And Thus Said Barker

In the course of researching for a paper, I came across a very interesting concept. In the present day when a number of diseases ail us, it might be worth considering this theory. With the progress of biomedical sciences, we have been successfully able to combat a number of diseases to a great extent, if not totally. Not many people die of small pox, chicken pox, or cholera these days unless they live in extreme poverty and stressful situations. Yet a number of diseases that were not in extant even a 100 years back are now on the rise (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, strokes). Most of them are directly related to our lifestyle, like a persistent period of improper diet, lack of exercise, stressful living, etc. So in theory, the prevalence of these diseases can be substantially lessened if we lead a healthy life.

So what new does the Barker Hypothesis say that we don’t already know? Eat well, sleep well, exercise daily, don’t stress out, and there you will stay healthy. But wait, the Barker Hypothesis throws a different light to the situation. Also called the Fetal Origin Hypothesis, this is what it says-

Apart from the lifestyle we lead, what we suffer from as adults could depend on what we were exposed to in-utero (in the womb). In other words when we were in the womb, if we got exposed to certain chemicals, drugs, metabolites, etc., we could be more prone to suffering from certain diseases in the later stages of life. We might not show any manifestations of it during our childhood or even in youth, but as we progress towards mid-life, we are prone to suffer from a number of diseases.

In other words, what we suffer from during old age depends a lot on what we were exposed to in our mother’s womb? That’s correct.

So what diseases are we talking about here?

Parkinson’s disease. Cardiovascular disease. Heart attacks. Male reproductive malfunction. You just name it.

Exposure to the pesticide DIELDRIN during pregnancy is predicted to cause serious health concerns to the fetus, increasing its risk of suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Though Parkinson’s disease is a disease of the brain and the neurons primarily concerning the elderly population, experimental and epidemiological finding suggests that the process of neurodegeneration begins much before. Thus developmental exposure to dieldrin causes persistent change in the dopaminergic system due to increased susceptibility to Parkinson’s disease. In other words, if your mom was exposed to pesticides when she conceived you, you in your old age will be prone to suffer from Parkinson’s disease.

Exposure to DIETHYLSTILBESTROL (DES) (a clinical agent) in pregnant women caused cervico-vaginal adenocarcinoma in their daughters. The carcinogen (DES) was taken by the mother, but the cancer appeared in the offspring and that too, only after the onset of puberty.

It is interesting to note further that women who were not themselves exposed to DES in-utero may have altered reproductive tract function if their mothers had been exposed in utero. This meant that maternal ingestion of DES during pregnancy could not only alter the reproductive capacity of the woman exposed directly with the fetus, but that the alteration may be passed on to another generation (the so-called DES granddaughter effect). So lets say your mom was exposed to pesticides and you were fine, but your daughter is at the risk of having reproductive anomalies just because your mother was exposed to pesticides and you were a silent carrier.

These effects are not just related to exposure to chemicals like DES and Dieldrin, but to biological factors (like undernourishment of the fetus leading to lower birth weight) as well. It goes like this. Fetal undernourishment in middle to late gestation leads to disproportionate fetal growth, and causes coronary heart disease later in life. This means that if your mom did not eat properly when she was pregnant with you, you are at a risk of developing coronary heart diseases when you are of middle age. Human studies have shown that men and women whose birth weights were at the lower end of the normal range, who were thin or short at birth, or who were small in relation to placental size have increased rates of coronary heart disease. Evidences and research findings show that coronary heart disease is associated with specific patterns of disproportionate fetal growth that result from fetal undernourishment in middle to late gestation. So undernourishment during pregnancy could make your child prone to having heart diseases and health related disorders later on in life.

Talking about low birth weight? Did you know that exposure to phthalates like DBP and DEHP could cause fetal low birth weight? And how might women be exposed to these compounds? Through the use of make up, nail polish, perfumes, creams, and body lotions. Although the cosmetics industry have come up with a lot of their own arguments, it still remains a fact that usage of perfumes and cosmetics with phthalates in them increases the chances of delivering low birth weight babies.

I will not go into the complicated mechanisms of how these happen, but would like to clarify certain things. All these findings include working with animal (mainly rodent) models as well as human models, and there is scope of a lot more research. Secondly, there is nothing concrete like a cause and effect relationship. Exposure to certain substances only make us more prone to suffer from certain diseases, doesn’t mean everyone in a population will start showing similar effects. We are all different, and in the complexity of this lie the beauty of biological sciences. But the take home message should be clear. We should definitely be more aware of the stuff we are exposed to, more so during our child-bearing years. For what we are exposed to could also affect the destiny of our future generations. I don’t mean be paranoid about the situation and take extreme steps to ensure you live in an axenic environment. That is not possible. But it doesn’t harm to be more conscious about our own bodies, health, and environment. No matter what, we will always be exposed to certain unwanted substances, and despite everything, our immune system will always devise new strategies to cope up. That is what evolution is all about.

For people who are interested in further readings, just google “Barker Hypothesis” and you’ll find the rest. Stay healthy, stay safe.

sunshine

Be My Guest

The host becomes a ghost when you can hardly see her. At least that is what my friend preferred to think. A friend back from my days of India, we made it to the US together. So I was delighted when a few weeks back, she called me up to inform that she was visiting me for a week. I don’t usually get many visitors, certainly not someone taking an airplane and travelling all the way to see me. Needless to say, I created a table on a word document, put the dates on the left, and made a list of all the things I had planned for us.

Now there are certain phases you have in your academic life when things don’t go the way you want them to. It doesn’t happen all the time, in fact most of the times, a grad student’s life entails nothing a lot more than the optional chore of attending a few classes, spending a few hours in the lab, and then the compulsory chore of chilling out with friends. At least that was the way things were with me. But then my advisor came into the picture, we got a few demanding projects to work on, and the rest is history. To cut a long story short, the last few weeks have seen me spending early mornings till late nights in the lab. Monday through Sunday, 7 days a week. Christmas, New Year’s, and any other holiday you can think of. Of course I am not the only one, my advisor has been at work too, strategizing new means of kicking my ass, but yeah, that has pretty much been the picture. I don’t know for how many days straight I haven’t seen the sky getting dark. I come in as early as I can, and when I get back, it is dark and raining. I see everyone going home, but no one in the lab has seen me go home in the last few weeks. And it was very nice of my advisor to drive me home last night. That too at 1:30 am in the morning (oozing with sarcasm).

Sounds incredible, huh! Seems like I have been on the verge of making some path-breaking discovery, or the spirit of Einstein has possessed me? Naah, it is this stupid deadline, and the constant urge to make sure that funding did not run out.

