Head and Heart ....

When I went to school, we never did a separate course on "communications".  We just learnt the language and its nuances, and picked up the niceties of communication by observation, mostly at home, school and in public spaces.

Very often communication has to do with local culture, and you observe, sift and pickup things that fit in with the ethos of your surroundings and your bringing up.

Then you have folks doing courses in what is  called Corporate Communications (hitherto referred to as CC).

When this is done to get something in return , it is called PR.  

When this is done otherwise, it could be for throwing the company's weight around, being intimidating, or even being euphemistic about some impending unhappy event like layoffs and so on.   Many times these folks in CC, get so carried away, they lose track with ground realities .

An afternoon in the living room. The land line rings. A very posh and cultured voice .  "I am calling from the LIC Zonal office " ..the-voice  "Yes ?" Me. Wondering.  "We need to talk to Mr Darshan Patel" ...the-voice  "I am sorry. You have the wrong number, no one by that name lives here." Me  " How can that be ? I have called this number several times" ...the-voice  " Are you trying to call Jalgaon, because the STD code is sometimes dialled in error with a digit missing and we get the call in Mumbai . Sometimes dialling from a mobile and land line is different." Me trying to help.  " How can it be Mumbai ? I must have made more than a lakh calls to this number ! This must be Jalgaon. Call your manager. I insist " the-voice  " Hello. This is a Mumbai Powai number. I am here sitting in Mumbai and cannot say that this is Jalgaon, much as you might like me to. Me .  "How can u be in Mumbai ? You are lying. Call Mr Darshan Patell. Better , Call the Manager !. the-voice  " Ma'am, this is a residence, and I am the Manager . Ab bolo. "  Just wondering why she made one lakh (100,000) calls to the number ?

This conversation happened yesterday afternoon. And found its way to FB  to the immense amusement of various folks.

I keep getting several calls for Jalgaon. Many times it is someone trying to call a family member , and they are disappointed to get me. Then I explain the STD code to them, and some of them , who have clearly not had the benefit of CC , confide and say how so and so gave them the number, it worked when someone else dialled etc etc, but they are grateful that one is not shouted at.  They even apologize when they manage to reach me again.

Then I get these "plywood" calls. Some guys wish to know when their order is being delivered. I tried telling that I  "don't do plywood or any wood", but they then throw dates and numbers at me. Some hear when I say its me , and bashfully apologize, while others  then ask me for the correct plywood person's number!   By and large, no one abuses you. They are just confused or flummoxed .

Which takes me back to another time , in the pre cell phone days.  Somewhere in 1990.  MTNL reigned supreme, being a telephone linesman was a lucrative profession, you waited years for a  telephone , and at that time, ours was the only telephone in a building of 4 flats,  thanks to my folks transferring their phone to me on retirement .

One of my neighbors was scheduled for surgery,  there was some confusion/problem  and they came down to call the doctor. First the lady dialled. Wrong number. Then I dialled.  (I was supposed to have magic fingers; in reality it was this ability to tirelessly keep dialing till someone answered).  Again wrong number.  This went on for several minutes, till the lady at the other end asked what the problem was.  We told her the problem, the doctors name, his clinic etc,  and that we needed to explain and hear from him before the elderly patient could be moved .

Turns out, that she did know of his clinic, some numbers had changed. But she didn't know his changed number. She asked us to hold on, and sent her son to a neighbor who had the doc's card. It looked like he would take a while, so she asked us for our number!  We offered to call her again. Ten minutes later, we get a call back,not from her, but from the doc !   The patient's folks were relieved, the doc gave the instructions and everything went off fine in the subsequent days.

I don't think the lady was trained in any CC.  She probably realised we were not trained in any CC either.  She just hugely empathized with some worried folks who had an incorrect number given to them.  But she "thought out of the box" as they say,  and got in touch with the doc himself .

Such things may not happen today.  For one thing, doctors have cell phones, and they hand out the contact details to whoever they feel necessary.  Elsewhere, these are the days of trained communicators marinated in jargon. And people with fancy accents telling you to press different numbers for different services. 

