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........George Bernard Shaw
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During my school days in the early 1950s I was intrigued by two protocols in which women figured:
1. In our arithmetic problems (euphemistically called 'sums' although they were more like multiplications and long divisions) there was a set of questions on Time & Work. The damn thing involved mysterious 'inverse proportions' that our teachers took for granted and never explained properly...the more the number of workers doing the work, the less is the time taken. And then, men were paid at the highest rate of Rs 1 per day, women @ Rs 0.5 and children @ 0.25. Too many complications for a kid like me at 9.
I never understood why women were paid half the money as men. For, whenever I was awake, I saw my mom working and doing the most troublesome part of work like cleaning the dishes, washing clothes, cooking and feeding, and fetching drinking water from a distant well; while my Father sat down in a chair reading or writing, went to school, sat down in a chair except when he was talking in the class or shouting and beating...
2. In the Old Telugu films projected in our Touring Talkies, the titles always led with heroes and then heroines. I was at a loss why, since I was at an impressionable age and thought the heroines more beautiful.
It is more than 4 decades since I watched a new release in a regular movie theater...the last was in 1969 at New Delhi: "Where Eagles Dare", but I think the practice persists till today. I was also intrigued that the Producer who supplies the moola figures before the Director who takes his last zinging bow...I never understood what is so great about 'directing' that he dethrones his money-lender.
The tables, at least in schools, seem to have turned. When, after 60 years, I visited my Village, Muthukur, with my wife and son and stopped at our good old school and barged into the HM's Office without prior notice, we found that the HM was a wonderful lady, and so were most of her Teachers. And, on hearing my tall tale that my Father was the first HM of her school that was started in 1950, and that I am her proud alumnus, she charmingly asked:
"So, what?"
And then my son whipped his wallet and produced a Rs 1000 bill saying that he wanted to donate it to her School Library in fond memory of his granpa. Then, of course, she was all smiles and took that note and slipped it into her table-drawer and gave him a receipt. And then I gave her two Rs 500 notes and asked her to call up the best boy and the best girl in English in her School Final Class, and thereafter it was all glam-chum. News spread and all her Teachers assembled in the impromptu Prize-Giving Ceremony, the HM in her best pose, my wife acting the prize-giver, and my son the photographer. I guess he should still be having some of those pics...if yes, I shall post them sometime later.
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In addition to our Andhra University, Vizagh also had the Andhra Medical College in which I had several friends in addition to my didi who did her MBBS and DGO there while I was at AU. And my MD uncle who was a much-feared and respected Physician and Professor of Medicine.
The AMC was on two sides of a hillock. Students spent their first two years on one side of the hillock trying to learn Anatomy & Physiology and usually taking anything up to 4 or 5 years to cross over to the other side, which had the next three years of study, learning pathology, biochemistry, bacteriology and such non-clinical courses, and then medicine, surgery and gynecology which were the top of the glam-hill.
Non-clinical people and professors were treated as subordinate staff...shudras in the hated Manusmriti. The Brahmins were Medicine and Surgery profs. Gynies were kshatriya ladies fighting for a place in the sun. And then there were intermediate castes like vysyas...ENT, Ophthalmology, Skin & VD, Pediatrics...
Now of course all these are shudras...the Brahmins are those who specialize in Super-Specialties like Heart, Kidney and Cancer (where the moola is).
After crossing the hillock (phew!), medical students earned their right to push stethoscopes and knee-hammers into the pockets of their overalls. Never before that! Occasionally they hung their steths from their necks. I don't see knee-hammers these days...must have become obsolete.
And now there are a large number of para-medics who wear their steths all the time to show off. No decent doctor ever wears his steth these days...all of them have assistants who check the pulse and BP, ask for lab reports, whole-body scans and super-scans like MRI, PET, CAT, FAT, RAT, MAT...
The Lion King who gets all the money just looks at those reports and scans and pronounces his diagnosis and treatment...and then the assistants take over once again.
Wearing a steth!...infra-dig...
You can as well carry a knee-hammer:
http://www.spiderpic.com/search/knee+hammer
We truly are now living in a Knowledge-Society!!!
**********************************************************************
Just now when I clicked on "Publish", the Blogger, for the first time, asked me to type and submit three awkwardly scribbled words, one after the other, saying that there has been an 'unusual traffic' from my computer network so and such, and it wants to know if it is really me doing all this fierce blogging or a robot...
I guess it is indeed a Robot called gps..