However, for as long as my friend was staying with me, I tried my best to be a good host. Certainly not by the standards of how my family would host someone back at home, but certainly my own way. For a record, I actually started to rebel and take the 8 pm bus home. I would be home by 9, and then we would start to cook. I made sure that I cooked at home most of the days. It’s not that I am an exceptional cook, but most places would be closed and most friends would have made other plans by the time I reached home. Now I am not the cooking type, but that one only thing I did for her in the whole day gave me such satisfaction. We would chat incessantly while she chopped the onions and I heated the oil, and man, it was such fun.

Mornings would start with me waking her up, making some coffee, and that’s it. Soon, I would be running for my classes, and she would have plans for the day. And while she got ready and I got late, I would sneak out of the house with the note neatly tagged on the fridge. This note contained the bus routes for all the places she had planned to see that day. Yeah, you heard me right, barring Sunday, when I finally decided not to report to office (my advisor did come to work and as a protest, I refused to pick up my phone), my friend has been seeing the city on her own. And she darn well did a good job out of it. She didn’t whine or complain, she rather sympathized. And know what, she saw more of the city in a week than I have seen in a year. She went to these places that I have just heard of, but never been there.

After she left, I was reflecting on how good a host I have been. Certainly she had no problems with me working and she seeing the city on her own. She didn’t even have problems making tea for me while I worked or cleaning the dishes when I ws too tired to do them. But I thought of the way I had grown up seeing guests being welcomed at home, and I am sure ma would disown me if she saw what a ghostly host I have been.

Now many people have been guests at our place. But when it was a close friend, the person would have better places to sleep than on a mattress. I don’t even have a bed at home, not that I am too poor to afford one, but I have never had the need to. So my friend slept on the mattress. I did volunteer to cook every night we did not eat out, but it was nothing grand. Dinner rather consisted of something that I can quickly concoct without getting tired, and not the elaborate dishes mom spent making all day. So there was no home cooked biriyani and chicken kebabs, there was the simple bhindi masala and potato curry and stuffed veggie omelets and my customized raita with loads of bean sprouts topped with crushed potato chips. Dinner was served in disposable plates (my friend suggested that) so that not much time is spent doing the dishes. Certainly a far cry from the ornate sets of china we were used to having in whenever people visited us. While mom would spend the day showing people around, and dad too would take an occasional leave from work, I kept working half the weekend. The only thing I did was call my friend from office every day to make sure that she was not lost in the streets of the city and what time she was hoping to come home. And then I would usually come home much after she did (I gave her a set of my home keys), make coffee and some dinner cooked in 30 minutes, and eat in disposable plates. Even the day she was leaving, I had a deadline to submit in the morning. So I arranged for a cab, gave her a hug, and that’s about it. No seeing her off at the airport, no parting tears and no farewell gifts (mom usually made this farewell caramel pudding for everyone). What more, when she was leaving, I told her “Come again”, and though my “come again” was heartfelt, my insides laughed at me sarcastically at the “come again”.

It made me realize how different our lives become in a different country. My intentions of “atithi satkaar” were still with all my good faith effort, but circumstances did not permit me to take either a day off, or to show her around and cook well for her. What more, I got late on my way to pick her up the night she arrived at 10 pm, just because I was busy finishing off the grocery that I haven’t had the time to do before. I know she was totally fine with it, and perhaps I am feeling a little more than my deserved share of guilt. But mom and dad back in India failed to understand why it was so difficult for me to take time out of my schedule and show her around. I am so glad she came, as I did not have to go back to an empty house for a week. But all that I did was more out of my need for seeking company and reinstating my sociable instincts soon to become extinct.

Anyway, she reached fine and told me that she had one of the finest trips here. She loved the city, loved the places she went to, and loved the bhindi masala I cooked. She is hoping to be back in summer. Only I hope that I am more with the what you call “Aantorikota” (whatever that means in your language) and have more time for people in my life then. Sob!

sunshine

Calendars.

I was skimming through the newspapers while waiting for the food to warm up in the office microwave when my eyes fell on a bunch of calendars with the departmental name and logo neatly imprinted. And while my food warmed, I was transformed back to my childhood days for the next couple of minutes, to be interrupted only by the beep of the microwave.

Calendars. Diaries. Every January saw our homes piled up with these two things. In fact, I am still fond of collecting diaries, and it broke my heart to leave dozens of them never written on back at home when I moved here. But calendars are a different thing altogether. It used to be great watching the old ones from the walls vanish, to be replaced by new pictures. The worship room had that single paged huge Dey’s medical calendar every Bengali home wall must have had. The holiday dates would be marked in red, with the huge cross logo right in the middle of the page. And then every neighborhood mistanna bhandar (sweet shop) used to gift the usual smaller calendars with the photo of Ma Kali. The designs, photos, and the fonts changed every year, but the subject always remained the same- either Ma Kali, Thakur Ramkrishna Paramhansa, or Baba Loknath.

But then, dad used to get a totally different kind of calendar from his workplace. Scenery. Birds and flowers and bees. Great photography. Pics of sea coasts and sunsets and the ripples on the water. The picture of a bee on a flower with every yellow and black stripe on the bee’s abdomen distinct. Then there were snow mountains and forests. Those were the kinds where at the end of the year, I took a pair of scissors and went snip snip, cutting all the pictures I liked and collecting them neatly. Not Ma Kali or Baba Loknath, but pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Florida beaches and the jungles of Africa. What more, they made excellent paper to cover books. So while I hated history in school, I made sure that the best pic of my favorite flower was used to cover the history text book. I guess that kind of made me less averse to touching my book every day.

The one I was holding in the office kitchen had every message written all over it- about conserving forests and protecting nature and aiming for a cleaner environment. Who uses calendars these days by the way? With the advent of mobile phones and Google calendars, who even needs to flip through the pages of a calendar to see what day was it the 15th of the last month?

But then, even now when I see a stack of free calendars somewhere, the heart somersaults in joy and the hand feels like picking up a copy for myself. They never really make their way to the walls, they just get lost somewhere in between the pile of books and newspapers. But somehow, someway, it brings back all the childhood excitement of flipping through the pages, to find one new picture every month. The only difference is, I no longer collect or hold on to the pictures at the end of the year. I just go get myself a new calendar.

sunshine.

Stereotyping.

