My Fundas of Life

My “eat like a lion, drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney” life seems to have hit rough waters. Well, it was just today that my HR manager poked a form and said, “Please get your health check-up done…the doctor’s downstairs.” For the last few days I dreaded that I would be cornered as the management arranged for a free health-check for all. When it comes to meeting the doctor, the word FREE doesn’t seem too enticing. But today I was singled out and had to meet her (the doc), the day when I was dressed in my tees I wear at home and socks torn in the corners.

For my weight I displayed my tattered socks and I offered my left arm for my BP - 164/ 99 it read! But no one’s checking my pulse…well then didin’t have the stethoscope to do so and I knew the results way before the machine pronounced.

Now I need to tell her all I do, what I eat etc. etc….all done and the sentence. Well Rs 3360 worth tests to be conducted the following day…good going. And my Weekend drink…well she didn’t seem to care. My very existence revolved around rice and it was off the diet chart…For God’s sake I’m an Assamese. I grew eating rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Never mind…but with hypertension written in my diagnostics card, I’m not feeling too well now. And the fact that I have to shell out Rs 3360 now makes me sad even more.

I have now to make decisions; decisions that will change the course of my life. It’s the end of the month and I have very limited resources in my bank account. I had seen a pair of shoes in the Rebook showroom near my place but could take because they didn’t have my size. Just yesterday the salesman called me to inform that my size for the pair had just come. I have to choose between the two - go for the tests or buy the pair of shoes.

As for my diet, whatever comes of the tests, I will probably follow the diet chart for a couple of weeks and go back to eating rice and non-veg, while the pair of shoes will remain with me for the next couple of months.

While I have a couple of hours to decline one, I still feel the later option seems better (to go for the shoes)…let’s see. I wish they could have had some scheme like “Go for a health check-up and get Rebook shoes for free.” This could have solved the entire problem.

Now my Funda of life is: The first impression of a person is made on the shoes he wears and not on the diseases he is afflicted with…agreed?

When a couple of retired servicemen sit for a couple of beers, they can’t help discussing about the lowly lives of the civilians, of which I’m a part too. The indiscipline that is associated with us civilians - we go to bed too late, our day starts even more late, we can talk about nonsense for hours and we can pee anywhere whenever no one is watching…OR IS IT?

Well, it’s a debate we civilians never discuss. We leave it to our disciplined brotherhood to discuss in a set time-frame. This post probably revolves around my self-realization that I can’t live life in compartments with an expiry date attached. Have food by 8 pm or else you will have to go to bed with a empty stomach…GOD, I will go crazy!

Being friends (or rather friends of my better half) with some of some ex-servicemen, I have in a couple of occasions been in the middle of most humiliating situations in my life. The latest being sent away by a bartender in a services’ gathering because I was a couple of minutes late from the deadline and the bar had closed.

My frustrations actually don’t arise from this fact. It comes from the fact that I have encountered the most undisciplined second generation of these disciplined first generation servicemen. And the list just keeps growing longer and longer. What are they actually trying to prove?

Based on my assumptions I have found that discipline is like tying the tip of your manhood with a rubber-band so that you can’t pee all around. And indiscipline will thus be peeing all around the place when no one is watching. In the first case your kidneys would burst and you will pee from your mouth probably - disgusting. While in the latter case you will probably be caught and will get away with a small fine or a bribe. However you will not die.

Now, I say life is more precious. So if you pee a little where you should not, how does it matter. At least no one is dead. Think and decide…

Now my funda of life is: If you have to go, you have to go. You will not be court martial-ed.