Seven Advantages of Tsundoku: Acquiring books and reading none

Seven Advantages of Tsundoku: Acquiring books and reading none

 

Tsundoku is a Japanese Word for acquiring books and not reading them but allowing them to pile up unused or unread. As a noun, it refers to the person – accumulator of books. The act itself may include buying or getting them as gift or perhaps stolen from a library or bookstore. Without dwelling into the origin or history of the word, I may say, it can be used satirically to mildly look down upon a person who has a big collection of never-read-books.  However earliest usage of the word was straight use of the word without any implied offence. The man in the photo on the left is not a Tsundoku. Not because he is reading but because it is a statute! Even though you do nothing – not even reading them – after buying the books, there are certain distinct advantages of this special art / act.

 

Let me enumerate a few of them:

 

• 1.      It helps the bookseller and publishers, anyway
• 2.      It helps furniture manufacturers like shelves and cabinets
• 3.      It makes you proud to show off a huge collection of ‘learned’ books
• 4.      It is talking point or a conversation starter with friends who visit you
• 5.      You have some book ready on hand in case you feel bored and want to read
• 6.      It develops a sort of guilt feeling needed for survival
• 7.      You can introduce yourself as a Tsundoku expert.

 

Whatever is said above does not apply to a librarian or a retail book seller though activities are similar but objectives are different. Are you a Tsundoku, capable of adding to the list of advantages?

 

 

      

Grateful THANKS to All those who greeted / blessed me on my 79th birthday on 14th Dec 2020

 

 Grateful THANKS to All those who greeted / blessed me on my 79^th birthday on 14^th Dec 2020

Dr P Vyasamoorthy

 

I wish to record my sincere thanks to all my friends and well-wishers for having conveyed their greetings and blessings to me on my birthday 14^th December 2020, via SMS, WhatsApp, Email, phone call and in person. Many of you have taken pains to reach me by means more than one. Besides thoughtful touching text, pictures, photos, cartoons, poems etc embellished  several messages.  To each and every one, my grateful thanks from the bottom of my heart. To many I could acknowledge then and there but a few I may have missed. I hope this consolidated thank you note amends my lapses. THANKS AGAIN. Padmanabha VYASAMOORTHY, 79!

 

Prof Ramamurti	Mr V Badrinarayanan	Mr Badrinarayan Miriyala
Mr Ramachandran Chennai	Mrs Jayanti Menon	Mr Janardhan IDL
Mr Janardhan IDL	Mr Markandeyulu	Mr Khanapur Krishna Rao
Mr TSK Raman	Mrs Indu	Dr T Thomas
Union Bank	Prif V Seshadri	Mr RV Rao
Mr Kesavan	Wg Cdr Bhushan	Mr K Venkataramani
Mr Kishan Rao IDL	Dr Sajjan Singh	DR SR Prahlad
L&T Mutual Fund	Mr K Kochhaar	SBI
Mr A Suryanarayana	Mrs Suhasini	Mr T Balamukund
Mrs Prema Anand	Dr RK Garg	Mr SL Narayan
Mr VRV Rao & Susheela	Mrs Indira Narayan	Birthhday Alarm
Mr Venkata Shashtry K	Col Annavajla Sarma	Mr Chepuri Shankar Rao
Mr Ramesh Babu	Mr Arvind Chandwaskar	Pune Srinivasan
Syndicate / Canara Bank	Dr T Dak	Mrs Malini
Mr G Ramakrishna	Justice Rangarajan	Shweta Vyas
Mr SV Chalapathy	Mrs Sarojini & VKN	Mr S Sathyamoorthy
Mrs Kamakshi Hatti	Mrs Kalyani	Mr RN Mital
Mr Ramakrishna Savaram	Mr DK Rao	Mr K Gopalakrishnan KGK
Mr SV Ramana	Mr KV Shastry	Mrs Neela Jagannathan
MR Shankar ao	Mr Linga REddy	Mr ASN
Mr Venkatapathi Raju	Mr BN Acharya	Mr Udaya Babu
Mr Ishwar Rao Bagade	MR N Rajendra Rao	Mrs Sima Chakravarti
Mrs Meenakshi P	Mr Sarvesh Gupta	Mr Gandikota Subba Rao
Mrs MN Rajeshwari	Mrs Sunitha	Mr S Ramakrishna
Mr Raghurraman	Dr Vasunder REddy	Dr KR Ganghadharan
Mr Chalasani Prabhakar	Mr G Ramakrishna	Mr R Bhashyam

 

Multiple Email Ids of same person

 

Multiple Email Ids of same person

Many of my contacts have more than one Email Id from service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. When I initiate a message for such persons I am in a dilemma as which one to choose. Gmail suggests all addresses to choose! When the message is important, I mark it to more than one ID to ensure receipt / response.  Replying to an email from multiple IDs is no issue, as REPLY button always helps you.