A few days back, I was bawling my vocal cords out. I had screwed up. Not my vocal cords but my exams. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise as it happens to me all the time. Not my exams not going well but my bawling out. My friend, in a desperate attempt to stop be from crying, said, “Hush. 26 year olds do not cry”.

This made me cry even louder (one of those days when you get into the mode of crying). Once I was calm after my friend convinced me that my next exam would go well and how the concepts of protein folding and unfolding we so interesting, I wondered- What did he mean 26 year olds do not cry? You can’t cry and express grief just because you are 26? So what do they do anyway, mourn in silence? And then I thought of my reply- “You insensitive men do not understand what we go through”.

26 year old girls do not cry.

You insensitive men do not understand what we go through.

Weren’t both of us stereotyping? It’s not just others who do it. I myself do it all the time. I started to think of these stereotyping comments I have heard or made at people, and boy, I came up with an unending list. Here are a few, in any random order of having said or having heard.

You Indians are so good at math (well, okay, yeah, maybe).

You Bengali women love to gossip and eat fish all day (well, eh? errr? I never ate fish till I left home).

You Southies know not the world beyond Rajni.

What do these people here understand about bonding and human relationships?

You grad students in the US have such an easy life compared to that in India.

You IIM people end up being a money churning machine.

You married women barely understand the pangs of being single.

You single women don’t know how difficult married life is.

You PhD people are like humans with two extra brains.

You Microsoft people are humans with two extra wallets.

You Oriyas are such boring people (okay I didn’t say this, but someone else did, mistaking me to be an Oriya. And I promise, I reprimanded her more for stereotyping Oriya people than for calling me an Oriya).

You ABCDs know nothing about struggle in life.

You women have an easy life- study and then get hitched to an NRI.

You Biology students are so bad at math.

You doctors are suckers for money.

You men are so romantically challenged.

You men…. You women….. You doctors…. You engineers…. You buggers….. You desis…… You fat people…. You white people…. You socialists.... You communists....... the list goes on and on…… Rarely do we realize that each of us is fighting a battle, fighting our own battles and that irrespective of what we are and what we have, no one has had an easy life so far.

sunshine

The Kiss Eaters.

We Bengalis are strange. Social. Gregarious. Food lovers. Corrupt. Morally depraved. People tell me that you cannot mistake a Bengali. Why? Do we wear two extra horns? Do we talk a lot? I don’t know- says a friend. When you see a Bengali, you’ve got to know it is a Bengali. Okay, that was very intuitive. Not that it helped a lot. Often I have been told about half-cooked ideas of Bengali women being very proactive, with huge eyes and dusky complexions and luscious figures. Not that it helped a lot to boost me up. Then they said Bengali men loved to be dominated by the women folk at home and seldom had a mind or a voice of their own at home. This angered me further, because this was stereotyping. Although sometimes, interaction with the men folk in the friend circle had somewhat confirmed this. But then again, it is one thing to live with a notion, and another thing to vocalize it. 

Would you want to marry a Bengali? Asked a non-bengali friend in hush tones at a party. He was expecting a rebuff, a rebuke, like he must have been used to with every Bengali chick now. I looked around me and whispered in equally hushed tones- “No way !!! I have heard they are quite boring !”

And then we had laughed, my laughter borne out of guilt for having such an opinion about my own people. So tell me what Bengali people are like, asked my friend. The ice had been broken long back with the confession of not wanting to marry a Bengali, and the conversation had taken a somewhat humorous tone. I thought hard.

They are complete foodies.

And?

They like to talk a lot.

And?

They make friends everywhere. Strong networking skills, you see.

And?

Umm……… oh yeah. They eat everything.

So you said. They are foodies.

No, not that way. They eat everything.

Everything? My friend looked somewhat amused.

Yeah, everything.

Like what?

Like, they eat food. Everything. Fish. Meat. Eggs. Rice. Dal. Vegetables. Everything.

Oh wow !!!

Yeah, and even Bengali Brahmins are meat eaters. They eat everything, unless they are into Manekaism and animal rights kinda things.

And what else do they eat?

At this point I realized that it would be unfair to carry on the whole conversation as “they”. Who was I talking about? I myself was a Bengali too. So I decided to be politically correct here.

So we eat everything. We eat water. And we eat drinks.

My friend looked confused.

The colloquial Bengali language has no concept of drinking. We eat everything.

Even water?

Even water. We say, jol khabo, which roughly translates to- “I’ll eat water”.

My friend looked amused. What else do you eat?

I thought hard. We eat cigarettes.

Cigarettes? As in crush them and chew them?

Hell no, we smoke cigarettes, but when we say that in Bengali, we again say, cigarette khabo, which means I’ll eat a cigarette.

Really?

Yeah, it goes with cigarettes, beedi, alcohol, everything.

Wow. What anything else you eat?

Umm… that’s pretty much it. I thought hard. No wait, we eat something else.

Yeah?

Umm… I don’t know how to say this, it is kinda embarrassing. 

What else?

Umm…. We eat a kiss..

What? Holy…. My friend started to roll on the floor laughing even before he had completed his words. What the…..

Well, yeah, I squirmed uncomfortably. You see, we say, ami chumu khabo, which roughly translated into English sounds like, “I’ll eat you a kiss”.

With this, I too started to roll on the floor laughing, so funny it sounded. You were right indeed. We Bengali people are the weirdest people. We even eat kisses. I just wonder if this is what makes us the epitomes of romanticists. Good food for thought. 

sunshine

Jab They Met

They didn’t realize how much they wanted to see each other till they actually met each other. It is strange how you spend years without seeing someone, and then the last few minutes of wait become unbearable. So she settled with her bags and baggage in the airport lounge, neatly arranging her stuff, nervously combing her hair, and waiting in anticipation. She was a little nervous at the prospect of seeing him perhaps. It had been years after all.

She restlessly tapped her feet onto the ground in rhythm with the music playing in her ears. She wondered which gate he would enter from, if he will show up from the front of the lounge or from behind her. Thus she waited impatiently, looking here and there every few minutes and then looking at the watch.

And then he appeared. He simply stood there, smiling at her. For a moment, she thought that she was transfixed. Here she was looking at the person she has flown thousands of miles for. All her resolve of a courteous hi and a civil hand shake was soon shoved away. For the moment she saw him, she dropped her bags and baggage, running head on, like a weapon all set to hit her target. Seeing her and knowing her all these years, he opened his arms wide. When she was done running more than half the way, common sense prevailed and she started to realize some basic laws of physics she had learnt back in school. If she did not start to decelerate in time, she would soon hit her target head on, and so high would be the momentum (which is a product of mass and velocity by the way) that it could cause disastrous effects which were clumsy and far from elegant.

