Eat Not, Tweet Not!

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"...It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive

organs.  We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so.

It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.  After eggs and bacon, it

says, “Work!”  After beefsteak and porter, it says, “Sleep!”  After a cup

of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don’t let it stand more than

three minutes), it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show your strength.

Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and

into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a

god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long

lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”

After hot muffins, it says, “Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the

field—a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy,

or of hope, or fear, or love, or life.”  And after brandy, taken in

sufficient quantity, it says, “Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that

your fellow-men may laugh—drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless

sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will are

drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol.”

.......From:Three men in a boat

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Well, that was a long Absence Without Leave (AWOL) from blogging. In fact the longest. Exactly a month.

Were I a student of Kendriya Vidyalaya, I would have had to submit a Medical Certificate (MC, fake) before being re-admitted to the class. 

At IIT KGP I had to also fill up a Joining Report (JR).

There was another curious thing at IIT KGP.  Whenever I got promoted (unduly) to a higher post within IIT itself, I had to not only submit a Joining Report but also fill up a form titled: "Handing Over and Taking Over Charge". I was familiar with this boogy-woogy from my Father's HM days in Muthukur. When he joined Office there, he had to "take charge" from the outgoing HM. This entailed signing a long list of assets like almirahs and library books and rubber stamps and brass seals. My Father was a sticker and he would ask the outgoing chap to show him the listed items physically. And the outgoing HM would get hurt and get into the dialogue mode like between the two crooks in the Great Train Robbery:

"Don't you trust me?"

"No!"

"Good!"

When I went to the Establishment Section to 'join' the first higher post as a Lecturer (from Associate Lecturer) I didn't know how to fill up the said form of charge transfer. And meekly asked Das Babu: "To whom should I hand over charge and from whom I should take charge?" He said:

"Yourself in both cases...just sign at the bottom of both the halves of the sheet"

In Physics we call it:

"Virtual Charge Transfer"

Anyway, here is my MC (fake):

I was ill for the four months before I stopped blogging.

Actually I should say, I was growing more and more ill by the day...'growing' is the right word...mot juste...I put on like 10 kg in four months. All of it in the belly. It was a case of continual overeating and over-resting.

Result: 

First my couple of 'working' pants ceased to fit me...or is it the other way round?

Then I had to discard them unhappily...you know how you get attached to a pair of pants that fit you to a tee...you would continue to wear them much after they are worn out.

Then I had to fish out half a dozen pant pieces that were lying here and there gifted to me over a decade or more by well-meaning people and take them to the "Raymonds Tailors" (fake again) and ask him to stitch all of them so they fit me easily with an inch or two to spare. He did an excellent job.

And after a while I outgrew them too...

And the good old leather belt gifted by my friend NP that served me for three decades exhausted all its holes leaving no space to punch more holes...it was at the end of its tether. My good son then gifted me a leather belt he had outgrown :-)

And that was also threatening to reach its "yield point".

It was then that I said: "This far and no further" and revolted...I decided to go on a diet famously to get back to my earlier regimen..."One meal a day!"

Meanwhile I was lying down and groaning...literally...with belly cramps.

My son and D-i-L took pity on me and relented.

And then my dieting started. I hope you know what a crash diet entails...it is a full time job...all the time fighting pseudo-hunger and resolving not to munch that extra slice of heavily buttered toast.

So, I had no time for activities like blogging that tend to dilute the dieting resolve...you know how you tend to munch junk food while you prepare for exams at night.

Well, the result of a month's dieting:

"The new pants are just fitting and the new belt is fitting so so. Perhaps I lost five kg...five more to go...wish me success!"

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In our childhood we knew only one Section of IPC by its serial number:

"420"

That was because there was this Raj Kapoor Starrer titled: "Sri 420"

And we had to ask our elders what 420 meant.

Last week I heard about another Serial Number that got famous:

"Section 66A"

That was the one that landed those two young ones in the jail.

I guess our politicians have become too touchy.

There was the case of this Minister who lost his job to his "cattle class tweet" not too long ago. But then he got his job back by and by. But he looks as inveterate a tweeter as I am a confounded blogger. He tweeted again needlessly about his million-dollar wife to upend a needling guy.

And there was this case of a cartoon-mailer who was arrested in the land:

"Where the mind was without fear"

That scared my pants off.

For, I had blogged about a hundred limericks and light verses three years ago, all of them highly offensive to one living politico or the other. By name. In one instance my B-i-L from TN had warned me too that had I been living in TN I would have been thrashed.

So the first thing I did this afternoon soon after I touched my laptop after a month was to 'delete' about fifty of the more venomous stuff.

They say: "Discretion is the better part of valor"

Am a chicken?

Undoubtedly...jails stink.

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I should now explain (to myself) why I suddenly resumed blogging. There were two triggers apart from the fact that the time was ripe.

1. Supratim submitted a 'late assignment' the other day. And there was no way I could sit on it without blogging it, having 'invited' Guest Columns. So, I had to open my blogspot after a month and then you know what happens...the resolve of a drug addict not to touch pot again, and again, and again, like Mark Twain said:

"It is so easy to give up smoking...I did it several times"

2. Ishani yesterday stunned me asking (in Telugu):

"What happened to you Granpa...you are pulling a long face these days, not chatting, and not even smiling?"

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings:

Psalms 8:2: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

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