These are days, where there are set ways of greeting each other in a corporate ambiance. I've often greeted folks with a namastey, the same instant that they have held their palm out to shake hands. It is fun. :-)

There are even set ways of dressing, as was brought home to me (after a lifetime of working/retiring and dressing in the Indian National Dress ) when folks went shopping for "western formals"  on acquiring their first job.

What is true of verbal communications is also true of non-verbal .  I am aware that corporate types having to work with, say Japan/Taiwan/Korea, or even Middle East folks, get special training in local communication culture. 

This form of communication is often culture centric.   And very often , those who do not have the benefit of special professional training, communicate the best.

Young children  in the house know, that when they take leave of elderly grandfolks , whether actually related or no,  they are expected to touch their feet doing namaskar. This is mostly taught  to them by example , as it was , to me , personally, by my mother.

A couple of years ago we were visiting   a family friend  , an American lady,  aged 92(or is it 94) , while on  trip to the US. This lady's son lived in India for several years, and is conversant with the cultural ethos, and we  had accompanied him to his mother's house. When it was time to leave after a very nice lunch visit, my daughter quickly bent to do namaskar to her.  The lady was literally taken aback  (she actually moved half a step back, wondering if something had fallen down).  In a reflex action of sorts, she placed her hand on the daughter's shoulder and patted her.  The message had probably gone through .  (Her son must have later explained to her the namaskar gesture by the younger to the older folks) .

I guess communication, per se,  whether verbal or nonverbal, originates in the head, but is more enjoyable, with a dollop of heart thrown in.....





    

Smart Solutions from the heart ....

At 75, she looked back at her life with a lot of satisfaction. At a time when norms of behaviour for a new bride in her in-law's house were fairly conservative, she was lucky to travel and set up house with her husband who worked in another town, away from home. Living with people from all over the country who came to work there, this was her introduction to the customs from different communities, that make up he mosaic that is India. Nucleisation of family life sometimes brings a different kind of freedom to a family. There is less minding of overbearing P's and Q's, and more open thinking. But she always remembered her family back home, and ensured that the children spent some fun times at their grandparents' home during the summer holidays.

Today was her little grandson's birthday. The first one after she lost her husband, ten months ago. The little boy's maternal grandparents had traveled over for the event, from out of town, and the house was all hustle and bustle with the boy's mother organizing the eats and games for the evening. The cake was home made , iced according the wishes of the little boy.

She remembered the last birthday, when her husband had distributed the prizes to all the little ones who won in the games, with the birthday boy holding his hand, jumping in excitement as his friends rushed up to get their prize. Late that night, after everyone had left, the little boy had sat with his grandfather, and opened all his fancy presents, both of them admiring the stuff, as the ladies were organizing the left over food and the mess in the living room, that remains after some boisterous 7 years olds have finished with it.

Traditionally , every birthday, an aarti was done for the little boy. He sat on a "paat" , east-west facing always; and every year, the two grandmothers, his mother, any aunts who happened to be there, as well as the household help lady who was like a family member did the aarti. His face would gleam in the light of the oil lamp, as he beamed at the ladies, and they would apply some vermilion and turmeric and rice grains on his forehead.

She sat to the side today, and watched the hustle and bustle of the preparations. She never ever sat idle and her hands were always busy with something like shelling the cardamom, or peeling cucumbers or boiled potatoes , or whatever was the requirement of that time.

The boys mother did the aarti. Then his maternal grandmother , who was nearby , did her turn, and she looked around for the other grandma. She was watching them all, an indulgent look on her face, some old memories bringing an occasional old thought into her eyes, and she smiled at the little boy.

"Aji, come, its your turn !" and he looked expectantly at her.

"I need to just get done with this for your mother", she said, " You all carry on "....

The boy's other younger grandmother understood, but didn't agree with what was happening.

Widowhood was a new factor now, and at 75 years of age, all the old customs came back to the elder grandma.She wouldn't do aarti for the little boy. It wasn't auspicious. Her heart didn't agree at all. But her head was in the grips of age old tradition.

"Tai, come , its your turn now. Its OK, we will do the cardamoms later. " the younger grandma said, trying to act casual. The little boy was not to know why his older grandma was hesitating.

She went to the older lady and spent some moments cajoling her into doing the aarti.

"No, No. Its OK. You carry on. My mind is not in it." she said. The older lady , acutely aware of her widowhood, was trying to exclude herself, thinking her participation would be unlucky.