She slowed down just in time to hit right on to his chest, and the moment she did so, he engulfed her into his huge frame. They knew not how long they stood that way, hugging each other and breathing in each other’s scent while time stood still and nothing really mattered anymore. She stood on tiptoe to reach somewhat up to his height, and stood there with her eyes closed.

How have you been?

Good good.

I’ve missed you.

So have I.

How was the flight?

Tiring, as usual.

I’m glad you made it.

So am I.

So what are you listening to?

Some random music playing in my ears.

Silence…………..

So are you gonna release me or are we gonna stand this way all day?

It is then that they both realized what a scene they made……

And they thought such events happened only in movies and in romantic novels…..

sunshine

Visit To The Haunted Ground.

The man on the street was playing a heart-wrenchingly sad music on the flute. It was a cold chilly night and the dry wind blew wisps of hair all over my face. It was one of those cold nights that made you cling tightly to whatever dear you have, which wasn’t a lot more than a few winter clothes that didn’t really help much. I didn’t know if the misty eyes were due to the harsh chilly winds or a response to the sad flute music playing beyond. The music reminded you of pain, of loss, of letting go of everything you have dear.

There was quite a crowd of tourists like me all over the place. It was my first visit to New York City, and all day, I had been excitedly taking pictures. These were the places I had seen in movies, on television, in albums of other people, and now I was seeing everything anew. Even after a hundred pics or so, I thought that I could not have enough of the mightiness of the Empire State Building, the majesty of the Statue of Liberty, the liveliness of the Times Square, the serenity of the Staten Island. If there was a model city I wanted to live in, this was probably it. I walked on the streets and thought-“Wow, is this the Wall Street, the hub of so much going on in the world?” I was like a kid finding my way through wonderland, never knowing what fascinated me more.

NYC gave me neck aches in no time. I was craning my neck every time I wanted to see the sky above the buildings. There was very little sky to see anyway. The place wasn’t called one of the most happening places for nothing. The Manhattan skyline was a complex mesh of the tall sky scrapers straight out of a Matrix movie, and one just had to see them to gape in astonishment. The buildings were so tall and there was so little sky to see beyond them that I was actually beginning to wonder if people didn’t feel claustrophobic walking down the streets.

On one hand there were these tall buildings that made viewing the sky almost impossible. And then there was the broad, clear sky dotted with stars. Though one would expect such a thing, it was a different thing altogether to see it. I am talking about the ground zero- the remnants of the place after the 9/11 tragedy. All these years I saw the videos of people jumping out of the WTC in desperation. I read stuff and saw pictures. I watched documentaries and movies. I replayed and watched them again. But nothing, I repeat, nothing compares to what I saw standing right on ground zero. The place was almost fenced with thick material and there were people at a distance who peeped through a tiny orifice in the fencing material. When I crouched to take a look myself, I could not believe that I was witnessing from that 4” by 4” window one of the worst acts of nefariousness mankind has witnessed in recent times. It was different to read about world wars and disasters and movements in history books and to watch movies and documentaries about them. But here I was peeping out of a window in the NY cold watching the area that had witnessed the loss of everything one could value, and withstood it. There were no signs of wreckage, no mangled metal and trapped bodies, no blood or stench of death. The area looked akin to a large construction site with neat cement and concrete and construction workers wearing helmets and safety gear. I tried to imagine what the site must have looked like 6 years back, but my imagination failed me. 

The man was still playing his flute and there were people walking past the spot to catch the train. There were visitors like me, tourists who were taking pictures and were reading the stuff there. There was a list of the people who had lost their lives and given the amount of space the list took, I estimated it to be around 3,000. There were about 3,000 names in front of me, names who meant nothing to me, but names who were people once, who had lives and families, and who had lost their lives on the very spot that I was standing. There was nothing placed deliberately there to attract your sympathy, in fact it was mentioned clearly that no materials were supposed to be distributed or no public speeches were to be made around 25 feet near the place. Yet I saw the names and wondered who they were and what fate had caused them to be there at that particular point that day. My friend later debated that more people died elsewhere, in wars and suffering, and we pay no heed. That is not the point. Here I was standing in that spot, and that is all that mattered to me. I did not care about quantifying how big or how small the loss was. I was standing there like a visitor, like people visit museums and Disneyland, yet it was none. I looked up and saw the biggest stretch of skyline I had seen in New York. They claimed that in the next few years they are going to erect structures and buildings, but that was not the point. I wondered staring at the mangled pieces of construction if the memories of the dead were to reside there forever and to come back and haunt whoever cared to think of them. Life went on, people were busy catching trains and celebrating the holiday and getting on with their life and work. It was good in a way, since life is all about moving on, no matter what. Yet I stood there speechless, transfixed, my vision crystal clear after the tears had wiped the debris off my eyes. I wasn’t really crying, I found out much later on my way back to the train station that my eyes had gone misty. And in that strange moment of realization, I discovered that after spending a holiday taking hundreds of pictures, not once did I remember to take out my camera standing at ground zero. And why would I? It wasn’t a memory I would have loved to take back with me. I could have sent the pictures home, but did it really matter? If you felt the pain and the sadness as much as I did, you would not even remember walking away from there, let alone taking pictures of the place. There were ample pictures on the internet anyway if you googled "Ground Zero" for images. The least you could do was to let the dead rest in peace.

sunshine

Why Blogging Is Like Dealing With A Relationship?

It is because no matter how much you guys need each other, you always reach a point where you need to get away for a while. No misunderstandings, no lovers tiff, not even an argument, but you realize that the relationship consumes so much of your time and energy, it consumes so much of you that you need to get away for a while. You need your own space. You need to do other things. You get into a mode where you no longer want to answer phone calls or reply to love messages. You realize that you are capable of being nouns other than a WRITER and a BLOGGER, a LOVER and a SIGNIFICANT ONE. You need to let go of the obsession. You need to be on your own and not talk, not share, not even look at each other. You just want to live in a home not acknowledging the presence of the other person. You come home, you cook, you eat, you crash, you wake up, and you leave home.

There is nothing to feel guilty about it. I guess it happens to all of us at some point of time. We give so much into something, we are so consumed with each other that sometime we have to just leave things the way they are and let go. Not apologize. Not feel guilty about. As they say, don’t see something so closely that you lose focus.

