M*A*S*H

This was a show that my parents used to watch every night at 11:00pm 19years ago. While they were watching, they were also waiting for me- then a clump of cells inside my mother- to turn into a human being. They always spoke about the show nostalgically and I was always curious about it. There was mention of it in Perks of Being a Wallflower, too. Then, one night a few months ago, they caught a couple of episodes of it on air and were filled with excitement. The ingenious idea of renting the episodes on DVD season by season and revisiting this masterpiece of a sitcom sprung. And now, all these years later, with fully developed seeing and hearing organs, I could watch it with them and see what all the fuss was about.

It took me only a couple of episodes to really start loving this show. It’s full of witty, quick, non pretentious dialogue. Set during the Korean war, M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is about doctors of the 4077^th MASH unit in Korea and their lives as the war brings the place crumbling down around them. Having said that, it is a humorous and yet realistic depiction of their struggles there. The characters are delightful. Each one of them is well written with a story of his own, a mind of his own and problems of his own. The story and the characters work together like a well-oiled engine. It’s ironic how a show set in wartime with 20 wounded soldiers being operated on in every episode and guns going off in the background can make you sympathise and feel all that pain and at the same time make you laugh so hard that your sides ache.

Of a total of 11 seasons, I’ve watched all the episodes up to season 3 with my parents. Here’s a brief description of all the characters:

Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce: Supremely charismatic, witty, humorous, warm hearted man who has his head screwed on straight. The best surgeon they’ve got .  A guy who doesn’t seem to take anything to do with the army seriously and is just there to have a good time while he does his job. A guy who knows what’s morally right and wrong and who would go out of his way to help someone who really needs it. A guy who seems to have the right outlook of the war. Also, he is very smooth with the ladies.

John McIntyre “Trapper”: Another stud of the 4077^th and Hawkeye’s best friend. Generous human being with a big heart, great sense of humour and an enthusiastic laugh. Has great command over his work as a surgeon and is easy to talk to. Loveable guy who’s always up to mischief. Again, always does the right thing and ensures he has his fun time. 

Hawkeye and Trapper make one hell of an irresistible duo.

Henry Blake: The unassuming Commanding Officer of the 4077^th MASH. A softy, a scatterbrain. Lost without his personal assistant Radar O’Reilly. On some occasions, lost on account of his personal assistant Radar O’Reilly. Almost always seen in his fishing cap, he’s not one for staunch military discipline and is a surgeon before he’s an army man. His leadership is loved none the less by everyone under him.

Major Frank Burns: A complete contrast to Hawkeye and Trapper. A despicable disciplinarian who’s unfortunately next in line as commanding officer. Having nearly no sense of humour, he’s the butt of several jokes and pranks. Ambitious and stingy, he considers himself the only true patriot on the premises. He’s not the best surgeon around and is constantly teased in the operating room much to his annoyance. 

Major Margaret ‘Hotlips’ Houlihan: The head nurse of the 4077^th, she’s headstrong, confident and patriotic. She enjoys discipline and finds it hard to tolerate nonsense from Hawkeye and Trapper. She’s perhaps the most masculine of all at the MASH but she can be as vain as a little girl. Attractive with a good heart, she insists on following military rules but has a soft spot for doing what is right when she needs to. 

Also, Hotlips and Burns have a secret relationship that everyone knows about.

Corporal Radar O’Reilly: A short, enlisted 17 year old assistant to Henry. He’s an innocent and efficient little man with a bottomless stomach and a keen love for all animals. He’s attached to Henry like a son is to his father in the most subtle way possible. He’s the owner of two adorable dimples and is perhaps the most easily lovable character there is. 

Maxwell Klinger: An enlisted member of the 4077^th, he hates the army and the MASH and spends his days trying to be sent home under the army’s Section 8 law. He tries to secure his section 8 psychiatric discharge by dressing up as a woman and trying to prove that he is mad. All his efforts are in vain but he never gives up.

Father Mulcahy: Innocent and soft spoken, he isn’t taken very seriously around the place. He’s very understanding of everyone’s problems and is partial to no one. An absolute darling, he’s the most pleasant personality within the compound.

Now, I will come to the reason I began telling you all of this. It has to do with the last episode of the third season. It began with Radar rushing into the operation room with news of Henry’s discharge from the Army. He was going home! Throughout the episode I was hoping that something would make him stay back but there were no Bollywood twists to the story. Calls to home were made, packing was done, celebrations followed and finally with a parting gift of a tailor-made suit from Hawk, Trapper and Radar, goodbyes were said. After a formal salute off and some sweet but good humoured last goodbyes the next morning, he got into the helicopter that would fly him to Tokyo where he’d board his flight back home. As tears filled Radar’s eyes, I began to mist up too.