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"Fashion is nothing but induced epidemic"
........George Bernard Shaw
******************************************************************************************************
During my school days in the early 1950s I was intrigued by two protocols in which women figured:
1. In our arithmetic problems (euphemistically called 'sums' although they were more like multiplications and long divisions) there was a set of questions on Time & Work. The damn thing involved mysterious 'inverse proportions' that our teachers took for granted and never explained properly...the more the number of workers doing the work, the less is the time taken. And then, men were paid at the highest rate of Rs 1 per day, women @ Rs 0.5 and children @ 0.25. Too many complications for a kid like me at 9.
I never understood why women were paid half the money as men. For, whenever I was awake, I saw my mom working and doing the most troublesome part of work like cleaning the dishes, washing clothes, cooking and feeding, and fetching drinking water from a distant well; while my Father sat down in a chair reading or writing, went to school, sat down in a chair except when he was talking in the class or shouting and beating...
2. In the Old Telugu films projected in our Touring Talkies, the titles always led with heroes and then heroines. I was at a loss why, since I was at an impressionable age and thought the heroines more beautiful.
It is more than 4 decades since I watched a new release in a regular movie theater...the last was in 1969 at New Delhi: "Where Eagles Dare", but I think the practice persists till today. I was also intrigued that the Producer who supplies the moola figures before the Director who takes his last zinging bow...I never understood what is so great about 'directing' that he dethrones his money-lender.
The tables, at least in schools, seem to have turned. When, after 60 years, I visited my Village, Muthukur, with my wife and son and stopped at our good old school and barged into the HM's Office without prior notice, we found that the HM was a wonderful lady, and so were most of her Teachers. And, on hearing my tall tale that my Father was the first HM of her school that was started in 1950, and that I am her proud alumnus, she charmingly asked:
"So, what?"
And then my son whipped his wallet and produced a Rs 1000 bill saying that he wanted to donate it to her School Library in fond memory of his granpa. Then, of course, she was all smiles and took that note and slipped it into her table-drawer and gave him a receipt. And then I gave her two Rs 500 notes and asked her to call up the best boy and the best girl in English in her School Final Class, and thereafter it was all glam-chum. News spread and all her Teachers assembled in the impromptu Prize-Giving Ceremony, the HM in her best pose, my wife acting the prize-giver, and my son the photographer. I guess he should still be having some of those pics...if yes, I shall post them sometime later.
******************************************************************************************************
In addition to our Andhra University, Vizagh also had the Andhra Medical College in which I had several friends in addition to my didi who did her MBBS and DGO there while I was at AU. And my MD uncle who was a much-feared and respected Physician and Professor of Medicine.
The AMC was on two sides of a hillock. Students spent their first two years on one side of the hillock trying to learn Anatomy & Physiology and usually taking anything up to 4 or 5 years to cross over to the other side, which had the next three years of study, learning pathology, biochemistry, bacteriology and such non-clinical courses, and then medicine, surgery and gynecology which were the top of the glam-hill.
Non-clinical people and professors were treated as subordinate staff...shudras in the hated Manusmriti. The Brahmins were Medicine and Surgery profs. Gynies were kshatriya ladies fighting for a place in the sun. And then there were intermediate castes like vysyas...ENT, Ophthalmology, Skin & VD, Pediatrics...
Now of course all these are shudras...the Brahmins are those who specialize in Super-Specialties like Heart, Kidney and Cancer (where the moola is).
After crossing the hillock (phew!), medical students earned their right to push stethoscopes and knee-hammers into the pockets of their overalls. Never before that! Occasionally they hung their steths from their necks. I don't see knee-hammers these days...must have become obsolete.
And now there are a large number of para-medics who wear their steths all the time to show off. No decent doctor ever wears his steth these days...all of them have assistants who check the pulse and BP, ask for lab reports, whole-body scans and super-scans like MRI, PET, CAT, FAT, RAT, MAT...
The Lion King who gets all the money just looks at those reports and scans and pronounces his diagnosis and treatment...and then the assistants take over once again.
Wearing a steth!...infra-dig...
You can as well carry a knee-hammer:
http://www.spiderpic.com/search/knee+hammer
We truly are now living in a Knowledge-Society!!!
**********************************************************************
Last Laugh
Just now when I clicked on "Publish", the Blogger, for the first time, asked me to type and submit three awkwardly scribbled words, one after the other, saying that there has been an 'unusual traffic' from my computer network so and such, and it wants to know if it is really me doing all this fierce blogging or a robot...
I guess it is indeed a Robot called gps..
========================================================================
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