who was calling even as he passed the phone to her...

"Hello", she said. "You said you would come back to see him, but you never came"...

In the next 5 minutes, she said a lot of things. She asked me how my wife and son were, she repeated that he had suffered a lot and that this was best for all. She even consoled me (funnily) that it was good that I had paid them that surprise visit, lest I hadn't seen him at all and signed off in her motherly way asking me to take care...

But only her "First Response" will keep ringing in my ears every time I see the picture on the wall...