Unreligiously Yours

Friend: Hi Natalia.

Me: Hi! Howz life?

Friend: Good. What’s up?

Me: Head, hair and ceiling.

Friend: Bad joke.

Me: That wasn’t a joke. I stated a fact.

Friend: (irritated) Let it be. Hey tell me, what are you?

Me: (I was confused. What can one possibly present as an answer to that question?)I am a specimen of the Homo sapiens.

Friend: Now why do you have to get biology involved in this?

Me: What do you mean?

Friend: I mean like what are you?

Me: Well in accordance with human obsession and fascination for borders, I carry an Indian passport so that makes me Indian.

Friend: No, I mean what religion are you?

Me: How can a person be a religion?

Friend: Alright! What religion do you follow?

Me: Ah that makes more sense. Hee hee! Haa Haa! My name confuses you doesn't it? Natalia Hule does not give you a clue as to about whether I ma a Christian or a Hindu. My looks baffle you more because you can't associate me with a particular region of India and the fact that I speak Marathi, Hindi and English equally well worsens your case further. Haa haa, stay confused. I won' t help you... Well I follow ‘Nataliaism’

Friend: What?

Me: It is a very recent religion. It started the day I was born. This religion has only one Goddess, she is called Natalia. The Goddess has only one devotee, her name is Natalia. The religion has only one prophet, her name is also Natalia. The principles of this religion are whatever Natalia finds right. This religion prohibits conversion. The Goddess Natalia explicitly states that there shall never be any reincarnation or resurrection whatsoever. The Goddess Natalia does not promise any Land, Water or Air. By the way this Goddess, her devotee and the Prophet is all me, and not some other Natalia. In this manner, I shall remain in peace with everyone and anyone around me and also prevent any possibility of war and riots after I am gone, hence ensuring peace even after my demise.

Friend: Hey this idea is great. (I was slightly taken aback to hear this) Everyone should create their own religions and not bother others. What do you think?

Me: I think I’ll complete the assignment for French class.

Diabetes Demystified - Unraveling the mystery of diabetes mellitus for the layman

As unpredictable as earthquakes, conversations can get us talking or explaining anything in the universe at any given point of time. My memory falls short of recollecting exactly what led us to discuss diabetes that day but I managed to straighten the my friend’s comprehension of diabetes.

Friend: I avoid eating sugar or sweets. They are known to cause diabetes.

Me: No, they do not cause diabetes.

Friend: How is that possible? Eating a lot of sugar causes the blood to go sweet and that condition is called diabetes.

Me: No it is not. You are mistaken. You believe the human body to be like a cup of coffee that will become sweeter as we go on adding sugar to it. It is not like that.

Friend: Then what is it genius?

Me: Well let me give you an example. But promise me that you won’t ask me questions while I explain. The example is far-fetched but you will understand what it is. But don’t ask questions, we won’t get anywhere.

Friend: But what if I have a doubt?

Me: No way! No questions! Try and believe for a little while that I am Lord Krishna and you are my devotee Arjun and we are on the brink of the commencement of the final battle of the Mahabharat! Lord Krishna had asked Arjun to not ask him questions while he spoke the Bhagvad Gita.

Friend: Oh my God! This is the height of exaggeration!

Me: I know but may I begin my explanation?

Friend: Go ahead.

Me: To live life fruitfully, we need money. We keep that money in a bank. When we need our money for use, we can only obtain it from the bank with the help of an ATM card. For the time being, we will forget the option of withdrawal slips, alright?

Friend: Fine. No problems, next?

Me: Now consider this situation. You have lost your ATM card. Will you be able to obtain your money from the bank?

Friend: No

Me: Situation no. 2. You have an ATM card but it is damaged beyond use. Will you be able to obtain your money from the bank?

Friend: No

Me: Now you are without money, i.e. liquid assets. Hence you start liquefying your other assets i.e. you sell your other assets like your vehicle, gold, etc. to obtain money to run your life smoothly. But the money in your bank will remain unaffected; in fact it will increase due to the interest.

Friend: Yes

Me: Now as we require money, the body requires glucose. The body puts this glucose into the blood like we put money in the bank. To obtain our money, we use the ATM card; the body uses ‘Insulin’ to obtain the glucose from the blood.