 Searching email from a person with multiple email ids is cumbersome. You can not guess from which address you got it. Further searching mail is made difficult by users changing the subject line often. But, sticking to same subject line increases the thread length so much that searching within the thread is difficult. Moreover, users do not stick to the discipline of deleting unwanted parts in ‘replied-to’ messages and length of each post keeps increasing like Hanuman’s tail!

 Labels are a good way to manage searching. However, when I looked into my labels, I found I had allotted / created labels indiscriminately, more than half of which I can not now guess what they mean!

 Why do people have multiple Email addresses? What are the different purposes they are put to use? Do they see all incoming mail, though sent to different IDs, in one consolidated inbox? How do they ensure that they are spammed, the messages are not duplicated, their messages go without action required to be taken?

 I too have three or four Email IDs. Two only are used – one primary the other one for ‘recovery’ of forgotten / lost password etc.  While writing this story I discovered a few that I never used after creation and I do not know how to delete those accounts!

 There are many sites that insist on registering yourself with your email id. Usually, such sites land you in furtherance of spam or misuse of your mail id. Hence, I use disposable email Ids. I can conveniently forget about them after exploring the site for whatever is worth.

 What are your suggestions for alleviating these problems?

 

New Covid Business opportunities

New Covid Business Opportunities

As much as Covid has destroyed many businesses and industries, it has offered different business opportunities also, though not many. Hospitals, pharmacies, diagnostic centers, manufacturers of  PPE, Masks, special devices like oximeters, sanitizers etc.

In Secunderabad, one erstwhile lodging house is offering a special Covid Isolation stay facility for ten days at Rs 8000/-. Free as a part of the ten days package are: Pulse Oximeter, Spirometer, thermometer, Facial masks (10), disposable bed sheets (10) sanitizer etc (9704537965 / 6309333102).  Food / doctor / nurse / physiotherapy/ ambulance / oxygen and others are included.

As I do not want to go to a barber's shop for a haircut, a home visit barber comes with just a scissors and a comb plus a disposable apron for about Rs 350 per call. Isn't that great? 

Frequency and number of street vendors has increased. One guy refused to entertain a customer when the latter approached him without wearing a mask!

Dr P Vyasamoorthy

Why do people hide their email address and how to find them?

 Why do people hide their email Address and how to find them?

There are some people who blog, tweet, update statuses in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or other social networks and stamp their presence everywhere except give out their email address. I am sure you have come across such people. Why do they do so, I wonder.

They want to be seen spreading their knowledge / experience but they make it difficult to be reached via email. One reason could be that they do not want to fall into the hands of spammers and hackers. Hackers could send phishing mail duping you into sharing some sensitive unwittingly. Spammers will fill your Inbox with unmanageable number of unsolicited messages. Such careful people may not be IT savvy to avoid or filter spam effectively.

Or people may consider themselves very busy and important that all and sundry should not write to them; they will entertain mail only from those to whom they have given the email address – sort of super-snobbish approach, I feel.

One such example is Dr Shreya P Trivedi based in New York, who is an expert in producing podcasts for training medical / healthcare staff. She has not revealed her email anywhere?

Librarians require scholarly articles and papers published in reputed journals. Nowadays contact email address may not be easily found in some cases.  They routinely search for email addresses. So do journalists, police, donation-seekers, credit card companies etc

How to track down email address of persons to establish a genuine contact? Here are a few useful tips:

You can lookup alumni database, staff listing, commercial directories, associations where they are members, their social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and similar sources.

In the case of Shreya, I got two of them, one professional and another personal after some efforts. During this phase, I learnt a lot about her and could even locate a photo here:

https://www.todayshospitalist.com/social-media-should-you-stop-lurking-and-log-on/

I got her two email addresses via Rocketreach.co However, you need to register yourself in Rocketreach site in order to search and fetch email address. IF you are not searching for contact details on a regular basis, it may not be worth registering at all.

Unfortunately, it took so long for me to track down Dr Shreya P Trivedi that when I got it, I forgot why I wanted it in the first place! That is not funny but true.

