A PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT

 

 Christmas 2020 finished a few days ago. Despite lockdown due to increasing Covid19 cases we managed to give gifts to near and dear ones and got some too, thanks to the efficiency of online stores and the postal services.  

While shaving this morning I was reminded of a gift Bibha gave me a decade ago. Over the years I have received many gifts on birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries, parting days, meeting days and on several unbranded days.  How come I was reminded of this one gift from years ago? The reason was simple, it was that very electric shaver I was using.

When I unwrapped it, I was surprised and delighted. A good gift must elicit these two emotions.

Though I would have liked to try one I would not have bought it for myself. Somehow, I had the notion that manual safety razors do a better job than electric ones. In essence it was just a status quo bias on my part. It is for the very same reason that many people including me continued driving a manual car for a long time. It was just a chance that in 1985 I booked a car in Florida on my holidays and the hire company gave an automatic car. After a few cautious practice drives in the huge Hotel’s carpark, I took it out on the roads. I found it much easier to drive and safer on the road as well. Back from holiday, we exchanged our manual car with an automatic one. I have not driven a manual car since then.

I wished to challenge my notion about the electric razors too but it did not make sense to spend so much money just to try it. As you know one cannot return a razor after using it even once^¤! So, if it were not as good or better than a manual razor, it would be a waste of money spent. This is a purely utilitarian view. I do hold this view when I am buying for myself but certainly not when buying a gift. In my opinion a good gift is one that the recipient would not usually buy for him/herself and it may be useful but certainly not in a utilitarian way. this is what produces surprise and delight.

I used the shaver that very morning on the Christmas day, 2010.  it was a smooth shave as good as the razor and it did the job in less than half the time. I did not have to even wet my hand or to mess with soapy lather. Since then, I have used it every day, it has been a trouble free and efficient companion. I wish I had it when I was working, it would have given me a few more precious minutes to sleep! It is not just a shaver but also a prolific saver. It had saved a lot of time, money and blood^¤¤ too in the last 10 yrs. And is still going strong.

You see it did turn out to be a utilitarian gift in the end, but I did not have to pay for the risk! That made it a perfect gift

 

¤ Health and safety regulations

¤¤  bleeding from nicks and cuts

WHY DO I LOVE AUTUMN?

 Sing a song of seasons!

 Something bright in all!

  Flowers in the summer,

                                         Fires in the fall!"            Robert Louis Stevenson

You can smell the change. The summer is over. The ambient temperature gradually slipping down, the days getting smaller. The most noticeable is the changing colour of the leaves all around you. The different shades of green are miraculously turning into brighter shades of yellow and red as if the trees and shrubs are trying to compensate for the decreasing brightness and coldness of the sun. The air is filled with aromas of the ripening fruits. Pure magic.

But there is another reason I welcome autumn. The abundance of flowers, buzzing of bees &, and long hours of sunlight that makes summer so delightful, gradually becomes monotonous. I do become restless and yearn for a change. And change whether we like it or not, is inevitable. If there is no change, there will be no “before” and “after”. Simply it will mean that time has stopped. Time measures change and is measured by change (From Aristotle’s Physics Book IV, part 10-13, 350 B.C.E.) Stopping time is not a technological problem, it is a physical impossibility for our model of universe. Everything in the universe including us has evolved in this everchanging environ and hence it is in our very core to love change and hate status quo.

I like autumn also as a matter of principle. I detest monopolies of any kind. Autumn

breaks the monopoly of Green (Chlorophyll) by giving the others like Yellow (Xanthophylls), Orange (Carotenoids) and Red (Anthocyanins) a leg up. Even the swaths of green lawns get covered by the fallen yellow, red, and brown leaves.

What is there not to adore Autumn

                       "The trees are in their autumn beauty 

                        The woodland paths are dry,

                        Under the October twilight the water

                        Mirrors a still sky.”                                   William Butler Yeats

COVID19: EARLY POST LOCKDOWN EXPERIENCE

 

I fully knew it was irrational and silly but still I felt awfully uneasy with a sense of impending menace.  I and Bibha were in a huge out of town supermarket.

