Corporate Hospital

I came across this term in the day's newspaper.

Context: An inspector was run down by drunken youngsters; poor guy hit the median and hurt his head. They rushed him to a Government Hospital close by, but had to go 'elsewhere' because the Scan machine wasn’t working.

That elsewhere was refered to as a Corporate Hospital...

I wonder if this clearly distinguishes these hospitals as money-making machines… What next?

Business Hospital?

Capitalists Hospital?

Hhmmm…

One Cloud and its silver lining…

That’s how I would see my nieces from now on, at least for a while.

This is about 2 brats :)

Esha – all of 10 years, bookworm, lazy goon, affectionate sweetheart of a kid. Is a voracious reader, finished all the Harry Potter books. Is almost always reading 4 books at once - much to her father’s pride.

Pavani – “6 years ki ho gayi hoon” BIG girl, cant-sit-still, upto pranks all the time, very loving, loyal fiery defender of weaklings. Is now a part of an all-boys group cause she finds the gals too silly. :) Is amazing with art and craft, has an ear for music and has already composed a tune on her Casio Keyboard.

Now these brats hardly are what you can call friends. They fight, bicker, call each other interesting names, and at each other’s throat almost all the time :) they can even call each other the most mean cartoon character’s name they can think of. Given the state of affairs, my sister would be kind of happy with a superficial truce even for 10 minutes. Wonder how often she gets happy. :D

And yet..

They defend each other when my sister takes one of them to task. The younger one can actually do harm to anyone who dare scold her didi.

They think of each other when they buy something for themselves – on a recent visit to the Parle factory, Esha brought back a packet of biscuits ONLY for her younger sister.

Esha makes sure Pavani wakes up at their bus stop on the way back from school.

And to Esha, Pavani is the best cloud in a school play.

This happened a couple of days ago. In a school play Pavani was one of the ‘supporting’ clouds and had a small dialog. Apparently all the other ‘clouds’ were either too soft-spoken, stiff with stage fright, or plain not impressive enough in our elder sisters’ eyes.

Back at home in the evening, my sister asked the brats how the play went. The younger one launched into the ‘story’ while her sister only had this to say, “Pavani sabse acchi Cloud thi. Bus uski hi awaz saaf and accha sunayi diya”.

The younger one couldn’t stop beaming and bask in her sister’s praise!

As for my sister, I think the poor woman lives in hope!

Only good things happen - Contd...

Ah,

I plain forgot, but to put you out of the suspense :) I found the ticket intact along with:

• 972 INR - when I had thought it would be around 700 INR.
• 2 combs - dont ask how/why 2.
• All cards intact, though a lil jumbled from the search.
• The car's music console in its case - we hadnt even missed it till this point.

I am ever so grateful that there wasn't anything more silly in that pocket!

Friendship...

Friendship should not be like the morning shadow which decreases in size as time goes on.

It should be like afternoon shadow, it should increase with time.

Only good things happen!

This is a phrase I borrowed from a friend because something good really happened when I expected the worst. He, to be honest, wasn’t refering to something all that drastic, but this sentence stuck :) like glue.

Imagine a Sunday late evening. You’ve just had a long day, first visiting friends for breakfast, shopping and lunch out. Hey! There are times when shopping is work! At least I would like to think (read justify) it. I make this ‘to do’ list of the things to shop and tick them off as I buy the stuff. So, anyways, coming back to this Sunday, the highlight of the day was the Madhubani painting I bought.

And then some clothes for your sister, bro-in-law, and the nieces. It’s not been a very kind day; the sun has been shining (shame on it for forgetting it is winter) and beating down your back and you’ve been baked to a nice brown.

And then you’ve walked a lot. You’ve walked some more and shopped a little more. You’ve been piling the car truck with bags, but there’s always space for more. Its now past 9 and you are just dying to get home and off your feet, have dinner, some tea and off to la la land. Right? Sure, only the there was a little drama that had to be enacted.

We get home and just about start dinner when I realise that I had to confirm my flight early next morning. Fetch the handbag – now, this is one of those HUGE ones that can hold a lot of stuff, has 4 pockets in all. Hunt for billfold, not in pocket 1, 2,3..!

Serious rummaging now.. pocket 4 isn’t big enough for the billfold! DG goes pale!

Rummage through shopping bags.. come up with clothes and some more clothes. No billfold? Nope!

Rummage again through all pockets of monster bag, wonder if the darn thing gobbled up my billfold. Sister and brother-in-law wondering if I am pulling a fast one!

Take mental stock of stuff in it. License, debit card, credit card (old dead one, but its in there) all the shopping credit cards (from Crossword, Westside, et al), and the flight ticket! Hit the panic button!

Try deep breathing… in out, in out… frantic recall of events: stop 1: I didn’t take out my wallet, stop 2: we didn’t buy anything, stop 3, sister had paid, stop 4: I paid for the car park! Deep breathing, in out, in out!

Wondering about what should be done – cancel debit card, figure how to smuggle into aircraft with a ticket, duplicate license.. everybody is planning different things. In the meantime, I continue to hopefully rummage my handbag like some genie would have put my wallet back there by magic!

Since the parking lot was the last place I remembered opening my bag, off we go back to the car park and start looking where we’d parked the car. We’d just reached and a security guard walks up to ask if we were looking for some stuff. We said yes, and he says “its with my manager”!!!

We let out these thrilled screams and hugged each other, smiles all round! You’d have though Tendulkar reached yet another landmark in his cricketing career..

Here is how this happened, the upturned bag was emptied in the parking lot when i got out... and all the contents in one pocket (including some embarrasing stuff) fell out and these guys - decent scrupulous ones at that, had it all safe and waiting for us! One of those times when my faith in human beings is reaffirmed!

Good things happen? Ya, sure, they do!