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTIONS and BIODATAS

 

INTRODUCTIONS and BIODATAS

 

Today I would like to talk, or write about, Introductions. I arrange a number of meetings where people of eminence or otherwise are invited to speak. When it is my turn / task to introduce the speaker to the audience, I generally approach the speaker or his secretary to send me a brief formal biodata. The material I get varies in length, scope, purpose, language etc. Let me explain what I mean by this.

 

Some people are shear lazy and they mail a standard “one-size- fits-all” type of a biodata.

It may be so long and extensive that he might have prepared it when some chamcha suggested to him that he should apply for Bharat Ratna award. Or it may an application for some vacancy. Or something he wrote for “About the Author” cover page of a book that was never published.  Or it may be a part of an appeal to voters in some local Association elections. It may be in a language I cannot read or understand. In most of the cases the only common thing that I can safely use is the PPS photograph that helps me identify the person when he arrives at the venue.

 

Long biodata is useful to ‘kill’ time in cases of over allocation of time meant for the speaker and discussions thereafter. Some speakers are kind enough to tell you ‘frankly’ that they will finish much faster as they need to leave for another event. In one case, I had to read a very long biodata that when I ended, people started clapping either to show there were happy or thinking I have completed my speech!

 

In other cases, I have to put in some efforts to extract something interesting and useful to the audience of that meeting. Nowadays, it is online meetings. Face-to-face land-based meetings are out of question for many more months to come. I found out that when I introduce some speaker or deliver a talk myself, in an online meeting, I do not need to keep a piece of paper and read it out.  I open a word file where the text is kept.  During the meeting, while you are still facing the camera, you may open the word file and read it out. This way, participants won’t seeing you looking down to a piece of paper again and again when you are presenting. You are still visible to all,  on the video screen.

 

In my case I keep different versions of my biodata, meant for different purposes, in one file. And send only the relevant part to the party concerned. Couple of days ago I received a biodata, just tailor made for the audience, brief enough for intro-time specified, formal and just enough for the purpose. That was great gesture from Sri JR Gupta, Executive Chairperson of ISU3A. But such cooperating speakers are rare.

 

When a famous dignitary was arrogant enough to tell one meeting official to be very brief when introducing him, saying:” If someone who does not know me is here, he need not be here”. The official rose to the podium he said: I am very happy to introduce Mr X. He is” and sat down.  What he meant was: “He is – He is alive – Don’t understand why!”  I am not sure if this anecdote is real or fiction.

 

   

 

 

Advantages of Online Webinars and meetings

                           Advantages of Online Webinars and meetings

Covid situation has imposed on all of us to conduct or attend all our meetings online. Whether it is a small meeting of 5-10 members of a Managing Committee of an Association or a webinar where hundreds participate or online classes for regular students, video conferencing has come to stay. Hardly a year ago skype meetings were a luxury meant only for the sophisticated! When something becomes common, we tend to take it for granted and go about without appreciating the plus points. Let me try listing out benefits of online meetings so that we feel blessed.

 

1.      For organisers or host it is simple, easy and almost free of many charges. No rentals of the meeting hall, refreshments, honorarium / bouquets / mementos to speakers are involved.

2.      Participants avoid travel, pollution and save time and effort to attend meetings

3.      Participant can feign attendance by placing a placard / cut out etc on the chair or have a good photo on his google account which is shown when camera is off.

4.      You can switch off camera at will and have coffee, tea or snacks or go for a break without embarrassment or disturbing others seated next to you.

5.      You can avoid the embarrassment of having to sit next to someone with foul breadth or body odour - even coming from yourself.

6.      You can chat selectively and privately without disturbing anyone

7.      You (the host mostly, others in some platforms) can record a dance, song or speech locally on some systems

8.      You may watch / observe others(womenfolk!) with impunity, without getting caught

9.      You may note the event in (Google) calendar and get reminded automatically

10.  You can read the list of all participants in one go; At times in a physical meeting, if you are in the front row, you need to be turning back every now and then to see if anyone you want has come.

11.  You may place positive comments and appreciation about topic, speaker etc without waiting to write the same in the register at the end of the meeting.

12.  Many meetings offer a recorded version when meeting is over. You may watch this in case you have missed some portions.

13.  Generally online meetings close following the time booked during scheduling it. You can budget your time accordingly.

