Hospital Grub

I am starting this week’s blog with a quiz.

What do you think the following pictures are? If you thought that the first was the foyer of the Ritz Carleton in Munich you would be wrong. If you thought that the second was filet de saumon frais en papillote served in Maxim’s of Paris, you would be wrong.

In fact the first picture is the foyer of the Benjamin Russell hospital for Children in Birmingham, Alabama. When you get in through the main door, it is the start of the curvy journey with the paths leading to the nursing stations and help desks.

The second picture is one of the items on the menu offered to patients at the Henry Ford West Bloomfield hospital in Michigan. Henry’s, the caterer, offers such good food in a very pleasant atmosphere that people who have no reason to be in the hospital come for a meal.

Jokes about hospital food are passé and yet I could not help post a picture of a typical dish that you might get (see below) if you are incarcerated in one of the ordinary body shops.

But it isn’t just that the food looks like something that the inmates at Attica might get served on a typical day.  It turns out that the food is also quite bad for you – it might make you sicker than the reason you landed up in the hospital in the first place!  A 2012 CBC news story stated that most hospitals don’t have the right nutritional balance in their menu plans, and that recovering patients need more protein and dense calories to heal.  Another major issue for hospitals is that their purse strings don’t allow them to create culinary delights for their patients.  The article states that “Most hospitals are cash-strapped and see treating patients, rather than feeding them, as a priority. Hospitals devote about one per cent of their total budget to food, which breaks down to an average of $8 per patient a day.”  $8 dollars per day?  Well, I could at least go and get a burger and fries from McDonalds for that much money, which, unbelievably, would likely be better for me!

My solution is that we let families bring the food they want to the hospital for their ailing member.  People do it on the sly anyway, all the time.  We Indians have the perfect technology for such an idea.  It is called a tiffin box, and it allows you to transport multiple hot dishes in separate containers at the same time.  Some of you may recall seeing a picture of it in my book, The Vivid Air (still on sale, by the way at Amazon.com in case you haven’t picked it up yet).

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The Macarthur fellowships awarded every year are often referred to as ‘genius grants’ because according to its website they “connote a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess”. This year twenty four people got the award of $625,000, and it includes Canadian astrophysicist Sara Seager.  But the most exciting recipient is 41 year old Vijay Iyer, a new York based Jazz pianist, composer, band leader and producer.

Iyer is the son of immigrants from Tamil Nadu, one of the southern states in India. He started playing the piano when he was three years old and had 15 years of classical training. All the while he was also pursuing a degree in physics which he got from Yale when he was 20 years old. He went on to finish his doctorate in an interdisciplinary program in technology and the arts, focusing on music cognition.

Iyer is arguably the best jazz interpreter of the times. He was voted the “Jazz Musician of the Year” in 2010.

He will take up a teaching position in Harvard next year.

If you are interested in a robust jazz interpretation go to the site below. It is called Galang (trio riot version). It is a riot!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOBhrnOzwXw

Zero

(I have always been fascinated by the concept of numbers and how they influence and identify language. I believe the romance started after reading a book, the exact title of which I forget. From what I recall it was “Language, Numbers and the Mind” or something like that. Over the coming months I intend to indulge in a flight of fancy about the numbers 0 to 10.)

 

No matter what you call it: goose egg, duck (as in cricket), love (as in tennis) Ciphra (Latin), Babu (Hausa), Nula(Czech), Sifr (Pushto), Meithen(Greek), Noll (Swedish), Shunya (Sanskrit) or Zero , it means the same thing—nada,zilch, zip,naught. Nothing.

You put a cardinal number after it, zero spurns it with the hauteur of a dowager. But you put it behind and it is an entirely different matter. It gains importance and strength as though through some osmotic process.  More zeros mean more power, which increases exponentially. A lowly number one with just five zeroes after it takes on an entirely different character with the addition of one more shunya, babu, ciphra or whatever.