Friend: Oh, ok. (He looked liked he had heard the word ‘insulin’ for the first time)

Me: Now if the body does not have insulin, it will not be able to obtain glucose. If the insulin is damaged, i.e. of a bad quality, the body will still not be able to obtain glucose. Just like the case of the ATM card.

Friend: Oh, ok.

Me: Just like us, the body starts liquefying the other assets available. It first starts burning all fat available to produce energy. Therefore, diabetes patients become thin. Now the glucose in the blood remains unaffected; it in fact increases because we continue to eat food. This is why and how the blood turns sweet. Not because of sugar, but because of a lack of insulin. Is it clear?

Friend: Now I’ve understood what diabetes is. It’s good you asked me not to ask questions. I might never have understood your example. How do you think up such things?

Me: One may call me the epitome of immodesty as I self-assuredly state that I have a brilliant imagination and a fantastic ability to draw up incredulous but pertinent analogies.

Friend: There we go again.

And so we continued our blah, blah, blah… about everything under the sun.

P.S.: I was originally planning to title this post as ‘Diabetes For Dummies’ but decided against it because that might have amounted to copyright infringement!

My Quest for French Literacy

There was a time, during the level 2 of my French studies that I was convinced that I would never be able to read French. After about 3 or 4 sentences, my mind would just go on a vacation to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. I was persuaded to quit my pursuit of French proficiency. Then the money-minded element of my head told me that quitting would be equivalent to a waste of money! Now that was good motivation to continue. But it still did not solve my problem of having a slight headache while reading French; I just couldn’t read.

I then told myself that it would be advisable to concentrate on the Listening skills for a while. Since I reckoned that babies learn to talk due to prolonged auditory exposure to language, I subjected myself to a blitzkrieg of French songs and movies. It would also cause an annoyance. I plainly could not comprehend the sounds that the French people produced from their throats and mouths! Now I had to discipline myself. There was no way I was going to give up. So I started watching the French movies and cartoons along with the French sub-titles, hoping that I would understand the dialogues that way. So I discontinued French reading for a while. 2 weeks later, I read an article (not in French) in the Times of India. It changed my approach towards improving my reading skills.

This article was titled Power of subtitles and was written by Gurcharan Das. It spoke about the efforts of Dr. Brij Kothari and his work with DoorDarshan. This project is about subtitling of songs on DD shows like Rangoli, Chayageet and Chitrahaar. The viewer subconsciously associates the spoken word with the words displayed on screen, thus practicing reading in an unobtrusive and hassle-free manner. It involves no extra cost or time investment for the viewer. This method effectively increases literacy levels even with just 30 minutes of exposure to such programs every week. Thanks to Dr. Kothari’s mission, a Nielsen-ORG survey, conducted in 2002 and 2007 to measure the influence of subtitling, showed that only 25% school children could read a simple paragraph in Hindi after five years of education. However, this soared to 56% if they also watched subtitled songs for 30 minutes a week on Rangoli. Similarly remarkable outcomes were reported among adults.

This convinced me that I was on the right track and my methodology was perfectly sound. From that day onwards, I watched 2 French movies or animated films, along with the French subtitles weekly. That amounted to nearly 5 to 6 hours of French audio and visual exposure per week. I did that for 4 months. My efforts paid of in January 2008; I managed to read the French novel, L’Africain of J.M.G. Le Clezio in 10 days! I had become perfectly literate in French. J’ai devenu francophone! I wrote about this to Dr. Brij Kothari on his website http://www.planetread.org/home.php. He wrote back saying that my experience mirrored his own while he was learning Spanish. That was seriously cool. According to AC Nielsen’s ORG-Center for Social Research, there are nearly 312 million early-literates and 444 million non-literates in India. This estimated number of non-literates is significantly higher than the official figure of 296.2 million. I wish all channels start sub-titling their shows. Everyone stands to win. Channels get better TRPs. Higher literacy levels means better levels of income that translates into higher sales for advertisers. That is fantastic motivation to speed up India’s conquest of 100% literacy and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.