14.  You may leave without being noticed after you have heard your favourite speaker

15.  You may attend to email or make a phone call after muting your mike or switching off the camera.

     

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Coconut Fruit Falling on Your Head

                                          Coconut fruit falling on your head

We have a coconut tree in our garden, for well over three decades. It is in the pathway from front to back doors. The tree yields about 60-70 fruits per year during the season. It is a pity that we do not take care of it well. But it is very forgiving and friendly, despite termite infestation, lack of adequate water or enough space to grow.

My neighbor’s son, school kid, is afraid of jumping over the compound wall to fetch the ball that crosses the boundary wall and lands into our space. Not that he is wary of being chided by me but he is afraid that a coconut may fall on his head.

What are the chances of a ripened coconut falling from the tree on your head? Well that depends upon several factors such as: the ripeness of the fruit, how many times you walk past its trajectory, how many coconuts form the yield, time of the day, wind velocity if it is windy and perhaps your luck.  

There have been a few studies to determine this, both bogus as well as really good results. The often-quoted statement that “There are about 150 deaths per year due to coconut falling on the head”, has been de-bunked. The latest guestimate of a death occurring on account of being hit by a coconut is about 1 in 270,000,000. You have better chances of winning Australian Saturday Lotto.  Interested? Look up: https://www.lottoland.com.au/magazine/what-are-the-odds-of-being-killed-by-a-coconut.html

As per my observations, coconuts fall more during night than during the day. They fall in my garden space, into my neighbours’ yard or on my terrace. Monkeys play a major role if more nuts happen to fall down. We never engage a person to bring fruits (pluck) down. Whatever falls on its own, at its destined time, is enough for us. I will consider that I am lucky if they fall in the terrace. One, because, they don’t disappear through the hands of the servant maid. Two, because, if I am hit, it will be better than being hit if I am on the ground, directly under the tree – impact will be less!  

 

Observing Participants in Videoconferencing and Online Meetings

 

Observing participants in Videoconferencing and online meetings

 

Like many of you, I also participate in a good number of online meetings, webinars and video conferences. I use platforms like Zoom and Google Meet extensively. Lesser used platforms are Cisco, Skype, GoToMeeting etc.  When the speaker is not inspiring (read: boring to death!), I observe participants who dare to expose themselves via their cameras. Very interesting questions and answers come up but I shall share with you only the questions and not the answers. Here we go with a select set of dirty dozen questions!

 

1.      By looking at the ceiling fan, can you guess whose house it is?

2.      Whose wife prepares different snacks for her hubby in every meeting?

3.      Who is the participant that braves presenting himself in cut banian?

4.      Who is the guy feigning attendance by placing a card board cut out on his chair?

5.      Whom would you select as “the widest yawning member”?

6.      Who is the one who manages to sneak in during Vote of Thanks?

7.      Who is the one who focuses his mobile to the screen making you sit alert & straight?

8.      Who is the one who refuses to mute his mike by switching it back again and again?

9.      Who is the one that has an unmanageable external camera that frustrates him?

10.  Who is the one that allows his pet dog to overrule him?

11.  Who are those participants interested in showing hairy nose, donkey ears, dirty hands, bald head etc instead of their faces?

12.  Who is the one that lazes in his “undone bed” in slouching “Sriman Narayana” posture?  

 

What is your take on this topic? Let us have some fun! I am sure you are equally experienced.  I admit I am also the answer to some questions listed above!  

 

 

Image Credit: Mohammed Hassan

Book Review - Knowledge Junction of Ailments

Book Review: Knowledge Junction of Ailments by Chepuri Shankar Rao

This book is about ailments afflicting the human body. Rightly titled: “Knowledge Junction”, it reminds us that all of us are at a junction in our lives always wondering “which road to take”. This is more so when our failing health is concerned. 

Sri Shankar Rao has compiled a veritable compendium of titbits, articles and extracts. The book provides basic information on 1] diseases like dementia, cancer, Parkinson, BP, heart attacks, diabetes, jaundice, arthritis, renal failure, colic, thyroidism, glaucoma, paralysis, ILD, haemorrhage 2] medical procedures like endoscopy, colonoscopy, angioplasty   and 3] tips on food, diet, nutrition etc. Both English and Telugu extracts, short and long, have been included.

As there is no grouping or categorisation of topics you have to go through the entire book to find out what is there on the subjects of your interest. On the whole this book is useful to the common man and it is not targeted towards any specific group of readers. A number of colour photographs in cover pages show his activities and other interests like singing, speaking, skit-play,  honouring others, getting facilitations to himself etc

Shri Shankar Rao writes stories, poems and titbits in Telugu and English, sings popular and patriotic songs, organises donation camps to the underprivileged older persons, volunteers in the activities of Senior Citizens Associations. This author-published book shows another face of Rao – compiler, editor and author – in that order.

