Upfront I concede that mine is somewhat of a strange habit, one which harks back to and is thanks to our 5-year stint in Colombo.
After we relocated to SL, carrying on from what she had been doing in Dubai, Kitty had not given up her teaching job and was working in the British School as a regular junior schoolteacher. Muskan, at the same time was enrolled in the Colombo International School, doing her ‘O’ levels. The long and the short of it being that Bala, our driver who in the years we were there had been metamorphosed from his mild and affable Sri Lankan nature into a crazy fiend on the road, would drive the two girls to their respective schools, heading out at 7.15 every morning. I, by force of a habit acquired during my planting days, being up and about by 5.30, would also get ready and all duly spruced up, would plonk myself in my office (which was in the house) well before Kitty and Muskan had been driven off.
Every day the maid, having dusted and cleaned the office very early, would place a large, oversized jug of water on my table. Colombo being hot and humid (very) even at that early hour, all morning long, almost mechanically and with a mind of its own, every couple of minutes my hand would keep bringing the water glass to my lips so that without my having even noticed this, in a couple of hours I would have gulped a copious volume of water down my gullet.
In 2005, having left behind the hot and humid Colombo and having relocated to the cool and crisp milder climate of the Nilgiris, my morning routine of behaving like a camel just out of a long trek in the desert having stumbled across an oasis, followed me all the way to Coonoor. The upshot being that every single morning I simply have to gulp down at least two litres of water to function (you are welcome to read any meaning into that statement) with the ‘icing on the cake’ being almost a litre of plain and unadulterated tea liquor which follows the water sloshing around in my innards. The upshot being that while by noon I usually revert to being a normal human, up to that hour I can put any self-respecting fountain to shame.
Brushing aside a fair bit of well-meaning advice to the contrary and having convinced myself that my camel avatar is what keeps me ticking, the only downside is that this habit means that I have to cater for an extra two hours to my morning chores before I can head off anywhere. To the extent that on days when I have a golf round planned, our usual tee-off time being 8 a.m., means that I have to be up and about well before the lark to be able to reach our lovely course up in Ooty well in time.
I have one more somewhat peculiar habit acquired from the time I was a junior assistant superintendent on Panniar Estate way back in 1975. The job demanded that I spend the better part of my waking hours with the workers in the field. During the main season, that meant supervising and adding my two bits to the pluckers and keeping pace with them as they went about their work. The ‘two bits’ meant that I’d also be plucking leaf, all the while carrying on a conversation with the pluckers, at the same time gleaning information about the general mood of the workers on the estate. A rather tedious and boring undertaking and with nothing better to chew on, I’d end up slowly and steadily munching on a freshly plucked tea shoot. No particular reason to be doing that other than the fact that a tea shoot was handy. An ‘addiction’ which has stayed with me to come to the fore whenever I’m anywhere close to a tea bush.
Our home ‘Thikana’ being in the midst of tea and with tea fields laid out on both sides of the path I take for my evening walk with my dogs, I’m always plucking off a shoot and chewing on that as I walk along, much like a cow chewing on the cud. Without my even realizing that this was happening, that unusual habit has developed to a point where on the evening before the next morning’s golf round, while on my walk, I end up plucking a handful of tender tea shoots which I keep in my shorts pocket so that, while playing going around the Ooty course which is bereft of any tea, I have enough leaf to keep munching on, through the 4 hours it takes us to traverse the 18 holes.
Two ‘not quite normal’ habits which had one of my senior golfing partners bestow me with the title of ‘Mr. Tea & Pee’. While the christening was fine, he followed that up with constant pestering, trying to convince me that I had a prostrate issue which he insisted I get attended to without any delay. My explain to him that it was my ‘camel behaviour’ which was the cause of my heading off behind the nearest bush on every fairway of the 18-hole course, were brushed off as being excuses. Mohan’s constant nagging and persistence finally pushed me to fix up an appointment with Dr Ganesh, a very well-known and reputed urologist based in Coimbatore.
Having been advised to be at the hospital by 9 a.m. on a particular day, the only other instruction was that on the morning in question I should not urinate ahead of getting to the hospital. On that day, having been through my ‘camel in the desert reaching an oasis’ routine, I took off from home by 6.30. In the two hours enroute to Coimbatore, I simply had to disregard that instruction. Not once, not twice, but three times. Post the third rush of relief, for the final 45 minutes before reaching the hospital, I gritted my teeth and clenched everything possible. Reaching the parking lot, I scooted into the hospital, with my bladder in danger of bursting, I rushed up to the reception and told the startled lady sitting behind the counter that I simply had to go. Walking behind the lady most uncomfortably and awkwardly I was ushered into a room and told to do my thing aiming into some plastic funnel type of contraption which had all sorts of wires and dials attached to it.
Oh! The sheer relief of it all. On and on and on!
Stepping out with a smile on my face, I sat around twiddling my thumbs for the next half an hour before Dr Ganesh called me in to his chamber. Whatever it was that popped up on to his computer screen had him turn to look at me goggle-eyed to say, “That’s a crazy volume”. On being told that this was my fourth since the morning he wanted to know why I had come to consult him:
- “It’s my friend, Mohan, who’s your patient who has convinced me that I have a prostrate issue”.
- “Talk me through your morning routine.”
- “Well, there’s this daily morning routine of 2 litres of water and a litre of tea.”
- “Does that cause you any discomfort?”
- “Nothing other than the fact that I need to go every 15/20 minutes.”
- “Have you read the Bible?”
- “Well, yes”
- “The book of Mathew?”
- “I know that one.”
- “Have you come across “as you sow so shall you reap”?”
- “I have”
- “In which case Mr. Khanna, if you’re in no discomfort and don’t get hassled by spending half your morning hours unzipping and zipping your jeans, just carry on and let’s not waste each other’s time!”
Which wise advice leads one to ask that why don’t they, any longer, make down-to-earth doctors like the good Dr Ganesh.