iKarma...

I don't do much around the house!

I work very hard at my job, often putting in more hours a week than are needed and sometimes even burning the midnight oil or rising really early to make sure I've given the job at hand everything I have. Whether it meets the expectation of another or not then becomes a matter of rhetoric...

So when it comes to home, I take it easy! If I can get a few minutes in between, I'd rather watch TV, I take pride (not just pleasure) from a Saturday afternoon nap and given the smallest chance, I'll sit on my high black chair, put my feet up on the bed and do my favorite thing. Write...

But there is one thing I do! Without fail. Every week day, at about 630 AM, as I make myself a cup of coffee (first or second depending on what time I wake up), I also make my son his favorite lunch. "Idli"...

Now if you don't know "Idli", go Wiki - "a traditional breakfast in south Indian households, Idli is savory cake of south Indian origin popular throughout India. The cakes are usually two to three inches in diameter and are made by steaming a batter consisting of fermented black lentils (de-husked) and rice"...

The Idli I make for my little fellow is the mini-version. About an inch each in diameter, I make them in a circular steel mould that has 18 little cups (kinda like a cup cake tray, only round), which are filled with the batter and then placed in a pressure cooker (go Wiki) to be steamed...

And I have a method! First I pull out the bottom pan of the pressure cooker and pour some water in it. Enough to drown a base plate made of aluminium on which will stand, first an empty Idli mould of the traditional 2-3 inch diameter type and then over it, the special 18 one-inch cup mould....

Once I place the traditional mould on the base plate, I pour some water on it to cover its four 2-3 inch cups, to temper the metal plate from being wrung out of shape due to the heat. It's holding water now, but one fine evening, it will be filled with batter to provide a traditional "tiffin" dinner to the family...

Then comes the best part! I pick up the little fellow's special mould and with a carefully cleaned index finger, I apply Ghee (go Wiki) to each of the 18 cups. Once the cups are well-oiled, I fill them with the batter and carefully place it over the support plate. I then close the cooker with the lid and turn the stove on...

It takes 20 minutes! Just enough time for me to walk upstairs, wake up my son, throw him in the shower, get back to the kitchen, heat up his breakfast waffle and his milk and set them on the table for him. Once I turn off the stove, I let it cool for a few minutes before I can open the pressure cooker again...

I safely put the hot lid away, pull out the plate full of Idlis and place them next to the little fellow's lunch box. I then scoop out the Idlis, one at a time, placing 4 rows of 4 each that fit the lunch box like a square and put one right in the middle on top of the others. Idli number 18 is served to the Gods in a little silver cup...

Today is a week day! The middle of the week in fact and my busiest. I woke up at 3 AM, started working, had my first coffee at 5 and by 630, it was time for my second. And as though I'm wired to do this by rote, the Idli was already cooking when the digital clock on the stove turned 637...

Having added a couple of slides to the presentation I was creating and draining the coffee from my cup by 7, I went to wake him up. It usually takes a couple of call outs to get him up but today, he sprang up from the bed on the very first call. "Yay! It's a Half-Day Today", he said, even before wishing me Good Morning...

In a second, he was in the shower and I was back in the kitchen. I had just switched off the stove before 7, so I set his breakfast on the table and then opened the cooker. And even before he arrived at the table, I had packed his lunch, put it in his lunch bag and gone to get ready to drop him at school...

"Are you dropping him or should I", my wife asked? "I'm going, I'm just getting ready", I said. "Thanks" she added, "But why did you pack Idli for him today? Today is a Half-Day", she said. It's when I realised that it hadn't even registered when he said it a little while ago. "He can still have it for lunch", I smiled...

Soon we were in the car, on the way to school and then I was back at my work desk, which I didn't leave for many hours. A quick lunch was followed by more work and when I decided it was time to hang up my boots for the day, I sat up on my chair, put my feet up on the bed and started writing this...

I paused here for a bit, looked out the window, and wondered!  This is my sweat-equity, I think! My "Idli Karma"...

Lead...

The phone rang!

"Hi L, this is Lisa calling from Dr. Wun's office to confirm your appointment for 4 pm tomorrow", she said. "4 pm? I'll be there Lisa, thanks for the call", I said. "You bet. See you tomorrow", she said and hung up...

