Confusionist

Um, no. Nothing to do with Confucius. But with Confusion. Complexity. Chaos. In the brain - an Xray of which would confuse it with a Pollock painting.

An avid reader of the AARP magazine, I follow suggestions on how to keep the brain active. Do mind exercises, it advises.

What mind? The mind that cannot remember one’s own phone number? (Wait, is it 1916, or 1619? 6191? ) The mind that cannot remember how old one is? (Wait, am I 58 or 59? This is September and I was born ...) The mind that cannot go to the grocery store without a list and then leaves it in the car? (Then goes to the car, and the list isn’t there, because it was in my pocket all the time.) Alternate scenario: Goes to the car, and the car is not there. Help! It’s been stolen. No, it’s not. I came in my husband’s car.

Yes, that (non) mind.

Forget the mundane stuff that every oldie goes through ... entering a room and not knowing why you went there, opening a drawer and not knowing why you opened it ... etc.

It’s the highly intellectual stuff that gets me ... or I don’t get, actually.

Quantum Physics: Huh?

Statistics: Four out of three people can’t understand statistics? I am the fifth person. For one thing how do you believe them? And just how accurate are they? Example: 50% of young kids ages 5-20 skip breakfast. How do they know? Did they interview every single young kid/young adult in the country? What if they lied? Does a granola bar count as breakfast? What if they turned 21? What if ...

Directions: Make a left at the next light, then a right at the stop sign. Go straight and then the freeway will be on your left. I was already glassy-eyed at 'Make a left' and then just heard blahblahblah. Thank goodness for that life-saver called GPS. Without it, I would still be somewhere on the 405.

Math: Now there’s a subject that can discombobulate the innards of my brain. When I first started working in the school, they thought “Indian=Math Genius” and threw me in all the Math (or Maths) classes. They thought wrong. What’s with that place value crap? And GCF and LCMs? Fuggedaboutit. Word Problems? The very words ‘Two trains left the station at the same time ...’ send me out of the room at bullet speed.

And don’t get me started with that crap about the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil, or the sound of the falling tree in the forest. The only thing I hear flapping and falling with regularity are brain cells.

I love being a Buddhist, but try understanding the koans. The sound of one hand clapping? Expressing truth without speaking, without silence? A Buddhist Zen Master says Enlightenment rarely comes if the Road of Thinking is Blocked.

So be it. I shall take the detour.

The Tale of Ganji

Not to be confused with the Tale of Genji - that one is a venerated Japanese text. This one is an undergarment that covers the chest.

There were flagrant disparities when relatives doled out gifts to my children in India. My daughter got gold chains from her grandmother. My son got ganjis. My daughter got diamond earrings from her aunt. My son got ganjis. My daughter got silver anklets ... you get the idea.

Strange as it seems, I think my son got more pleasure from his gifts than my daughter did from hers. She handed me her gifts, which I put in the safe, where they stay till today. My son wore his ganjis out ... or at least till I threw them out when there were more holes than there was cloth.

To quote Seinfeld: “ Men wear their underwear until absolutely disintegrates. Men hang on to underwear until each individual underwear molecule is so strained it can barely retain the properties of a solid. It actually becomes underwear vapor. We don’t even throw it out, we just open a window and it goes out like dandelion spores. That’s how men throw out underwear ...” ... Or until mother/wife wait till the men are out of the house and bury it under the potato peels, tea leaves and other trash in the bin.

The ganji habit was inherited. Father and son never left home without one. If your chaati is covered, you won’t get a cold. Never mind the heat index is high enough to use the sidewalk as a tandoor, father and son will wear a ganji. And ... this year we welcomed the newest, ganjied member to our clan. Yes, we set the bar to enter our family pretty low.

Make sure you wear one when you cross the threshold.