I thought writing was as much a part of me as I was of writing. I was wrong. It has been a record 10 days that I have not blogged. I HAVE NOT blogged and not I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE to blog. The reason? Work is partly responsible. The intense pressure of getting through the semester and meeting deadlines consumed me. It took away my creativity, my thinking, and my ability to do anything not related to complex equations and data interpretation and assessments. I have been writing tons of academic papers of late, and I realized that it is not possible to write a paper with the “blog mode” of thinking. For days, I saw my creativity seep out of me, coming home hallucinated in the wee hours and wanting to do nothing but slump and sleep. But all this is a part of the reason.

I have wanted to do things other than writing. I have danced for four hours non-stop on the dance floor. I have almost spit out my lungs in the process of blowing balloons at a party. I have put myself through the torture of watching Om Shanti Om. I have read 2 books and watched 3 movies. I have visited friends. The only thing I did not feel like doing was blog. And it suits me fine. For I realized that a relationship, a bonding can survive as long as we are able to give space to each other, and be able to let go. The moment you know that you HAVE TO be in something, the moment the dimension of compulsion sets in, it is no longer a relationship, a bonding. It becomes an obligation. It becomes slavery. You are there in it because you are obliged to be in it, because you had made promises at some point of time and you are stuck. That gets you claustrophobic, makes you want to run away and start afresh. That isn’t a bonding no more. It becomes a chore. I have done good by not writing these last few days. I did not want to ruin my creativity and frustrate myself in the process.

I hope I’ll get back to the writing mode soon.

sunshine

Made/Maid To Steal.

Someone from here was visiting India, and asked me if I wanted to send something home. After much thought and deliberation, I finally bought an mp3 player online to be sent home. It looked cool, all white, with better features than the one I have. I beamed at it with pride, not concerned about the price. It was a gift I was sending home. It had better be a nice one. My mom had insisted that I keep the new one and send them the one I use. I refused. Gifts are supposed to be new, unused, and not second hand. The day I went to hand it over to the person who was going home, I lightly touched the player once. I touched it because I knew that very soon the people dear to me were going to touch it. I could imagine sis jumping in excitement while dad tried to read through the instructions provided with the product and mom holding it in her hand, beaming with pride. I finally handed it over to the person.

On reaching India, the person sent me an apologetic email, saying that the mp3 player had been stolen by their maid. I was shocked. I asked if he was sure that the maid had done so. I mean I couldn’t imagine a maid listening to songs from an mp3 player, especially because one had to install stuff on the computer first. I was told that they suspected the maid had done it. 

Needless to say, I was upset. Here I had imagined my family rejoicing while they uploaded songs and listened to them using it. The next moment, I was imagining a maid selling the stuff to some guy and getting money out of it. The maid probably did not even know how much it was worth, not just in terms of money, but in terms of sentiments too. It was the first gift I was sending home. I wondered if the maid had ever touched the player the way I did, trying to realize that there was love and sentiment associated with the stuff she was holding, and certain people in the world were waiting eagerly for it. She must have probably thought that these stinking rich people who come from the US eat, sleep, and bathe in money. She had probably sold it to someone at a price much lower than what it was worth. But I wondered if she ever felt a pang of guilt, especially at taking possession of something which was not hers, and was sent with a lot of love. I was imagining my parents using it while in reality the player was destined to go to someone else’s hands. So much for all the money and the sentiments attached and the numerous attempts to create an account from the website it was bought from.

I wonder where my player is now. I wonder if the money (as they say) wasn’t hard earned because then, it would not have gone into unworthy hands. I wonder if the maid had the same sentiments attached to the player that I had while sending it back home. For all I care, the maid’s kid might be using the player as a prop vehicle and driving it noisily across the floor. I wonder why we develop an attachment for something, and then it breaks your heart to let go of it. Most importantly, I wonder if the maid even realized that it was not about money, but about the feelings attached, and the fact that someone is waiting for the gift. All of you must have had your prized possessions stolen some time, maybe the sari your mom gave you, the expensive pen your best friend gave you on your graduation, the watch your husband gave you for your anniversary. How did you cope, knowing that the thing of such immense value to you is in someone else's hands?

I wonder. This is because that is all that I can do right now. But then again, I wonder if it is better to move on and accept the situation, and go get something new. Is it wise to forget about the old player, since it was not meant to be with me from the very beginning?

It seems I am wondering about a lot about things these days.

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Chris-Calculation.

Two Decembers ago:

I see sister hanging her socks on the Christmas eve, and suddenly have this irresistible urge to mock her.

I: Some people don’t grow up even when they are grown up.

Sister ignores me and continues to decorate the room.

I: Some people do not believe in science, rationale, and logic.

Sister ignores me further and continues to make her bed.

I: (YAWNS !!!) Some people still believe in Santa Claus at 18.

Sister ignores me.

-

I: Muhahahaha.

We drift off to sleep. And there in my sleep, I sense a scuffling of feet early morning. Must be dad watering the plants. I grab my blanket tighter and drift off to a deeper sleep. Suddenly, I am woken up by a shaking and deafening laughter.

Sister: Muhahahahahahaha………..

And there she takes out a 100 rupee bill from her socks.

.

Confused I: But !!!! (Scratching my head).

Sister: Some people believe in rationale and logic. They know that even when there is no Santa Claus, there are parents.

The expression on my face:

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Missing Link.

Remembering a few random things about birthday celebrations:

1. We grew up seeing dad travel all over the country. There were times when he was gone for 2-3 weeks in a row. When my sis was little, she would sometimes not even recognize my dad and would scream her lungs out every time he came home. I myself have been so used to mom going solely to my parent teacher meets, the annual functions, and taking me anywhere my heart desired. In fact, I never cry when someone leaves. I didn’t even cry when I left home. Yet no matter where dad was or how busy he was, he always made it a point to come home on our birthdays. I don’t remember a single birthday of ours he has missed. On the day I turned 9, it had been impossible for dad to get the train tickets back home, and I had prepared myself for a birthday without him. Yet the calling bell rang at 11 pm, still an hour before my birthday ended, and there he was. He had miraculously managed to get the tickets paying a few times more. I was soon woken up from my sleepy self, was dressed up again and made to cut the cake that dad had brought for me. The pics of that particular birthday shows me all sleepy eyed and grumpy.

2. This is the second year that I have missed the birthday of everyone in the family. Everyone in the family celebrates their birthday in a span of 10 days. Isn’t it amazing that everyone except me should have birthdays a few days away from each other? We call it the birthday fortnight. One after the other, there is never a time during this fortnight when there isn’t cake or sweets or good food at home.