For some people adding another zero is not all that difficult. There is a Spanish guy called Nadal, who instead of bull fighting plays with a ball, which he hits with a paddle called a racket. This is the only thing he does. Two weeks ago he spent seven days hitting the ball and earned over 3 million dollars. That is 3 followed by 6 zeros. His total worth is reported to be 80 million. You take one zero out, and he instantly becomes poorer. Take out six more and he becomes destitute.  Such is the power of zero!

Computer programmers are virtually impotent without zero. Computers are full of zillions of numbers—lots and lots of ones and zeros. When you type the letter ”A”, the computer representation is 0100001. I don’t understand this.  I wonder how many zeros and ones are required to represent this blog!

Guys who have scant respect for zero are the astronomers. For them a few dozen zeros more or less make no difference. They deal with astronomical figures (the pun was not intended). For instance they claim that the Andromeda Galaxy is 23,000,000,000,000,000,000 km away. Give or take a few zeros!  Since it is humanly impossible to deal with so many zeros in common parlance, the astrologers, to make our life easier, say that the same Galaxy is 2.3 million light years away. And a light year is the distance light can travel in one year. And light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 km each second. Just wondering how long it will take before I get to see the galaxy without the aid of a giant telescope.

Of all the mathematical symbols the zero is the most elegant and sensual. The triangle has sharp points, and the square is, well, square.  The zero represents the perfect circle.  (I know, I know, people are known to make them oval shaped. Sacrilege, if you ask me). It has a cosmic beauty. Consider the shape of a full moon or a setting sun. It is the epitome of perfection. Like eternity, it has no beginning, no end.

One would think that with all the glamor surrounding it, all people would like it. Not the cricketer. Nothing scares the batsman more than scoring zero and leaving the field in ignominy. In technical lingo it is called a ‘duck’. Many batsmen who had scored a duck in both innings are known to have contemplated suicide. While on the theme of sports, in tennis the zero score is called ‘love’. In other words at the beginning of the match, the umpire calls “love all”, which suggestion is promptly dismissed, especially when players like Djokovich and Nadal turn the tennis court into an arena reminiscent  of the glory days of Caligula and his gladiators. They fight until ‘death do us part’. “Love” is soon forgotten. Going for the jugular becomes the call of the day.

It is irritating to see that people use the term for less than noble purposes. For instance, I don’t like the word ‘Zero tolerance’. ‘No tolerance’ would have been sufficient. ‘Absolutely no tolerance’ has even more potency.  It is hilarious that some sour grammarian, probably suffering from dyspepsia,  coined the term ‘Zero article’ to refer to the absence of a definite article (a, an, the) before a noun.  

And the ultimate obscenity?  Zero balancing! I could have accepted it, with reluctance, if it had anything to do with accounting. No. It is “a manual therapy in which the practitioner applies finger pressure or traction to tense tissue to enable relaxation and reorganization. It has been described as “a bodywork modality that claims to balance energy and structure within the body”. Really??!!

In an article for Quack watch, entitled “Questionable Organizations: An Overview”, Stephen Barrett lists Zero Balancing Association as an organization which he views with “considerable distrust”.

There are many other aberrations. Space limitations do not permit me to elaborate on them all. But I have to mention Absolute zero! What balderdash! Zero IS absolute, my physicist friend!  You don’t say ‘sweet sugar’, do you?

To conclude.

Ideally, I should have dealt with the origin of the concept of zero. But I did not want to aggravate the people of Mesopotamia (parts of present day Turkey, Iran, Kuwait and Iran) India and the Mayans (if there are still any left) who all claim to have invented  the concept of  zero at some time or the other in ancient history.

A Question of Tort

In Oklahoma, a few days ago, an Australian man attending one of the colleges on a baseball scholarship was shot and killed by three teenagers. One of them said, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.” Another said that he did it for the fun of it.

On the 26^th of February, in Florida, a big, beefy 28 year old man called George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old African American high school student, who did not have any weapon on him. The reason was self-defence.

