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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Understanding the 'Urge'





When used as a noun ,the word 'urge' has been defined as an involuntary, natural, or instinctive impulse. The definition very clearly explains  the raison d'etre for all the urges that we, as a country, experience and brings immense relief ,along with absolution of  guilt and dissolution of any  conscience pangs that I  may have experienced. It is certainly not our fault if we stop anywhere, and i mean anywhere, to answer nature's call- or as my favorite columnist, Jug Suraiya , puts it ( though slightly indelicately and not very 'Cal', the city he oft remembers ) shoo shoo. This is not to be confused with the shooing away of a cat or a pesky salesman or a husband. You and I know what Jug's shoo means. We can't but know it. This is what we see when we look out of our bedroom window, or the car window, or the train window. I am slightly unclear and foggy about the plane window( having looked out of a plane window many years ago) and welcome any inputs on whether we are able to spot one of our  brethren doing 'it' from a plane window. The point is , it is certainly not his ( 'his' is an inadvertent slip of the pen here and not a feministic aberration) fault. How can the poor fellow be expected to control an involuntary, or  natural impulse? If anyone is to be faulted it is the peeping tom-the person peeping out of the bedroom /car/train/plane (?) window. That is not an urge- that is an invasion of space and we better stop doing 'it'. By now  I hope , dear reader, you know which 'it' is being referred to here- coz I am slightly confused ...

Another urge that till now leaves  me turning up my nose and gingerly lifting my trousers ( or whatever) is the urge to spit,  experienced by most of my beloved countrymen-oops - and countrywomen . I had always wondered why they could not take, whatever was in their mouth, in - why did they have to heave it out. But now that I have been enlightened, such banal thoughts have forever been banished from my mind. Infact, now the spitting seems to me poetry in slow motion or should that be slow poetry in motion ? I mean, look at the way the goo is all bunched up in the mouth , and then the mouth opens to just the right degree , and then the doer , ever so slightly, leans forward and then aims it at a wall or a heritage building-or whatever he/she finds a worthy beneficiary. Neat, frolicking neat !

And what about the urge to advise ? so parents advise their prodigy to become doctors or engineers and certainly not  actors or singers- coz children from 'good families' don't do such things ; teachers advise the errant student ( who had just happened to nod off) to mend his/her ways ; the doctor advises the patient to go slow on sugar, salt, saturated fats, potatoes, dairy products and almost everything which is edible; the friend advises on how to tackle a philandering and meandering husband ;and , of course, the poor Supreme Court is forever and anon advising the government to come back to governing the state and to stop governing its ill-gotten wealth. You and I, by now know all about urges, and how they are involuntary, natural and instinctive and so we permit ourselves an indulgent smile and restraining the urge to go on and on about urges, sign off- as a reader and as a writer.

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