3. I have always managed to drag my sister out of sleep sharp at 12. Apart from the big general cake, I would always buy cake for the two of us, and she would groggily blow off the candles, give a big yawn with her eyes drooping, and mutter, “My gift?”. She would take the gift and go back to sleep without even having opened it. It had always been that way between us.

4. Mom always got gifts from us that we could use. A pair of fancy earrings that would totally be a mismatch with her face structure, some makeup things mom would never use, her gifts were always customized to be used by us.

5. I have always stayed awake on the birthday eves, too excited to sleep. Now I feel sad about having turned a year older. Seriously.

6. And yeah, I miss the birthdays of my family terribly. I miss the bonding we had, the link and the whole feeling of being there. I imagine them celebrating like it used to be when I was home, and take vicarious pleasure by getting updates from them over the phone. But it is not the same thing. I miss the link. The post had nothing to do with missing links.

Happy birth day. Whoever’s it is today.

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Phuchka Waala.

Thought For The Day- Money can buy you everything. Dollars cannot.

I imagined this scene between me and my sis in the process of convincing her to shift to the US (an imaginary one of course).

I: Aaj mere paas Chipotle ka Mexican burrito hai. I have Alladin’s gyro. I have the Vietnamese pho. I have the Pad Thai noodles with the Thai red curry. I have the best of shrimps and scallops and salmon. Tumhare paas kya hai?

Sis: Mere paas phuchka waala hai.

Believe what you want to, but I have often woken up in the middle of the night craving for phuchkas. I have often fantasized about the large, round, crispy phuchkas in my biochemistry class, drawing patterns of them on my lecture slides. Naah, I have never had an affair with any of the phuchka waalas. Tell me, do you even need a condition to love phuchka?

Phuchka. Paani puri. Gol gappa. They are all the same things I am talking about. A very familiar scene outside most colleges (especially if they are girls’ colleges) would be hordes of girls and boys flocking near the phuchka waala. Koto korey? (how much?) Asking this is just a formality, for you know that you’ll have them in dozens no matter what the price is. Bhalo kore baniyo (make it tasty)…. Another unnecessary thing to say, as if he will put a little more filling of the potato, or give you a few extra helpings.

A lungi-clad man, the lungi itself dating back to the times of Akbar, and looked as if the last time it was washed was after Taj Mahal was built. You will often see him scratching his lungi (you know where) or scratching his unshaven cheeks when there are no customers around. Dad has told me many such stories to deter me from having roadside phuchkas due to hygiene issues. Hygiene be darned, it is funny how you know the basic tenets and commandments of hygiene, but the moment you see a phuchka waala, even the deadliest of diseases cannot deter you. He puts his hand inside the mountain of phuchkas covered with a plastic wrapper with a candle burning inside in the middle, stuffs some potato filling from God knows when, dips the phuchka into a pot filled with tamarind water with millions of germs of jaundice, cholera, and typhoid swimming in backstrokes and free style, and man, what I feel is best described as having a visual orgasm. Eating phuchkas is like…. err…. you know what. Once it starts, you just don’t want to stop.

Phuchkas are an essential ingredient for courtship. Like Rani Mukhherjee in Hum Tum, I am sure every woman dreams of a husband, chote chote bachche (little kids), Tommy (the dog), and all of them making a happy family sight eating roadside phuchka. “Phuchka khete jabe?” (Wanna go out and have some?)- a proposal like this would be enough to make anyone turn into Pavlov’s dogs. Even the sight, thought, or the smell of the phuchkas is enough to get you drooling. Ma had often tried to dissuade us, by buying the ready made mix and trying to make it at home. But there is something about standing by the roadside holding a dozen books, your legs being subject to constant mosquito bites, with not a drop of water to drink while your tongue hangs out due to the excess green chilly added (no matter how much you insist, jhaal kom deben- less spice please) and gulping puchkas one after another. 

I used to especially cherish the last phuchka (called the phau), given for free, which would have extra lemon juice squeezed into it and without the khatta paani (tamarind water). If your taste buds have ever experienced heaven, this would be it. No matter how appealing home cooked food is, home made phuchka is nowhere close to the roadside phuchka from the lungi-baniyaan clad man. There is something amiss in the Haldiram’s paani puris. The moment you know that it is made under hygienic conditions with mineral water and people wearing hand gloves, the whole thing loses its taste. Who wants to sit properly and eat phuchka in a civil way when you are used to standing by the roadside, dropping half the tamarind water on your dress in the process of holding your books, your mouth stuffed with the phuchkas while you pop out your eyes when he asks you, “Aaro debo?” (You want more?). The worst wait is when friends stand in a huge circle around him, and he takes indefinite time to get back to you again. But then, most quit after some 8-10, and it is then that the excitement of eating uncountable phuchka starts. These days, we Bengalis have taken a leaf out of the north Indian books and have started to introduce phuchka stalls at the weddings as well. A clever strategy I think, ‘coz once you are stuffed with phucka, you can’t really gorge on the bhetki maach fries and the chicken biryani later. 

Often there are rags-to-riches stories about some phuchka waala going to London or Paris and making it big. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case, for the prospects of the Indian fast food segment in foreign countries is vastly underutilized. Look at Seattle. The only place I have seen them serving phuchka is at the Indian stores. But then again, they serve you 5 tiny phuchkas the size of goat testicles with a little stale potato filling for $4 that tastes a week old. There, you have killed your desire to eat even before you had your chance. For me, I’d rather wait till I go back to India than have it here. You don’t want to have them in single digits. You want to have them as many as you want.

I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t like to eat, or even talk about phuchka. We Bengalis are famous in discussing food even more than we eat (which is also quite a lot). We often have this phuchka discussion of how many varieties of phuchka we have had. There are these huge cricket ball sized ones in Esplanade that would eventually cut your lips at the sides and your upper palate when you try to stuff them in your mouth. There was this place where they mashed small pieces of coconut, which in itself was a master stroke. At places, they gave you the option of having both tangy water and sweet water depending on what you liked. There was this place where they smashed alur chop (potato bonda) and used it as a filling. Personally, I am not in favor of huge phuchkas. They only kill the taste in this whole complexity of gulping them down your throat. Small, crispy, tangy, less jhaal, that is the way I like it. And man, I can gorge on them forever.