In April 2013, two brothers Tamerlan and Dhhokhar Tsarnaev  (named after historical heroes Tamurlane and Sohrab) turned the Boston Marathon finish line into a war zone. Tamerlan died; the other is in custody.

In July, Cleveland’s Arial Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts related to kidnapping, imprisonment and rape of three women. (He would hang himself in prison later.)

In July, again, a policeman in Toronto shot and killed a lone passenger called Sammy Yatin in a street car. Yatin had a knife in his hand, he had asked the passengers to evacuate and was standing at the door of the street car. He was no threat to anyone except, perhaps, himself. But the policeman, James Forcillo, thought otherwise and shot him. Nine times!!

Killed him.

I am not trying to catalogue heinous crimes that have been perpetrated recently or in the past. We all know that every day somewhere or the other loathsome incidents happen. In all these cases lawyers are appointed or hired to defend the lowlife that perpetrated the crimes. The lawyers, obviously, defend the criminals and try to get them acquitted.  For this, various defences are put forward: abusive parents, alcoholic parents, drug addicted parents, or even the society that did not take care of the disturbed individual. “Fell through the cracks” is the popular excuse. The most hilarious defence is temporary insanity. “Your honor, my client killed three people brutally, but he did not know what he was doing, and so I ask for the clemency of the court”. The criminal is sometimes set free only to perpetrate the crime again.

The question is:  If the lawyer abhors crimes against humanity and have a conscience why do they defend people such as Arial Castro or Tsarnaev or Forcillo? A few days ago when a Delhi court gave the death sentence to the four vicious rapists who murdered a 23 year old physiotherapy student, the lawyer who defended them was quite upset!  He was confronted by an army of journalists and he decided to capitalize on his moment in the sun and said passionately, “This is not a victory of truth. It is a defeat of justice.”

Would he have been so vocal if the victim was one of his own?

So when I saw a headline in New York Times (July 25, 2013) What motivates a lawyer to defend a Tsarnaev, a Castro or a Zimmerman?, I was quite interested. What indeed?

The author was one Abbe Smith who is a professor of law and the director of the Criminal Defence & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic at Georgetown University and co-editor of the forthcoming “How Can You Represent Those People?”

Smith says, “All criminal defence lawyers are asked this: it’s such a part of the criminal defence experience that it’s simply known as “the question”. Most of us have a repertoire of stock replies about how the system can’t work without good lawyers on both sides, or the harshness of punishment or the excessive number of people—especially minorities—locked up in this country. Capital defenders such as Tsarnaev lawyer Judy Clarke tend to cite their opposition to the death penalty…..

But our motivations are usually personal and sometimes difficult to articulate……. Defence lawyers try to find humanity in the people we represent, no matter what they may have done. We resist the phrase “those people” because it suggests too clear a line between us and them… ….Criminal lawyers are sometimes accused of investing all our sympathy in our clients and having none for victims. But we are human beings; we have feelings. ………”

Needless to say I was disappointed. Whatever the logic be, I cannot understand how anyone can defend a Tsarenev or Forcillo,or Castro. Whatever prompted the criminals to do what they did, it was premeditated. It is too simple to dismiss them as damaged, deprived or depraved. They have ruined families by their abhorrent behaviour.

Smith concludes her article by contending that criminal lawyers are motivated by the knowledge that none of us would want to be defined by the very worst thing we ever did. We represent “those people” because we can always find aspects of them that represent us”

Really??!!

I can categorically say that there is no ‘aspect’ of Castro or Tsarnaev that represents me.

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You may recall that I said I would occasionally share a cartoon from “101 Things”.  I hope you like this…

Tattoos

I think I will get a tattoo done somewhere on my body. I would also have liked to have my hair spiked– three spikes actually– and color it red, but I don’t have much hair left. Anyway, you must be wondering why this sudden desire to get a tattoo. Well, the simple reason is, I want to make a statement—a statement of protest, as it were.  All those who display tattoos, bizarre body piercing etc. are making a statement. I know this from many reliable sources of both sexes and varying ages.

