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These days my readership ratings have plummeted to a worrying all-time low.
Even the tried and trusted Varun wakes up once a fortnight and submits a hilarious link and goes into hibernation...I don't know when he is going to catch up on his hefty backlog of about 70 lessons.
So, I thought I must stoop to the good old journo stratagem of a titillating title (sorry for the inapt alliteration).
And what else than sex to come to the rescue and do the needful!
Every Man and Beast from Adam and Eve is intrigued if not obsessed by this all-pervasive topic from womb to tomb.
Indeed Thurber quotes the irrepressible Salvador Dali as saying that he was aware and distinctly recalls having hallucinations on this subject even when he was in the womb.
And what a womb!
As for tomb I don't think Thurber is allowed to dig it up, American Prudery being what it is.
Before entering their tomb, their golfers, governors and honored guests cultivate it assiduously but they stop short out of their received wisdom that dignified quietus must be maintained till the D-Day.
On the other hand our Hindu Gods are a promiscuous lot who assure us that we don't have to fear or respect Death, since we pass from Life to Life as they say...reincarnation is built into our scriptures so that we are not officially in any hurry to finish it all up before it is too late.
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Education being my livelihood, I always felt that All Education progressed linearly during my time here, except Sex Education, which seemed to have had an exponential growth.
Reader's Digest 1960s:
Daughter (6): Mom, is it true that you and dad have sexual relations?
Mom (guardedly): Ahem, yes
Daughter: Then why is it that they never visit us?
Reader's Digest 1990s:
Grannie (75): Give me 100 birth control pills
Shopkeeper: At your age!!!
Grannie: They are my tranquillizers...I slip them into my granddaughters' milk
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My troubles started with an unthinking Father who wanted to get me out of his way when I was just 3. My elder sister (5) refused to go to her All Girls Elementary School unless someone accompanied her; and I was the scape goat.
You might think that being the only boy among hundred odd girls is Salvador Dali's Heaven. Poor chap, he didn't know.
Only Lord Krishna could have coped because he was endowed with this most satisfying gift of multiplying himself as and when the situation demands.
All I recall is that girls are more curious than boys...the less said the better.
From that traumatic imprinting experience I never recovered to this day...I suffer nightmares that Dali would cringe from.
And when I won my liberation from Elementary School to High School, the pendulum (no pun) swung the other extreme...I was in an all-boy's school.
...Just when I needed all the Education I craved... Life is always like that...it kicks you from one goal to the other straight.
And all I could get was hearsay.
OK, I did have a tremendous crush on our only Lady Teacher...but that is neither here nor there...all our 25 Male Teachers also had.
I then gave up.
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By the time I joined KGP as a Teacher myself, there were no Lady Colleagues...IIT KGP was worse than Caltech.
And I came to know that it would be a long while (14 years) before I could hope to get a Line-Clear for my marriage.
Then I read Dale Carnegie's bestseller:
'How to Stop Worrying About Sex and Start Living'
That helped a lot till I got eventually married to a Medico, who I thought would finally educate me.
On our first night, she brushed aside my probing questions and told me that what I wanted all the time was Sex... period.
How true!!!
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Ah... The perennial worries of an addicted blogger (I know there is a better cliché but can't think of it right now): All-time low readers/commenters.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if it's any consolation, your readership at an all-time low level must be at least two orders of magnitude higher than mine at all-time high! :)
Am also glad your casual leave was not too long as it would have been bad for my daily quota of 'fictional facts'.
Also, thanks for your new Ishani booklet (received it a week or so ago) and read the first 3 chapters as soon as I opened the package before realising I was in office and should be researching.
You must not underestimate your readership. They lurk in the dark corners of the Blogosphere, reading your daily jabberwocky unfailingly and unobtrusively, uttering only so much as a smartass remark once in a blue moon, giving you the false impression that they read you just as infrequently.
ReplyDeleteMy comment can as well be described as an almost equal superposition of the above two. Except -that I had received (with much gratitude, of course) the booklet a little bit earlier and had read it at home(unless need be I avoid the office....)
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