Her daughter-in-law went over. She and her mother insisted that the older grandma participate.

"You know, Aji has to do aarti for her grandson. Its your blessing, and see, he is waiting. How can the birthday be properly celebrated otherwise ?" . And saying so, the younger grandma held the hand of the elder one, and escorted her to where the little boy sat.

Aji looked very gratefully at the ladies, her face a fleeting mixture of sorrow and joy, and slowly took charge of the aarti plate , and shielded the lamp with one hand. She bent down to apply vermilion and turmeric and rice to the little boy, and did the aarti.

The little fellow had a smile on his face, eyes twinkling, and he seemed to be holding something half hidden in the folds of his shirt, which was not tucked in yet. Sometime during the time that the ladies were busy convincing the elder grandma, that no taboo or tradition, irrespective of marital status, could stop a grandma from doing aarti to her grandson, he had quietly got up, grabbed his grandpa's photo from the side table, and was clutching it tight in his hands. The family was complete ......

She straightened up from the aarti, passed the paraphernalia to her daughter-in-law, so the lamp could be kept in front of the Gods, and looked at the younger grandma who was standing beside her. They both had tears flooding their eyes. They had no words, and none were needed. They suddenly decided there was some stuff that needed their attention in the kitchen /balcony etc and slowly made their way there.

For the little boy, something had changed. He was a big boy now. He knew that God had taken away his grandpa almost a year ago. He suspected that his grandma was missing him on this day. So he did the obvious. Grandpa watched , as grandma did the aarti, and the little boy was pleased.

His grandpa would be watching the entire birthday, from the frame on the side table .

The little boy's mother thought she noticed an extra smile playing on face in the photograph.

The two grandmas were at peace in their minds.

They couldnt get over the amazing solution offered by their little grandson. ....

This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with imlee.com

The heart has its reasons....

This has been a season for thinking about hearts.

No , not as in Valentine,s, or playing cards, or proclamations of "cross my heart", and so on.....

But thinking of something, that starts off, beating in a foetus, while in "bonded" labor inside some one's uterus,  only to attain freedom from the bond, roughly 280 days later, under some fairly tough labor...

And then continues to beat, year after year, moment after moment, through childhood, puberty, even childbearing, middle age, old age, and so on... through  good and bad days, regardless of all kinds of pressure put on it, externally or internally.   

It gets nothing out of all that beating, unless it is the ability to beat more.

And so one marvels, at the philosophy of work or living, that is followed by the heart, and finds, that it is the finest exponent of Nishkaam Karma,  which is enunciated in the Bhagwad Gita, one of our oldest Hindu scriptures, which is actually a treatise on living.  Your best mode of worship of God, is to perform your work, honestly, to your absolute best, and more importantly, without worrying at all about the reward or the fruit of that labor.

The heart continues to ceaselessly do its work, independently of any other organ's behaviour in your body, with the possible exception of the brain,  which is really the ON/OFF switch for the whole body.

It's job is to receive dirty blood, send it off to the lungs to be purified, receive the purified blood, and then pump it into the big Aorta pipe, on its way to the different body organs, carrying nutrition, medications, and other markers of health.

Think of how willful the other organs behave.

The liver, that lies below the ribs and to the right,  spends its entire life tolerating and handling all the fat and carbs you imbibe under the excuse of celebrations and "loving it ".  Like a car whose engine is flogged without limits, the liver too has problems, but in its own selfish way, doesn't let on till it is 80% messed up.  When your blood shows up worrisome liver function values, it is almost 80% gone.

Your stomach, the recipient of all kinds of junk you eat.  It gets used to pouring in all kinds of body acids to digest your food. Then when occasionally you reduce your food intake, it finds it difficult to change the acid habit, and you then have left over acid in your stomach.  You complain of pain and acidity. It is not as if the amount of acid is fixed, but for some reason and for some folks, the digestion process bears a grudge against your previous excesses.