I believe I was 8 years old when I first heard the word “tattoo”. An uncle of mine offered to take me and a few cousins to what was called a Torchlight Tattoo. It turned out to be a military exercise with marching bands, equestrian drills and such. It was much later that I learnt that the practice of deliberately mutilating the body with designs is also called a tattoo.

I am inspired to go for it because nine out of ten Torontonians sport some kind a tattoo or have their bodies pierced. The piercings are mostly on various parts of the face but sometimes on climes further south.  They are all, as I said, making a statement. The profundity of the statement dictates how detailed or bizarre these mutilations would be. Say you want to do something stronger than giving someone the finger (to the mayor for example).  You could opt for sticking out a tongue full of studs.

To be an effective statement- maker (hereafter called SM), one has to choose the accoutrements properly. Jeans and T shirts are the norm. But the jeans should be at least four sizes too large. It lends respectability if you have a very thick chain hooked to the waist loops and disappearing into the pocket. However, should you choose to wear jeans that fit, it is essential that the garment is torn at the knees. The larger the holes, the better.  The T-shirts usually will have strange silk screen designs. Footwear is important. The hippest SM’s wear dirty sneakers—each a different color.

So why would I get the urge to make statements at this stage of my life? What caused these stirrings to manifest now? I wasn’t sure. So I checked with my friend Dr Simon Cox who after retirement has taken to raising eagles in Ladysmith, British Columbia. He listened to me carefully. He was quite concerned and advised that I should see a psychiatrist. Pronto. So I did.

So I gingerly walked into the consulting room of the shrink. Soothing sitar music was being piped in. The doctor walked in after a few minutes. “Is this music for my benefit?” I asked. This was supposed to be humorous. But he did not laugh. He had a grave mien. “What can I do for you Prof. Neighyaar”, he asked dryly. I told him.

After three sessions he diagnosed my condition. It is called ODD—Opposition Defiant Disorder. It appears that I had a troubled childhood, under very authoritarian parents who did not give me whatever I wanted and sadistic teachers who revelled in corporal punishments. In sum, generally, well, troubled. This called for serious introspection. And it dawned on me that my parents were, indeed, quite strict. They were not amenable to listening to some of my reasonable demands. For instance, I wanted to wear pants when I was in Middle school. All others were wearing pants. “You are too short; you would look silly”, said my mother. I wanted a bike. “You are too small; no one has invented a bike for children of your size.  Many kids had lunch brought to them by dubbawalas (servants who do this as a profession); I had to carry my lunch in what was called a tiffin box.

So, generally a troubled childhood.

Obviously I have been suppressing the desire to protest for over seven decades, it HAD to manifest somehow, sometime. Well, the time has arrived to purge my system of unwanted sentiments.

I don’t think I will be ready until next year. It took a lot of thinking before I could decide on how I would prepare myself to be a good SM. Where exactly to place my tattoo was a major issue because there is not enough square footage on my chest for an elaborate design. So I decided on copying a Mondrian work (see below).

On the back, I thought I will have a bear’s head, with fangs bared.  For facial piercings I had to seek help. Thankfully I came across a reference book called “Dictionary of Facial Piercings” http://bodyjewelryblog.com/2011/08/01/whats-that-called-dictionary-of-facial-piercings/.  For my ears, I have decided to follow an old Indian tradition—large holes in the earlobes, filled with studs.

It is my intention to stick my tongue out to the Prime Minister when I see him next. That would be my ultimate protest. I will be ready for it.  I will be in costume. I will be in character.  My ultimate Stanislavsky moment!!! And when I get near him, I will stick my tongue out.  I reckon I might be arrested, but I would have made my statement. It is a non-verbal expression of, “Mr. Harper, the Government sucks. The Establishment sucks”.