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Pregnant Ladies in my life

                                                                Pregnant Ladies in my life

Can you recount the roles pregnant ladies have played in your life? I shall try to recollect this aspect it in my own case, by narrating a few cases.

It was in 1962.  After BLibSc results, I went to Employment Exchange in Chennai and registered myself. Right on that day they told me of a temporary vacancy in the library of the office of Commissioner for Labour and fixed an interview over phone, gave me a letter, I attended the interview in that afternoon and they asked me join the very next day. It was a three months’ temporary vacancy as their librarian had gone on maternity leave. I stayed there for just a month as I had to move on to Highways Research Station!

Again in 2001, after formal retirement from Satyam Computers, I worked in MANAGE, Hyderabad for three months. This again was a temporary vacancy to take care of the library when their librarian had gone on pregnancy leave. I was offered the job for six months but had to leave it after four months to move on the ICICI Knowledge Park as that was on a three-year contract!

The third ‘pregnant’ woman was a stranger, beggar who convinced me with her sob stories, and cheated me  to part with some money, clothes, food etc. She was not pregnant but dressed up so and posed as one to earn our sympathy.

In the case of most men, the mother and wife are the pregnant women closely associated. Mother-child relationship is wonderful, indescribable and mutually beneficial to both. But the same cannot be said of a husband and his wife! The bonding may be anything from pleasant to hell. Varies with vagaries of life.

I am thankful to all the pregnant ladies in my life without exception, even that beggar!

I am blessed. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

Fwd: A Note on Joshforseniorcitizens 2020 by Tata TRust

A Note on Josh for Senior Citizens 2020 – An online extravaganza

(Dr P Vyasamoorthy)



VIjayavahini Trust in collaboration with Silver Innings, Livolink
Foundation and Tata Advanced Systems conducted a Senior Citizens
Talent Show online in celebration of International Day of Older
Persons (IDOP). It consisted of six online sessions on Zoom parallelly
streamed on Facebook during 1030 am to 12:00 pm and 4:00pm to 6:00 pm
on 2nd, 3rd and 4th October 2020 under the name JOSH for Senior
Citizens 2020. Nearly 100 senior citizens, from the comfort of their
homes, proudly exhibited a wide variety of talents ranging from
singing, dancing, story- telling, sharing jokes, art and craft pieces,
public speaking, mimicry etc. They came from Mumbai, Bihar, Hyderabad,
Coimbatore etc. One could hear not just English and Hindi, but also
Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarathi etc.

True to the bye line adopted for this show: Hum Kise se Kum Nahi, the
participants proved beyond any doubt that they are unequal to none.



Ms Goli Anuradha showed us how to make decorative plant using Ridrakha beads

Ms Mani Koppala read a poem written by her who did journalism after sixty

Smt Srimahalakshmi spoke on meditation techniques and stressed that
regular meditation even for ten minutes twice a day will be beneficial

Smt Vijaya gayatri told us a story

Sri Vijayakumar, well known to Twin city audience, performed skipping
and showed his six pack muscles

Sri Samudrala Janardhan Rao of Kareem nagar told how he learnt the
nuances of digital art and showed a few amazing greeting cards he made
out of photos given to him.

Smt Darapu Janaki Devi rendered a sweet Telugu song

Smt Dadinath of Mumbai gave a Hindi Song – she has sung more than 1000 songs!

Sri Vasudeva Rao and his wife sang Mavaa Mavaa – a sexy duet of yester years.

Smt Hira Mandadi, a globetrotter, gave impressive stories of her visit
to Australia

Sri Akula Chandra Gupta sang Thinnava Ledha ani Adigave Kani . He is a
born singer. He can sing without any notes. Has the special ability to
identify film songs in different languages based on the same tune.

Dr Sobha staged a drama in English and Telugu displaying her
multifaceted skills. The theme surrounded three characters: a
daughter, her mother and mother in law, telling how they are spending
time during corona. It was awesome. Kamakshi's introduction of Sobha
was equally flattering.

Sri Ashokraj Maidam narrated a story of a Tender Coconut vendor
wondering how he picks up tender coconuts of various descriptions just
by tapping, shaking and listening to the sound of water within.

Sri Veeresham gave an inspiring song in Telugu motivating people to
become literates.

Sri Chepuri Shankar Rao rendered a beautiful song in Telugu on the
travails of people on account of COVID , all written and set to music
by him.