Phuchka is an element of bonding. It makes friendship strong. Like the tuition friends and the school friends and the college friends, I used to have this bunch of phuchka friends who would be available anytime I craved for some. You would see these couples bunking class and meeting surreptitiously, having phuchka near Science City or Victoria Memorial. Little joys of life, I would smile to myself. I am sure you have been gulping all this while because I myself have been salivating like one of those crazy Pavlovian dogs. So stop reading, go out, and gulp in a few dozen phuchkas. Forget about dirty hands and dirty water and typhoid and jaundice. Like my sister said when she was 3, “They are poor people, if all of us worried about hygiene, how would the poor man earn?” Valid point. Eat a few on behalf of me too. I shall derive the vicarious pleasure of having phuchkas from you. Trust me, every moan you make while you close your eyes and gorge on them is worth every rupee you spend.

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Bonding.

Over a cuppa coffee (not with KJo though), I thought-
What chemistry had biochemistry brought into my life? Mugging up the equations and formulae, being able to recognize and draw the structure of every amino acid, as if it would help me make better shrimps. The prof expected me to eat biochemistry, sleep biochemistry, dream biochemistry, and to permanently sleep with the text book as a pillow. Even if I did that, I would never bring myself to like biochemistry. I felt no bonding with it.

Wait, what did I say? Bonding? B-O-N-D-I-N-G? Carbon bonding? Nitrogen bonding? Oxygen bonding? Valence states? Bonding? Bonding? Thinking of bonding over a cup of coffee?

B
O
N
D
I
N
G
?????????
Paper and pen. Here I go. Scribble scribble. Scratch scratch head. God, I felt like a scientist at work.

B
O
N

D
I
N
G
Here I go-

sunshine.

One-Two-Three-Start !!!

This weekend, I went to my FIRST dandiya night in life. Many of my friends did not believe that it was my first time. They were as surprised as they were when I went to watch Bourne Ultimatum with them and dozed off midway. 

"What’s the big deal?”, I asked. You guys aren’t from Gujarat, are you?

“Gujarat or not, dandiya dancing is the cool thing to do”, came the reply.

Which made sense. Thanks to the K-serials and the KJo genre of entertainment, being a Gujarati or a Punjabi was definitely the cool thing.

So I went to the dandiya, more out of curiosity than the desire to shake a leg. Given how and where I was brought up, asking permission for staying out late and shaking a leg to the dandiya was not eve an option. That dandiya stick would have broken on my back, given the perception of late-night dandiyas. 

But this isn't Kolkata, and I did not need permission anymore. So donning my best clothes, here I was on my first dandiya dance floor.

If you asked me to describe the scene in one word, the word would be COLORFUL ! In a huge room, men and women with colorful, ethnic clothes were dancing their way around. Little children looked even more cute in their mini ghagras and cholis, jumping to the beats of music. People were dancing in concentric circles, the two inner ones for garba and the two outer ones with the sticks. 

I grew up watching Chitrahaar, where occasionally, Amitabh Bachchan would dance to the tune of “Hey naam re, sabse badaa tera naam, o sherawali” donning a piece of cloth on his forehead. Bollywood glamorized dandiya even more with time. And I thought, it's easy. Just clap your hands or clap the sticks to the beat.

So the first time I saw these people on the dance floor, I was like, "Look, I'm on the sets of Hum dil de chuke sanam!" Picking those steps were harder than I thought.  So I stuck to the simpler 6 beat and 8 beat movements of the garba. Still, I injured fingers, stepped on toes, bumped into people behind me, and confused the rights from the lefts. It was fun, but it was chaotic! I even saw a few White people who had donned their ethnic clothes perfectly and danced away without a care in the world. Wonder what took me 25 years to get here.

We kept dancing in circles till by head spun and reeled and all the faces floated above me. The floor was wooden, and it hurt. The same steps, 1-2-3-1-2-3 and the same dance became monotonous. The DJ played some awfully slow number after heightening the mood. So we formed a group and the moment the beats picked up speed, we started to dance Bhangra amid a room full of dandiya people. It was so much fun! Sticks in hand and our legs alternatively floating mid air, we were jumping to the beats of hayo rabba.

Three hours of dancing and I was done for the day. Even after 3 days, I am still limping, thanks to the wooden floors. “Coming the next time?”- someone asked me. Sure. But this time, I’d like to sit and watch people dance, and revel in the festivity. Unless of course I pick up the steps of Dholi Taro in the meantime.

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Heart Is Where The Home Is.

A few weeks back, a friend had thrown a grand party at his place to get us introduced to his fiancée who was visiting him. When I say grand, I do mean “Grand”. There was the most delectable food to choose from, free flow of wine, and rounds of poker and video games to play later. There was every kind of great food you could stuff your stomach with, and even more. After food and drinks, everyone settled to their choice of games or simply chatted and idled lazily. I was all sleepy and groggy eyed, and no matter how good the evening had been, I realized that all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. Yet none of the people were in the mood to leave, and I needed a ride back home. Not wanting to be a party pooper, I kept staring wide-eyed, unable to sleep, yet not quite active to participate. The hostess must have noticed this, for she soon started to stuff cushions under my head. Yet no matter how comfortable she tried to make me, all I wanted to do was to GO HOME. And I had never been more glad to be home.

Yeah, I am one of those people who have to get home by the end of the day. It’s not that I return to a house full of kids playing around, laughter, noise, or a significant one. Most of the times I talk to the bare walls. But no matter where I am, I want to get home at the end of the day.

There have been times when we were shopping all day and after that, G would insist me to have food with them and stay back. Yet no matter how much I wanted to, I would always find myself catching the last bus home. Another friend of mine has this posh condo on the 26th floor that overlooks the Elliott Bay on one side and the panoramic view of the city on the other side. Yet no matter how I swoon over my friend's place, I want to get back home.

I was staying at G’s place when my new home was not quite done, and I had merely dropped by my new place to keep some stuff. And suddenly something occurred to me and I knew that I was home. The place was unfurnished then, there was this one dim light and carpets on the floor. Yet the moment I was there, I decided to call G and let her know that I wouldn’t be home. Because I WAS HOME. I had cooked Maggi out of the one packet I could dig out, and had slept on the carpet. Yet the comfort in the knowledge of being home was unparalleled.

I don’t mean to demean my friends’ hospitality and warmth. They have great houses and the best hospitality to provide me, and I am immensely thankful for that. Yet no matter what, home is where I want to be at the end of the day. Familiar bed, familiar rooms, things familiar to touch and smell and see. Most of the times my room looks like Hurricane Katrina has struck it. And then when I can’t take the mess anymore, I spend hours cleaning up the place spic and span. Yet my familiar pillow, familiar blanket, familiar stuff has an extraordinary appeal to it. There have been times when I have hated to be the party pooper when everyone else wanted to stay back. I was once in the middle of an amazing party where an astronaut had brought his powerful telescope and everyone was having a great time watching the Jupiter and the craters on the moon. Yet the first opportunity, I slipped out and was given a ride home.