I could feel myself smile even as I put the phone down. Dr. Wun is not only my Dentist but also one of the finest men in the community. The smile plastered on his face forever is not just his advertisement, it's real. I really look forward to the visits to his office and even feel sad that they happen only once in six months...

On the next day, I cut short a meeting with my boss that was scheduled for the 30 minutes prior. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I got to run to a Dentist's appointment, I said at quarter to the hour and was out in a jiffy waiting in the cold for my wife to pick me up (returning from work) and drop me off at Dr. Wun's office...

Lisa was ready for me even as I walked in the door. Once I had hung my coat on the coat rack, she asked me to follow her, but instead of taking me to the examining room, she asked me to step into a small enclosure in the pathway and said, "We're first going to take a few pictures of you before we go on back"...

She draped a heavy armor like thing around my torso and then asked me to turn around and face a swanky, new machine. It was like one of those airport security scanners except it had an adjustable chin-rest. Once she placed my chin right, Lisa asked me to bring my hands forward and hold on to the two handles...

"I'm going to ask you to move in a little closer, bring your body in", she said. As I did that, I suddenly had a familiar feeling. I was in position, ready to Tango, only the music was missing. "Hold tight for just a second", Lisa said as she turned on the machine and sure enough, the music began...

It was not a zesty tango, but a soft, mellifluous tone that matched the movement of the plastic blades that went back and forth around my head, surely scanning my oral cavity from East to West. But it sure felt great! Alas! It was done in a jiffy too and before I knew it, I was following Lisa into the examining room...

As I sat / laid down on the chair, I was beaming like a kid who had just had candy, and just wanting more...

"LLLLLLLL, How are you my friend", came Dr. Wun's voice as he walked into the room flashing his inimitable smile. He stood erect and shook my hands like he does every single time and added, "what a pleasure L, what a pleasure". I just couldn't help myself, but as I noted, I was now smiling from East to West...

He sat himself down on his stool and started looking at the scans on the 26 inch monitor that hung at his eye level. He paused for a second as though he was ruminating something, turned around to me and said, "Now, tell me. Mahatma Gandhi. What religion was he? Was he Hindu or what's the other one, Jain"...

He gets me every time and sure enough he got me again. Not only does he have this uncanny ability to make one feel so at ease with oneself, but simply amazes me with his vast knowledge of things. I don't remember even one visit to his office where he has not talked to me about something Indian or thereabouts...

In the next few minutes, even as he had checked the swanky new scans and seen my past reports, we had talked through MK Gandhi's birth state, why he could have been Hindu or Jain and why Dr. Wun thought that the history books for 4th and 5th grade were not right about Indian or Chinese history...

"Hinduism fascniates me", he said, before he slid his mask over his face and finally started to work on me...

The next few minutes were those of intense focus. Not a word was spoken until he had conducted his procedure of ensuring all my teeth were in order, flossed, cleaned and until he had handed me a cup of water to rinse it out. "That's it, we're all set", he said as he removed his gloves to shake my hand again...

But he was not done yet! In the middle of the hand shake, he paused, held my palm for a second and said, "How are P & T? I forgot to ask". He was referring to my wife and son. And he talked for the next minute about one of my son's classmates whose family was known to him and how highly he thought of my son...

He didn't let me go until he had given me the customary toothbrush in the plastic bag and then he walked me out. This is the point where I usually start feeling, "What just happened? Was I just in heaven?" And then reality hits me. I notice I'm walking out into the lobby and have to put my coat back on to leave...

I spent an additional minute at Lisa's desk trying to set my next appointment, six months away, no sooner and he popped his head out again. "Oh! L, tell P I said Hi", he said. "I will, thank you Doctor", I said. "Pleasure L, pleasure", he repeated before walking down the pathway to his next waiting patient...

I slowly started walking out, pulling open the double doors, absolutely mesmerized and not wanting to leave. Not just this time, but every time I go to his office, he leaves me feeling like this. And not just me, he does just the same to my wife, son and every other person I know who is his patient...

