Stress Busters

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"As they waited, Joe Bidden nervously fingered his rosary. After the first dramatic words...Geronimo E.K.I.A....the President pursed his lips, and speaking to no one in particular said: 'We got him'."

...DC Wednesday, 3rd August Page 8

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I guess the tension was unbearable.

If you live as long as I, you would have been in several tense situations and seen many of your kith and kin in similar moments.

Each of us in time find our own solutions to bear or bust the stress.

For kids it is crying. One morning Ishani arrived at my bedside with her mom, and started fiddling with my Sprite bottle (it was warm summer). She gave it to me gesturing me naughtily to open and drink. As I lay on my back and yanked open the cap of the bottle, the liquid whizzed up like the proverbial hissing champagne fountain and the white bubbly froth spilled all over my torso. The poor kid thought I was done for and cried so suddenly and so inconsolably that we were baffled.

90% of women of all ages I have seen are no better than Ishani when it comes to coping with sudden stress...they cry...The rest make you cry.

But I have seen two grown-up men sharing the same year of birth (1914) not only cry but faint too...my dad and SDM. They were always high-strung, the former due to family worries and the latter due to research worries.

My dad was also prone to fits of violence...on his kids, students and servants when he was stressed up. And then cry and faint too. So was my MD Uncle (he included his wife in the list of his stress busters). What they needed was a portable punching bag.

I thought the mores have changed over the decades and dignitaries don't beat up people in public and make scenes in these times of child rights, woman rights, and human rights.

But no!!!

The other day, the CM of a southern state (known for its dignified Malgudi norms) went berserk when he was asked to step down and ended up beating his ministerial colleague, abusing his sons, smashing the laptop of his Party Boss and...getting away with it...and kneeling at the feet of his spiritual guru...quite like the penitent King Henry II.

For many kids (like my son) thumb-sucking is a stress buster. I saw the sonogram of a baby in the womb sucking its thumb, published in Readers Digest. My wife tells me that our son of a fun made Herculean efforts to guide his thumb to his mouth, holding his head firm with one hand as early as his 15th day. Later he became an expert and instead of catching his head, he used to catch her sari, and later a hankie expressly designed for him. My niece was holding her left ear and sucking her right thumb.

The trouble with thumb-sucking is that you can't do it in school and they get over it at least in public.

Of all adult male stress busters during our youth in Bengal, smoking was the most popular. There was no stigma attached to it; rather it was a fashion. And it could be done in private and public. At IIT KGP during my early years, 90% of Faculty were smokers, some very heavy (guess who?).

There was this non-smoker, non-violent, Professor KN Of Geology who was rightly called Father of Himalayan Geology by his students. He was a bachelor (another avenue sealed). And he was a Visiting Professor at Caltech too. And everyone was scared of his tongue-lashing (another stress buster). He was practically bald but for a wisp of hair near his forehead. And he used to fiddle with it constantly with his right forefinger. And when the stress was too much he used to pull it so hard that everyone felt that the tuft of hair would be clean pulled out. His naughty students used to say that is how he became bald...it was just calumny.

Since I am always diffident with stalwarts, I used to avoid him in the verandahs...I take the right wall smoking and he the left pulling his hair. But he was a great fan of SDM and so he knew that I was working for my Ph D under him.

One day, barely three weeks after I submitted my Thesis, I was walking to the Post Office to collect my mail, while he was returning from that ritual. Near the Bhatnagar Auditorium, he suddenly swerved to my side, stopped me and pulled his hairs mightily and said sotto voce that he saw my Report from Caltech and it is excellent. I thanked him profusely and lit up a fag and he pulled a couple of more strands and we parted...we never spoke to each other again.

I was always nervous whenever I entered the Lecture Hall whether it was a class of 60 BTech (Ch E) or 15 M Sc students (a wee nervousness before giving lectures, seminars or facing vivas or interviews is a good symptom...it shows you are keen to make it good). So I used to make an elaborate ritual of cleaning the black board with a duster (even when it was cleaned by some earlier lecturers who were secretive), washing my hands, saying "Quiet Please!" like the Wimbledon Umpire, taking roll call and giving a wan smile as if it was not all my fault...

I thought rolling beads was confined to widows of our South Indian Brahmin families. But I learned from Edwin Taylor that it is a standard custom in many Christian denominations. Not only during meditations, but many like Joe carry them in their pockets and roll them, calling them 'worry beads'. And Muslims too.

Biting nails, pulling ears, chewing hankies are routine stuff with our lady classmates...and Pres purses his lips, eh?

Now that he has stopped sucking thumbs in public, my son carries his high-end Nokia and fiddles with its keyboard constantly (it has 3G along with all its scandals). Even in board meetings secretly.

And I?

I blog...like the Devil...

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