After about 4 months the lockdown and shielding triggered by Covid19 was lifted a few day ago. All this time we have stayed in the house or in our small garden. We did not visit anyone and had no visitors. We ordered our day to day essentials online and got delivered once a week. Our young neighbours always inquired if we needed anything and got for us fresh milk, fruit and greens whenever they went to the shops.

We did go out for walks in our compound along the river. We went during quieter periods of the day and always maintained a substantive distance if anyone passed by. Deliberately changing your course to avoid the person or persons coming your way by such a distance would have seemed unfriendly at best and racist at worst in normal times. But it was certainly not normal times! One had to force one’s brain to see the fellow humans as walking reservoirs of corona virus.  It felt ridiculous but we did it. Since middle of June the lockdown has been very gradually eased. As the infection in the community continued decreasing, on August the 1st the shielding finally stopped. Hooray!

A few days later we planned to venture out to the supermarket, masked and gloved.  We decided that if we see a big queue outside the shop we will not go in, nevertheless it would be a good drive!

The drive was good, not a lot of traffic but enough to avoid a deserted appearance. The supermarket had a big car park. It had blocked alternate slots so as to keep the cars about 2 meters apart. Near the entrance door there was a small queue, 4 or 5 people long, everyone maintaining social distance by standing on the lines marked on the floor.

A uniformed man at the door ushered us in and indicated towards a table in the foyer.  There were a few big bottles of hand sanitizer gel on the table. We used the gel and entered in the store after picking a shopping basket. I was going to use the sanitizer on the handle of the basket but the steward there said that they were already cleaned.

Inside the shop the isles looked wider but it was an illusion because there were less people. We had planned only to buy a few things.  I went to get the coffee jar and Bibha went to buy some fresh fruits. The customers mostly kept distance but occasionally did come too near. I got a big jar of the coffee which we needed and some nice chocolate biscuits which we did not.

I went to the fresh fruits and vegetable section to get Bibha but she was not there. She must have gone to see something else. I was going to phone her but as usual, I had forgotten my mobile at home. I started walking slowly in the main isle hoping to see her or be seen by her. Now that I was not busy, I looked at the people. All during the lockdown we have only seen one or two people at a time but here there were many. In the bakery section they were only a few inches apart almost touching each other. Smell of fresh bread had probably attracted too many people at the same time reflexly.

After 4 months of isolation to avoid getting Covid, why was I here among all these people for just some nonessential grocery? Just because the government decided to end lockdown on this date, it did not really mean that the threat was over. What if the person who just passed me had asymptomatic disease? What if someone might have just sneezed or coughed a few seconds before I came here? All these thoughts quickly passed through my mind. I just froze. What was I doing here?

I saw Bibha coming towards me and we went quickly to the tills, paid and came out. At the exit door we used the sanitizer gel again and almost ran to the safety of the car. Once inside the car I was better and felt a bit silly at my reaction a few moments ago.

During the last 4 months of isolation we got in the habit of having total control of the space around us. When I saw other people around me in that confined space that feeling of control suddenly shattered. This was what caused the momentary panic in the supermarket aisle.

Since then I have been to shopping centre and supermarkets a few times with total ease, of course with mask and social distancing. We have met our children and grandchildren, some friends and some neighbours too.

Things are returning to near normal or should I say new normal.  

The threat of the rise in Covid19 cases and further Lockdowns still remains but with proper precautions and a sense of collective responsibility we might, just might avoid it. I wish and HOPE!

 

 

FURLOUGH: A CHAMELEON OR A WEASEL

  COVID19 came into our everyday lexicon in February, 2020. Though the viral disease that is creating serious havoc all over the world was first notified in December 2019 in China, the name was only given on 11^th February 2020 by WHO. It is simply an abbreviation for “Corona Virus Disease 2019”. Was it to avoid China or Chinese being prefixed to the disease as many had already started to call it, like Spanish flu?

  Even more intriguing is another word that has suddenly risen to fame is Furlough. What the celebrities will not give to have such a visibility in such a short span. The UK Chancellor announced on 20^th of March “Employers will be able to contact HMRC for a grant to cover most of the wages of people who are not working but are furloughed and kept on payroll, rather than being laid off.....” 