Your intestines. All 22 feet of them.  The whole idea is to have a quiet absorption/assimilation /exchange process going on while the digested  food moves about on this long road, so that what remains can be summarily chucked out.  But sometimes, the entire length of the intestine can get into a tangle, and cause you pain. Sometimes,  there are blocks in the path caused by stenosis;  consequent to some healing procedure, scar tissue forms, but clogs the path, simply blocking food from passing through nicely.  The intestines don't care what happens to the connected organs. They just do what they feel...

Think about your bones. All that milk you drank, and exercises that you did, as a child, followed by fitness concerns as a young adult.  Hit yourself accidentally with a tennis racket while playing, and you end up with a wrist fracture.  Take a irresponsible jump somewhere, and get an ankle fracture. I know of folks with a desk based sedentary lifestyle, who bent down to pick up a paper,  mistakenly thrown in the  waste basket, and sustained a rib fracture.  With all the fuss over bones in childhood and later, you reach menopause, and the same bones, in a wild independent streak, go haywire and start thinning. Without any concern for anything else around them. Sometimes, as a malicious  afterthought, some bones even develop extensions in weird places, and get called sesamoid bones. One such has often  kept India's star cricketer out of the game on occasion, by causing discomfort and pain.   


Think of the huge network of blood flow; arteries and veins. Thanks to folks who think they are being terribly stylish and smoking ,  these pipes simply remain inert watchers, as the walls are latched on to, by deposits which are byproducts of bad habits. Like Mumbai's subterranean water pipes, this network too suffers from  fatty junk sticking to its sides. The walls of these arteries and veins can do nothing, but look on fearfully as obstructions develop.

And then you think of the heart.

Relentlessly pumping the blood around. Sometimes putting in continuous hard work, which makes you a blood pressure patient.  The heart is often in cahoots with the brain; like, when  old age happens, and  weakness doesn't allow blood to reach everywhere in the body. The brain then instructs it to ration the blood supply, go to all the important places like the kidneys, stomach ,lungs, liver, brain etc, and reduces the supply to the limbs, ears, eyes etc; and you become bedridden, see and hear weakly.

Sometimes, the heart tries really hard to pump, and meets a tough opponent in some junk, blocking an artery totally.   Sometimes it is an artery that supplies the blood to the heart itself, as an energizer of the heart.  That's BIG trouble.

Even then , the heart doesn't give up. It sends out the word. An alarm. Your arms radiate pain. Your chest feels tight. There is a burning sensation in the breastbone. A sudden loss of energy.  And you rush. To the hospital. Sirens blaring, oxygen pouring into your nose , a small medicine under your tongue.

You are taken to a very sophisticated lab, where you watch, as some expert doctor, a cardiologist,  inserts a very very small diameter wire into an  artery (femoral)  in the groin, and guides it all over the place so that it reaches the blocked artery.  You yourself are able to watch it all on a huge screen. I know of a teacher by profession who even asked the doctors questions ....

Like Google maps, the doctors need to have the entire body artery / vein blood flow  map in their heads.  When to go straight up, when to do a U-turn, when to take a right, a left, and when to wait a second;  it takes amazing expertise.  (Unlike our Mumbai roads where we merrily destroy other roads in the process of repairing a given road.)

The specialists  scrape, and suck out the junk from the arteries,  shoring up the walls with some stent reinforcements. There are so many people there, helping out, reassuring your heart, to keep beating as well as it can,  and the little throbbing organ that has been doing so relentlessly, understands, tries its best, and at the end of a tremendous effort by some very clever folks, suddenly finds that blood can flow through its surface easily again.  The trauma and memories are not easy to erase, it isn't easy to live with repaired parts, but it tries.

Because its Bhagwad Gita philosophy for living says, it must perform its work to the best of its ability.  Nishkaam Karma.  Always. 

Without worrying about any rewards. Either from wilful types like the lungs, or kidneys, or stomach, or limbs, or intestines, or from the brain, which had been sensing what had been happening.   Presumably the person who undergoes this experience learns from this. 

The heart doesn't relax and sit back because the person has learnt a lesson; in fact it is so busy, pumping away blood, with a newly granted life, that it is now in its own life rhythm , doing what it knows best.  

  In the real world, such people are difficult to find. If you see a person who lives the philosophy of Nishkaam Karma, we think he is putting on an act.  Everyone has an secret agenda, and no one is ready to trust anyone.

If we only paid attention to our bodies, and the messages they convey .....