The point is, no matter where I am throughout the day, my home is where I want to get back at the end of the day. The familiarity, the joy of having one’s place surpasses any feeling of alienation or loneliness. They say the home is where the heart is. For me, my heart is where my home is.

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Thought For The Day.

“The more complex our lives get, the more the simpler things make sense.”

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Back in school (classes 3-4 to perhaps 8), we had the concept of a “Thought for the day”. During the morning/post-lunch assemblies, a student from an assigned class would come up on the stage and say a “Thought for the day” (TFTD), with a hurried thank you. Most of the times, the TFTD would be said with such hurry that the crowd standing at the end wouldn’t even understand. The TFTD thing was not just restricted to the mass congregations. The monitor/class leader of the class had the duty to assign specific people to write out on the blackboard the date, the subject to be taught (in that particular period), the total number of students, the number of absentees, along with a beautifully written TFTD in different colors of chalk. While no one but the teacher or the class monitor writing out the names of the miscreants who talked or made mischief in class were allowed to touch the chalk and the duster, it was an honor to have the right to use a part of the board (a little part though) to decorate and write things.

Apart from that, the class was divided into 4 houses of four colors and each house took turns to make charts out of white paper that would be hung on the walls. While most of them were the diagrams of the plant and animal cells, the pulleys, the map of India, the solar system, or the pictures of historical figures cut and pasted, some of these charts had different proverbs and saying written on them. It was during the chart making sessions that the artistic boy/girl of the class was in great demand, and like many people who “outsourced” talents, I would make my dad spend sleepless nights making charts of plant cells and trees and scenic beauties to get that extra bit of credit apart from the amount I got for being a diligent, non-troublesome student.

However, I must admit that most of these TFTDs never made much sense to me. Even if I understood what it meant, I would often fail to see the meaning in the broader picture of things. I once saw a board hanging with “Time is Money” carved artistically into it. I kept wondering how time could be money till after many years when I started to realize the value of time, not just while making it to an appointment or submitting a deadline, but in the broader context of things. “Honesty is the best policy” was another very common TFTD. Then there were the ones like “Talk less, work more”, “Speech is silver, silence is golden”, “God helps those who helps themselves”, etc. I once got hold of a new TFTD from some magazine which was far different from the usual ones, and while I understood nothing of the meaning, I had proudly scribbled the TFTD on the blackboard while struggling with the correct spellings of “possessor” in “Ambition destroys its possessor”. I was in the 4^th class then, and even pronouncing the last word has been a pain, let alone spell it right or even understand it. The teacher had looked at the board impressed and had asked me if I had written that. I had beamed in pride. Its just that I never really understood the meaning of it.

Thoughts… thoughts for the days. Thoughts for life. It is after years that the meanings of those TFTDs scribbled on the board or on large white chart papers began to make sense. And it was amazing how the simpler the thought was, the more profound it had its impact on life. “Talk less work more”. There was a time I never realized why were the teachers in class hell bent on making us talk less, or work more. It is now, in the age of telephones and freedom that I realize how important those lines are. I am not belittling the importance of speech, but if you calculated the number of hours you spent on the phone, or even talked about inconsequential stuff, you’d be surprised how much more time you could have spent working. For once, I consciously started keeping a tab on the number of hours I spend on the phone talking about inconsequential stuff, and consciously made an effort to talk to people only when it was absolutely necessary. I was amazed how I breezed through the whole day almost without the need to talk. That day when I accidentally left the phone in the lab, I was so relieved in a way because I didn't have to answer phone calls or itch to call people. I'm sure I could do with a 60% reduction of words I spoke everyday.

Another TFTD that had a powerful impact on me was, “God helps those who help themselves”. Let me not get into the conflict of the debatable issue of the existence of God, but assuming that there was God, I strongly agree that you can see through any situation simply by being proactive in what you do, and by not letting yourself be carried away with the confusions and options of life. Why is it that I can’t study and remember one whole chapter for a month, but come exams, and I can easily finish off 10 chapters in 5 days? This is what I call “helping myself”.

“Live and let live”, “Respect your elders”, “Greenery is the best scenery”, “Make hay while the sun shines”, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”, “Time is money”, “Silence is golden”, “Work hard”, there are hundreds of these simple sentences popping up in my mind now, simple words that didn’t make sense then, but that will determine what I become (or do not become) in life. And as I reiterate the importance of time and the necessity to talk less and work more, I hope I would live up to the resolutions of spending fewer hours on the phone, stalking people on Orkut, sleeping a little less, being less bothered about inconsequential stuff like who married whom and who broke up with whom, and being more focused towards the things I am good at. Like I said-

“The more complex our lives get, the more the simpler things make sense.”

Oh, the joy of coming up with a self-created TFTD. 

sunshine

Leave That System Alone.

Last week, I heard someone mutter a certain expletive. It’s not that I had heard it for the first time, but it was one of those whose meanings I never understood. After much coaxing and cajoling and telling him how laidback I was, he finally told me the meaning. And that got me thinking. Most of the expletives have two meanings to it, an inherent meaning, and a more often meant or "prachalit" meaning. Like, “screw you” didn’t really mean I wanted to screw you, it could rather mean you are the last person on planet Earth I would want to screw. 

And this got me thinking about the number of expletives in any language. I wondered why 99% of the swear words I knew either alluded to either the whole or parts of the reproductive system, or to the act of having sex?

Fuck, screw, klpd, the different sub-families of swear words ending with ch**, b***, jh*****, the list is inexhaustible.

I would think the power of the reproductive system has been historically acknowledged and worshiped. Then why don’t we say “I care eyes/liver/throat about you” instead of “I care balls about you”? Why can’t brains rot instead of testicles rotting? How is the reproductive system any different from say, the olfactory system? Or is it because the lower we want to get (in terms of words), the lower in the anatomy we have to go? 

What is this big deal about the reproductive system anyway? You are born, you breathe, eat, live, sleep, and just as normally you reproduce. Just like your heart pumps blood and aids in circulation, your sex organs help you in reproduction. Why then do matters of intelligence lie embedded in the brain, matters of emotion and affection stem from the heart, while all the filthy swear words you hear are concentrated in the reproductive system? Our fucked up imaginations needn’t really be fucked up all the time. For there are better ways to describe filth than alluding to the act of procreation and to the system where from we have sprung. 

sunshine