The next morning, Radar stumbled weakly into the operation room with news. News that Henry’s plane was shot down. News that there were no survivors. 

I couldn’t help but cry in utter disbelief. It was bad enough we wouldn’t see him anymore in the seasons to come. Why did they have to kill him off? Sure, they were trying to prove a point. A point that war is cruel. I didn’t realise until that moment how much I appreciated and related to Henry’s character. If one were to ask someone like Frank Burns, he’d enumerate many faults in Henry’s character and leadership like his haphazardness, his lack of punctuality, his laid back attitude to some military laws and how he doesn’t hesitate to have fun. But even Frank Burns would (reluctantly) admit that he was a sincere human being with a huge, generous heart. You couldn’t possibly dislike him. I can only guess that it must have been emotional shooting the last scenes of that episode knowing they wouldn’t be shooting with Henry again. 

I’m not ready to watch the next season without Henry just yet.

 

They Mock Us No More

They mock us no more
Days of cracking lightening
Days of just thunder
All gone, long gone
Now the rain is so heavy you can't hear the thunder
Now the clouds are so dense you can't see the light
The roads are full of puddles
Jump-in-worthy puddles
Heck, the roads are flooded
The wet crows are complaining in their white-exposed feather coats
The stray cats look disgusted
The cows just stand there....ruminating
The plastic bags float away
The cars splash water on pedestrians
The pedestrians wave their fists in the air and swear
They mock us no more
We are dry no more
The wind is merciless
It's wonderful that it is
They mock us no more.

And here is a picture of a wet crow

Egrets (pardon the fogginess, excessive rain was happening.)

We went on a road trip

 

We went on a road trip today. Well, sort of. I call anything longer than a one hour drive a road trip. We didn't know where we were going. We woke up early, we made sandwiches, we took music and our dog, Chaplin and set off. It was raining. The cats had already started falling. By the time we hit the outskirts, both dogs and cats were falling. It was exhilarating. Wind blowing, rain slapping you in the face, dog drooling into your lap, it was great. The trees were greens of every kind and the rain made them glisten. Ah, what sights they were to see. I will continue speaking of the trip as the photos below go by.

We were driving around looking for a stream or river we could take a dip in and set up our little picnic basket. Since it was raining, I wouldn't dream of taking the camera outside. So all the photos here are taken from the car. I wish I could share with you images of the green, rain-covered beauty. But these are all I got.

At the toll naka. We bought the fruit assortment. A necessity if you go on one of these trips.

But not from the lady in the picture below....

...from him.

We passed a small village. Look at the colours! I want a cute little cottage like this some day .

Mood was lifted even higher when I heard a song I love after ages: Roobaroo!

Spot=found. We parked by this river and disembarked. Chaplin jumped in immediately and swum swum swum. Then the two of us ran up and down the wide, wet, empty road. We also noticed that we hadn't brought the sandwiches along. We ate non-sandwich things.

We saw kingfishers (pied kingfisher too), bee eaters, egrets and cranes (see next post), darters and lapwings. Also saw train going by. Also crabs, frogs and a very cool water jumping spider.

The very first picture I allowed my sister to take from my camera. Note Chaplin on my lap enjoying the rain (and digging his claws into my thighs) .

We did some more driving around and stopped at another place for dipping-into-the-river purposes. Somewhere along the way we crossed this bridge. This man was standing on it. Beside him was another man fishing off the side of the bridge.

Somewhere near the bridge.

What I love about the outskirts: no traffic. You can stop bang in the middle of the road to take a picture and you won't be holding up any traffic. And even better, there aren't any cars in front of you ruining your picture.

Completely drenched to the bone, we turned homeward. Chaplin had a nice, sleepy drive. He's still zonked from all the swimming.

The Violinist

I stepped out of the house to buy some tomatoes for dinner. On the way there I saw a young man. He was sitting up on the wall of a building. His violin case was in front of him and his shirt was draped over it. He was sitting in his shorts and vest playing his violin. His face was calm but concentrated. A dog was sitting on the same wall facing him and watching him play, as though he was listening intently. He seemed soothed and comforted sitting there. I stood there for a couple of minutes just to listen. It was soft, sweet, melodious and so gentle. His music made me smile and feel happy. He was playing with his eyes closed. I was itching to ask him something, I didn't know what but I was intrigued and wanted to know about him. But he was so engrossed in his music that it seemed wrong to interrupt. I walked away having seen something quite out of the ordinary but delightful.

