The Eleventh “Thou Shall Not!”

There is in existence a 'Thou Shall Not' that never made it to the tablets with the original Ten Commandments. It got left out because of the obvious reason that every single human being on this planet knows it intuitively and never even entertains the thought of breaking it, thus doing away with the need for it to be put down on paper ..err! stone

For those of you who are not as intuitive as the rest of us are, the eleventh commandment reads thus:
"Thou shall not in any way, under no circumstance, consciously or unconsciously, never ever, even by mistake, commit the blunder of letting your friends and loved ones know the reason you like them, taking extreme caution not to even unwittingly give them a hint of it, whatsoever"

If you think this doesn't apply to you, why?..just because you are one of those people who go around hugging anybody or anything that even remotely resembles a human being? The knowledge of the scent of your perfume or the lack thereof is not really the kind of acknowledgement a person is looking for! Or even better, are you the sole reason for the 'Archie's' & 'Hallmark' galleries round the corner, being granted a SEZ by the government for mass greeting card production in order to cater to the growing needs of their customers (The 's' is silent by the way, thanks to you!)

Why am I saying all this? Last week, I finally buckled down and wrote a looooong pending testimonial to one of my college friends in Orkut. His reaction to the testimonial caught me completely off guard! He was so pleased by it that he even said he found a new incentive and happily looked forward to work that day, which in itself is a phenomenal statement given that he is a software engineer!!..as phenomenal as getting a patient in coma (doctors having lost all hope) to snap out of it, purely by your motivational prowess!!

The testimonial wasn't even something like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!! It was just the usual "He is responsible, good friend, trustworthy" blah! blah! I had even pulled his legs in a couple of places!! All I did was just put in writing the reasons I valued his friendship. But it made me realize that I had never actually told him all these things before and it got me wondering, Why is it that we find it so hard to tell people the reason we appreciate them and their relationship?

Y not let people we like and value in our life, know our real feelings for them. It might not be a big deal for us, after all that is what we really think of them but until we get it out in the open, they are going to remain clueless. I doubt if a person in their lifetime, gets to hear even 10% of those nice things people say about them after they pass away.If the dead were to listen to their own eulogy, I believe its gonna take an awful lot of convincing on St.Peter's part, for the person to accept that their death was no data entry error!!!

If you are one of my friends and still haven't heard from me about the reasons I appreciate your friendship, well I can't put it much better than Ardal O'Hanlon,

"Someone told me I should tell my dad I love him before he dies... but what if I get the timing wrong and he lives for another 20 years?! I don't think either of us could deal with the embarrassment! I'd have to kill him!"

But seriously, I have spent too many years in the clutches of the eleventh commandment. Thou shall get a mail/testimonial/scrap on 'ten reasons I value thine friendship' once I manage to loose the eleventh commandment in the next rush hour Tokyo subway ride!!

The Forbidden Fruit

In the beginning...Aha! I can see that glint in your eye! Well, if you think this is another of those oft argued, men over women; women over men discussions, I've got just one thing to say to you, "Grow Up"! The only thing this shares with them are the first three words.

I was just thinking that we Indians have gotten so very good at learning from other people's mistakes, that we take even something as ancient as the 'don't eat the apple' warning pretty seriously. The other day in office [To give you the background, right now am working in Japan. There are 5 Indians including myself in my office, the rest are Japanese] this Japanese guy walks over to our desks and offers each of us a banana. Myriad expressions flashed on faces!, ranging from a suspicious 'am I being taken for a ride' to downright unbelief...looks of incredulity shared..neighbours checked to see if they were offered one too. Am not blaming the others, as a matter of fact I was the first to start grinning like an idiot, trying real hard to keep a straight face when the guy approached my desk!

But this got me wondering, why is it that we were all so taken aback? (Point to be noted, it was by reflex). Was it simply because it was a fruit? I even considered the aspect of it being a banana having anything to do with the surprise, but I feel that an apple/orange/grape wouldn't have altered the reaction much...though come to think of it, a watermelon or jackfruit would have!!

I work for a client with a base in most parts of the world. In all the two years that I've been working whenever people visit us, both clients and fellow Indians coming back home from their onsite assignments, they always bring us chocolates. I believe it is the same everywhere. Y not fruits? Why do we find it so odd? This is the first time in my life I've been offered a fruit in office. If you think about it, fruits are healthier. Why doesn't the thought even cross our minds? The only time when you think of buying fruits for somebody is when they are hospitalized (in some cases the person might have never landed there in the first place, if having fruits was a habit!!). Does the idea seem strange, simply because we don't see ads with people buying fruits as gifts?

I did not get to see how the natives reacted to this. I think it must be common for people here to give fruits, otherwise being the sensitive people that they are the guy would have never come over to offer it to us, if it wasn't a normal thing to do. And I heard from one of the translators the other day that they have exclusive and even branded shops in Japan that sell fruits, to be bought as gifts. I was wondering, why not start the habit? I admit that we will draw strange looks initially. But when people actually start thinking about it, they might realize that it is not that bad an idea after all. So the next time I go visiting, am heading straight for the fruit basket!