Monkey Business

Revisitng their childhood...

Childhood habits die hard!

A humble monkeypod tree (jungli jalebi) guarding the Garden gate today bore the brunt of childish crankiness for a good half-hour after the exercises. Laden with fruit, it drew Srichand Arora’s attention first. From somewhere he produced a stick to thrash the pods down. The stick was too short. So Arun Patil joined him with a longer stick – soon to be followed by Rehana Sheikh with a chair to stand up on. Balancing on one another, they started to beat the hell out of the lower branches till a few pods fell down. Suddenly they discovered that for all their hard work, they were left with nothing. Tara Chand Seth, Ramila Mistry, Fehmida Khan and several others had collected all the pods from the ground. Arun got down from his chair and called for operations to be halted. The watchman was sent to the toilet area to collect a longer bamboo pole. This time there was a shower of monkeypods. After 15 minutes or so, they divided the spoils and everyone departed for the day, mission accomplished!
Inconsequential as it might seem, the incident illustrates how the Garden has come to exert a magnetic influence in our daily lives. We get our morning fix of high jinks here. We are supposed to be done with the exercises in an hour's time, but most of us hang around till well beyond two hours. After all, where else would a bunch of seniors be able to play the fool like kids and not have to answer for it?
Health Bulletin of Hari Singh Shekhawat - 6:
Today I reached the ICU of Kokilaben Hospital at 1:00 p.m. and came to know that he had been shifted to Room 22 on 13th floor yesterday. He was not in his bed when I visited. Upon inquiring, I came to know he had gone for an ultra-sonography test. It was obviously to ascertain the cause of his abdomen-related problem. --Jagmohan Papneja
Srichand Arora:
Visited dear Shekhawat at about 6.00 p.m. He was lying in his bed, but was in a really cheerful mood. His reports were taken by his son to other hospitals for a second opinion. The outcome is not known to Shekhawat, but everything is in control according to him. He is still planning the Kerala tour sometime in November and is sure to get a good crowd which will allow him to book a full rail bogie. God bless him. Most probably he will be discharged on Monday and later on, if needed, he can get checked by other doctors in another hospital.
Harish Wadhwa:
It is also known as elaichi imli. I recall my childhood when we used to get into a frenzy over the pods. Could anyone manage to get a handful of them after all the effort?