They Mock Us

The clouds mock us
Up there in the sky they mock us
They look down at us and they mock us
They turn grey and dense to mock us
They give us a brief shower to mock us
They pull the sun closer to mock us
They ooze humidity to mock us
Pregnant and grey they mock us
Until their waters break they mock us
Those torturous clouds how they mock us.

Cat Facts

Two interesting cat-facts came up recently while we were sharing random ‘did-you-knows’ around the house.

1)      A cat can’t climb head first down a tree because every claw on a cat’s paw points the same way. To get down from a tree, a cat must back down. (That explained every picture or actual cat I’ve seen go up a tree and then look down like a sad puppy with its ears slowly dropping backward.)

2)      Cats don’t like to eat food from the corners of their bowls since it hurts their whiskers. (And that explained why my cats always leave a cat food volcano in their bowls.)

This forced me to find out more. Hence, Google was referred to and the following assortment of facts from an assortment of sites was created. I present to you my random-but-genuine collection of wonderfully fascinating, intriguing, curious and weird cat facts that may explain certain cat behaviour things or something along those lines.

My Random-but-Genuine Collection of Wonderfully Fascinating, Intriguing, Curious and Weird Cat Facts That May Explain Certain Cat Behaviour Things Or Something Along Those Lines:-

A group of cats is called a “clowder”. (So all together they claw the furniture to chowder?)

A cat’s brain is biologically more similar to a human brain than it is to a dog’s. Both humans and cats have identical regions in their brains that are responsible for emotions. (The silent treatments, the long angry stares, the moodswings, the slapping-things-I-hate, etcetera etcetera)

During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Pope Innocent VIII condemned cats as evil and thousands of cats were burned. (They still remember. Hence the manic, out of the blue, psycho scratches.)

Cats are North America’s most popular pets: there are 73 million cats compared to 63 million dogs. Over 30% of households in North America own a cat. (Kittens self-advertise better than puppies with their blue eyes, giant heads and clumsy paws).

A cat rubs against people not only to be affectionate but also to mark out its territory with scent glands around its face. The tail area and paws also carry the cat’s scent. (Of course, there just had to be something to it other than pure love.)

When a family cat died in ancient Egypt, family members would mourn by shaving off their eyebrows. They also held elaborate funerals during which they drank wine and beat their breasts. The cat was embalmed with a sculpted wooden mask and the tiny mummy was placed in the family tomb or in a pet cemetery with tiny mummies of mice. (This was just weird.)

The little tufts of hair in a cat’s ear that help keep out dirt direct sounds into the ear, and insulate the ears are called “ear furnishings.” (They also help to filter out the sound of their owner calling out to them a gazillion times.)

A cat’s back is extremely flexible because it has up to 53 loosely fitting vertebrae. Humans only have 34. (My theory is they evolved from caterpillars.)

Cats spend nearly 1/3 of their waking hours cleaning themselves. (So a three year old cat has spent a year cleaning itself? So funny that is.)

In contrast to dogs, cats have not undergone major changes during their domestication process. (I did not need to internet to know that.)

Cats see so well in the dark because their eyes actually reflect light. Light goes in their eyes, and is reflected back out. This means that their eyes actually work almost like built-in flashlights. (THAT’s what they have those glassy bulb things over their eyes for!) 

Cats cannot taste things that are sweet. (Now this I knew but I’ve never figured why one of my cats loves chocolate and comes running on hearing wrappers and why another loves cham-cham which is a sweet that tastes purely of sugar.)

Cats are one of the very few animals that can stare fixedly into the human eye. (They’ve evolved to make us cower.)

Papillae on a cat’s tongue along with saliva ensure that their super-deep-cleaning doesn’t leave behind any offensive odour. (Another tactic to get us to like them more than dogs.)

Cats are creatures of order and habit and like routine which makes them feel secure. (That’s why they start getting hyper and jumpy all together precisely when we turn off the lights every night!)

While petting a cat, it raises its bum as an invitation for you to sniff its asshole. (Our brains aren't all that similar I suppose.)

That’s all I got for now. Stay tuned while the mystery unfolds in subsequent posts. *dum dum dum*