Another useless conversation

I was dragged into another close to useless conversation some time back, which makes me write this another close to useless blog entry. :) I'll let the following conversation with a person who moved back in our society speak for itself. Let it be known that he was a hi-hello acquaintance for a year or so 10 yrs back before today.

me: hello uncle..blah blah
he: hello blah blah, you were in Haridwar na?
me: well.. yea for a while at Rishikesh...
he: haan Rishikesh, I'd called you at Bangalore once.
me: hmm
he: so what do you do now? You can work in Bby now that you're back.
me: (after telling him some history) I'm undecided, looking at options, but not in Bby.
he: how about business?
me: no
he: marriage plans?
me: no
he: no, no, you should get married.
me: I'm lonesome, wholesome.
he: wholesome?
me: yea
he: no, no, without marriage you can't be complete...
me: hehe, says who? Its your opinion. Mine differs. Its a trap. :)
he: you can say that after experiencing everything. At my age 50-55 you say so its a different matter...
me: why? Lot of people marry, its just a popular path. Nothing about completion in it.
he: God created man for...
me: (interrupting) God did not create man, its a misconception.
he: no, no, he created so many beautiful things.
me: well, okay :) (who's gonna argue on that) But dharma, artha, kama, moksha are 4 stages. One can go from brahmacharya to moksha directly.
he: You should think and do things.
me: I've thought a lot, this is a 15 year old decision.
he: there are some duties that one has to do.
me: (This was perhaps an indication towards my parents, which is where I get pissed off) Sir, the duties that I was born with, I'm doing already. I don't agree with people who add their own burden on their head and call it a duty. When you're traveling in the train, you don't carry your luggage on your head, do you? I don't and I still reach the destination with my baggage. :)
he: you have to think a lot on these matters. After 50...
me: Sir, I'm 34. Thinking is a continuous activity, its not something that you snap your fingers and do! Decisions keep getting refined as you progress in thinking. Saying that one person is 55 yrs old doesn't mean he has thought a lot. It depends on what that person has done in 55 yrs! :) Maybe, you've a lot more laukika experience, I've a lot more adhyatmika experience. A person who assumes, without knowing any background of another on what he's done, is doing wrong.
he: see you have to think about all these things...
me: that very statement there implies that I haven't thought about things. :) (case closed)

Then I learnt that this poor chap's wife is in Chennai, he keeps going theretill she joins him here. His daughter is married and son works in Chennai. Now, now... main hi mila? :F (new smiley, no prizes for guessing what it means. ;)

-

This too shall pass

With a heavy heart I write
That all life is a fight
For some, this fact is a known one
While others figure when all is done
But each moment can be a pleasure
And then we learn how to treasure
Time, good or bad, will never return again#
So we do have the best bargain 



#This line maybe inspired by the following incident: Akbar asked Birbal to write something that when said to a happy person will make him sad and when told to a sad person will make him happy. Birbal wrote: "This too shall pass."
_

Off the cuff: hypertension

Its been a long time since I blogged and I recently learnt that there are a few followers, albeit handful of them, that read my blog regularly. I realize, therefore, its my duty to write every once in a while to bore them! :) Here's one topic off the cuff that I should've written upon since it also happened to me off the cuff: high blood pressure.

Some time in Oct 2009, I started to explore some in-house painting. After an online search on DIY, I went to a medical shop and picked some gloves. During the painting, however, my hands started itching and next day or so I'd to see a doctor with a handful of rashes! It turns out I have the quite common latex allergy... and while treating that, a regular blood pressure check landed the doc in shock! :) I was running 150/90, which over the week of changing doctors, going from allopathic to ayurvedic went to as high as 170/110 landed me to an expert doc in the field. He concluded that to be hereditary and put me on decent olmesartan doses. I particularly used to like this doctor since he treats my mother, but I gave up on him after some dosage disagreements. I'm yet to consult others for a second opinion or change to ayur/ homeopathic, but for now, I'm going with his medication with my dosage.

Thus far, I was sharing this news only to some on a need-basis or totally-unconnected basis because I was hoping it to be a temporary phenomenon, if that. However, with my kind of approach of checking BP and understanding how my body reacts to taking timely medication for a month and stopping it for 3 days at a stretch reveals that indeed this mortal body has hypertension, which to me, is a contradiction to my nature. In recent days, I've become a little short-tempered due to lot of interaction with useless service providers such as Reliance or circumstantial things locally. But these are no long term reasons for being hyper. Nor do I suspect lack of exercise and laziness to have led to it, but that is possible though frequent brisk walks didn't bring my blood pressure down. I've been neck-deep in stock markets too, but thats a fun pastime than any craze for making money or more likely the shock of losing it. And more people that know me know that I'm hardly concerned with money, even though I don't have much of it. :) So, the only valid reason, I reckon, is hereditary since both my parents have hypertension. I may be the cause of that for them, but I'm not the cause of it for me! ;)

Then again, blood pressure is a symptom, not a disease. More on BP some other time, if and when mood permits... adios.