After this all the news channels started using this word ad nauseum. I got the contextual meaning of the word but I was puzzled because it sounded like “Furlong”, a unit of length. Surely it could not be that.

For the next news bulletin I put the “subtitles” on, to get the spelling. It was spelt “furlough” not “furlong”. I had never come across this word.  Looked it up on the net, where else?  It originates from Dutch verlof meaning permission ( ver- for,  lof –permission).

  In UK it was used in past in Armed Forces to describe persons who were given permission to go on leave and was also used for the Christian missionaries who returned back home on leave from their postings abroad. 

  Apparently in USA it is a common word in regular use, almost as a posh synonym to laying off employees for an undefined period or forever, with or without any wage!

 The chancellor in UK  used “furlough” to imply that the workers are not laid off but they still remain in job and will receive a salary. If employers could not pay their salary due to loss of income from lockdown, the govt will pay a substantial part of it till the lockdown is relaxed or lifted. 

  So for now the furloughed are technically in job and can meet their day to day essential expenditure. It has been a lifeline for many citizens. It has prevented much worry and misery. It did make the people more compliant to lockdown rules.

    Whether all the workers will be taken back when the lockdown finishes is not assured. If the businesses do not bounce back furlough may come to mean just a fancy word for laying off.

 Furlough changes its meaning with changing environment and the shifting intention of the employer! It is a chameleon at best and a weasel at worst.

A DOORSTEP ENCOUNTER: SINISTER OR BENEVOLENT

     Last Sunday morning I was looking through the Sunday newspapers with a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee when the doorbell rang. I was not expecting anyone.  I put the paper on the table and reluctantly got up. Doorbell rang again. 


       At the door there was a young man, 30ish, tall, heavily built in worn out jeans and a shabby hooded black fleece jumper. Due to the hood upper half of his face was in dark. Beside him was a bike which he held with both his hands.


      “YES” I said rather loudly. He must have noticed the annoyance and a bit of hostility in my voice. I certainly noticed it. 

      “Sorry to bother you mate; your keys are hanging there.” He pointed at the door where my key ring was hanging. I must have left the key in the lock last night when we came after dinner at a friend’s house. Beside the main-door key the ring also had the keys of patio and the car.

       I felt so ashamed at my impoliteness that I could not speak. "Are you OK, mate?” the stranger said anxiously. I got my composure back and thanked him profusely.

      “It’s nothing. You would have done the same” He said smiling and turned back to the road.

       After he was gone, I was very uneasy and ashamed. Why did I behave so rudely? It’s not my usual state of being.

Reflecting on the encounter I think that some of the following factors might have contributed

•     I was too engrossed in the newspaper, halfway through an interesting article. The door bell ring felt like an intrusion. So even before I opened the door I was annoyed.
•     When I saw this young man with a hood covering part of his face, in untidy clothes I felt no qualms in stereotyping him. A young man hiding his face he must be a hoodlum and was up to no good. 
•    The flashy mountain bike beside him did not help the situation. My already preconditioned brain perceived it as an efficient snatch and grab getaway vehicle!

      It all happened in a flash, no conscious thinking on my part.
     
        Recently there have been incidences in London where criminals have snatched mobiles from pedestrians. The perpetrators were usually hooded young men on bicycles or mopeds. Short CCTV clips have been shown on the national Television and are doing rounds on Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media platforms. I have not paid much attention to these but they must have stayed in some corners of my brain.

     The brain regularly tunes itself so that it can  take fast evasive and neutralising actions to recurrent threats by preconditioning us without our conscious awareness. This clearly has an evolutionary survival benefit. Our long passed ancestors only knew about such incidences when they or their local community experienced these encounters. Now we are constantly bombarded with audiovisual clips (some true, some fake) from all over the world 24/7. We usually do not pay much conscious attention and rightly so. But the unconscious part our brain does; its rationale is brute survival.

      Recent decline of general civility and increase in communal hatred worldwide is a serious by-product of this information explosion. Ironically the very brain trait that ensured human survival and development of civilizations may now become a mortal threat to the civil society which we so enjoy living in.