My wife had gone for a meeting that day and I started the slow ten minute walk back home. Even as I crossed US Route 38 to get on to Larchmont Boulevard, my mind travelled to Columbia University in New York. To Prof Michael Feiner's class on Executive Leadership...

He tells a story about 2 famous British prime ministers of 19th century.  In his own words, "Of Gladstone, it was said that, after you had dinner with him, you would leave that dinner thinking HE was the smartest, the most interesting, the most important man you had ever met"... 

"But after you had dinner with Disraeli, you left that dinner thinking.....YOU were the smartest, YOU were the most interesting, YOU were the most important!!!"

"I should call him Dr. "Disraeli" Wun, I thought, as I stepped on to the sidewalk...


P.S. I think the swanky tango scanner is also part of his grand plan to make his patients feel like Kings...

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...

Good...

I saw Santa last week! Same day, may be a few hours off...

We don't have a chimney so I don't know how he got in, but he was there. I was awake. Waiting for him, in fact. My son is 11 and still believes in Santa. He'd left milk and cookies for him near the tree with a letter that stated what he would like this year for Christmas and what one calls a powerful close. "I will always believe in you", he said. I wanted to make sure Santa got the message and my son, what he wanted...

The letter must've been last minute, because what Santa brought for him was way off! "I'm not sure he's going to be happy with that", I said. "Forget the milk and the cookies, I know you get that all the time, but read that letter again, especially the close. You have got to do better than that", I urged...

"Hmm, he thought, "What if I gave him a gift card instead? So you can buy him the game he wants", he said. "That could work", I said, "what gift card are you thinking?", I asked. "Oh! It's either Target or Barnes & Noble, I got to stick to Red or Green, you see. Does that work?", he asked me back. "Target could work", I said, "though I have to check their stock to see if they're still carrying the item"...

"You know what, I'll thrown in an extra Barnes and Noble gift card, just for the trouble", he said. "It's no trouble at all Santa, but I would appreciate the extra card. He did get a Nook for his Birthday recently, so he can really use it to get some e-books. And I'd love for him to read books than play games anyway"...

Santa did have an extra B&N card on him but not one for Target, so we agreed that he would order it at Target.com. I asked him to sit down and have the milk and cookies while he did that, so he plopped himself on the couch, pulled out his mobile device (I don't know what they call those at the North Pole) and started his act...

A couple of minutes in, he asked me for my email address and told me he would have to send it to me and asked me if I could forward it to on the little fellow (something to do with not being able to send stuff electornically to children under 18, he mentioned). I agreed and gave him my email address. Ho! Ho! Ho! "That is probably the longest email address I have ever seen", he laughed, even as he hit "Submit"...

He said it usually took a few minutes for the order to be processed and for me to receive the email and I didn't want to let him go till I was sure that I had it in my inbox, so I asked him to sit and chat a while . I pulled out my iPhone, hit the email icon and gently stroked the screen with my thumb in a pull down motion, which is the equivalent of hitting refresh on a browser. It wasn't there yet, so we started talking...

"So how come you didn't bring ME anything?", I asked. "Hmm! That's a good question. Have you been Good this year?", he asked me back. "I can't say I'm perfect, but I try to be Good", I said. "I work hard, I care for my kin and I don't wilfully hurt anyone. Is that Good enough"?...

"Sure is", he said, "and I'm sure you believe in me too, you wouldn't have stayed up otherwise, would you? Well, let's see here. Maybe you never asked me for anything", he said. It made me think for a minute. "It's true Santa, I said, I really don't ask for much from life. But then, isn't just being Good good enough?", I said, even as I kept repeating the pull down motion with my thumb on my iPhone...

This time I think I made Santa think for a minute. "You certainly seem to have the right questions", he said. "But I think you also answered it yourself. You're Good because you want to be Good, not because you want something, right"? I looked hard at Santa, looked down at my phone again, saw the email from Santa drop into my inbox and then looked back at him. "You're right", I said...

I stayed awake a long time after Santa left that night. I've been thinking about what he said all this while. "Been Good" isn't good enough! Being Good is not a means to anything. Being Good is a choice we make, for ourselves...

The New Year is nigh! So like the merry old song says, "Be Good for Goodness' Sake"...

HAPPY 2013 TO ALL...