Sri K Udaya Babu entertained us with a long poetic number

Ms Vijayalakshumi Prabhakar, retired from the Handicrafts sector,
showed exquisite pieces of Banjara embroidery work; she also narrated
a couple of instances of highly satisfying and proud moments when the
training of craftswomen in marketing skills bore immense fruits in
foreign exhibitions.

Sri Patalla Bakkar read a poem in Telugu on Elders Day

One Sudha Mehta gave a scintillating dance performance

Mrs Nilaxi Surti recited with religious fervour, a Bhajan number in
Gujarati, that she had learnt from her mother

Ms Krishnaveni made a speech explaining how instilling discipline,
even incorporating punishments, during her school days was beneficial.

Ms Radha Kadali sang a number from the film The Titanic – pleasing to the ears

Ms Jayasree demonstrated how to make a flower tree using molten wax
into which wax crayon colour was mixed.

Mr Krishnakumar, a retired teacher, enthralled us showing all how he
can mimic many of the famous singers of the cine world like
Ghantasala, Pankaj Malik, SK Burman, RD Burman, Mukesh, Mannade, Bappi
Lahiri, KL Sahgal, MS Rama Rao et al. It was a great treat.

Kamakshi donned a garland of grocery items like masala sachets with a
cap saying Kottu and sold her wares in an imaginative, multilingual
sales pitch. It was a unique and innovative exposition.

I missed nearly thirty percent of the shows as I had other pressing engagements.

Anamika, Kamakshi, Hira Mehta and Sailesh Mishra acted as Anchors.
Anamika was simply oozing with positivity, encouraging and enthusing
the participants. Kamakshi captivated us with her command over English
and Hindi, made innovative introductions, commenting positively about
every participant. Hira Mehta handled Hindi, Marati and other
participants effectively. Sailesh Mishra is a born anchor connecting
people in a congenial manner. His experience in ageing sector for
decades makes him the best anchor for such talent shows.

We had three days of fun, engagement and interaction indescribable.
Million Thanks to all concerned from me and others who watched the
show. For those interested Videos of the sessions are available
online, provided by Vijayavahini Trust.

4th Oct-Evening performances:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=801905230625260

4th Oct-Morning performances:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=662449687790273

3rd Oct-Evening performances:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364995214690107

3rd Oct-Moring performances:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=330906328170183

2nd Oct-Evening performances:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1002936980127631

2nd Oct-Morning performances:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1443219275873304

Why is it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens?

Why is it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens?

Many speakers, lecturers and leaders find it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens. They want to utilise their time and opportunity to fullest by interspersing their talk with jokes. The idea is to break the boredom of a heavy or serious topic, draw attention of the audience back from sleeping and to ensure better audience engagement. However, senior citizens as a group are a difficult one to tackle. Jokes do not cut ice with them easily. Why so?

 We may think of several reasons. One is that they have attended lot of meetings and might have already heard the joke in some form or the other. Many seniors are hard of hearing and cannot catch the joke quickly, if the speaker is not careful. Most of the elderly population have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations – they have no zest in living and have ‘given up’ laughing altogether; they have, like they say about frozen shoulders, frozen faces. They simply cannot laugh even if they try to and even when they know that laughing is easier than other facial poses.

 Another aspect contributing to lesser appreciation of humour among the elderly population is that their cognitive functions decline and are unable ‘understand’ a joke. The joke may be situational, language-oriented or culture or community dependent.  Placing oneself in the required context in which the joke is told is necessary to value a joke. This is difficult for seniors in a mixed, heterogenous groups.   

 The speaker may not be adept in saying or sharing jokes. He may start off with a warning: “Let me tell you a joke”. He wants to ensure clapping when he pauses after telling the joke but makes an unintended pause midway and some persons start clapping, without understanding the situation and others join him spontaneously.  Other speakers may make a mess of it by narrating a joke monotonously almost in soporific manner. Even well delivered jokes cannot wake up people who start sleeping when jokes are told.  Some speakers start dissecting their own jokes with great analytical skills that the real charm of the joke vanishes. And the elderly participants are too sensitive to tolerate inept speakers.

 Some of the assumptions I have made in this write-up may be wrong. If you really care to dig deeper, read: G Greengross – Humour and Aging IN Gerontology Vol 59 Issue 5 August 2013 https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/351005

 My purpose is  just to stir your interest  on this topic of humour and the elderly!

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Image taken from pexels.com