INLAWS & OUTLAWS

Some daughters are in.
Others are out. Especially the variety that marries your son.
In that sense they are like Quarks: some are Up, Top and Charming, the others Down, Bottom and Strange.
Just so we are clear, the latter are also called Daughters-in-Law presumably to soften / blur the fact that they are considered outlaws.

The TV channels do a roaring line in Mum-in-Law  and Daughter-outlaw spats. While multitasking with a multitude of electronic devices (mobile, iPad and surfing on a laptop) I keep a sharp ear open for the inlaw-outlaw spats; and there's plenty. Surf any domestic channel and you will find it hard to avoid. This used to be the staple of Bollywood movies too, but ever since they discovered colour film, skimpy clothes and Swiss locales, they have moved on.

The outlaws are outlaws by birth. Not for us the new-fangled theories on nurture Vs nature. By not being born in a family you become an outlaw in that family, if you are a girl. Our girls are well mannered, well brought up, accomplished and full of social graces, lively, dont talk too much nor too little, etc etc. All round good eggs, if you dont mind a non-vegetarian analogy. Outlaws on the other hand are the antithesis of all of the above. By definition.

There is a saying in Tamil that if an outlaw breaks a utensil, it is considered made of bronze (presumably when this originated bronze was the most expensive metal known to them) and if it was was broken by the inlaw it is a mere clay pot. An outlaw can't win.Again by definition

In the TV versions, the inlaws are stately matrons impeccably coiffed and made up with row upon row of pearls and gold around their necks. Somewhat broad of beam too, to use a shipping analogy. They dont so much as walk as float while making an appearance. If only they were less substantial I would have said they waft in. They only come in one version: strong willed and steely eyed; eagle eyed for the errors, omissions and misdemeanors of the outlaws.

An outlaw cannot win, by definition. If the son of the family is thin, she doesnt feed him enough. If he is obese, she feeds him too much. If she makes him work out, the dear darling is being made to sweat it out; if she doesn't, she doesn't care for him. Is she tames his wild bachelor ways, he is henpecked; if she doesn't, she is herself wild. An outlaw has to learn to cook but not nearly as well as her inlaw; god help her if she attempts to go one better. You see, the inlaw's view of the son hasn't grown up with the latter: a son is one that needs to be kept happy at both ends. Since he has stopped wearing diapers (never mind that many don't start wearing the pants even after they get married) the only thing accessible to the inlaw is the inlet. An outlaw must never compete with the inlaw for access to this.

An outlaw has to survive in a hostile ecosystem consisting of different female members of the inlaw family. The latter are capable of what Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance"; so splitsville is no use, even assuming that one succeeds in beating a separate path. The men usually are mute spectators and prefer to let the females enjoy their little games. So the outlaw has no option but to focus on her own little darling and hope that when he grows up she can have  her day. Do unto other what was done unto you, etc.  And thus the cycle repeats itself.

When the outlaw happens to be your own, her inlaws become the outlaws.

THE SIMPLE LIFE

We live The Simple Life in Chennai.

Living The Simple Life involves repeatedly professing that one lives the simple life and that one does not need or want anything that ordinary mortals (translation: you and me) cannot do without. It involves proclaiming that one is used to the hard life and is ready to live it again if called upon to do so.

Don't get me wrong; to be an adherent of the Simple Life you do not have to give up anything; you just have to profess to be prepared to, if so required. The acceptance of the daily bounties of life is merely to please someone else: mother, father, family, wife, children et al. You must at all times appear not to want anything for yourself and must constantly beat yourself up with hardships and self-denial. Don't worry, you wont really have to live the life of a monk - someone will always persuade you to partake of the good life and you will do so to please them!


The concept involves abnegating the material as well as accepting it; acceptance not just of the greater cosmic inevitability, but of material things - the latter mainly and only to please the offerer. It might seem oxymoronic that you reject and accept at the same time. That is the beauty of this concept. You negate your need for something but accept that thing in order to please someone. Brilliant, isn't it? You can have what you want but just make a song and dance about how you can live without it and how you are accepting it merely not to offend anyone.

Lets start with the very purpose of life according to the votaries of The Simple Life.We must live this life lest we offend someone who put us here in the first place. We have no desire to live, but since we have been placed here for reasons unknown by powers unknown, we must not upset those powers. Our continued existence must never be confused with a positive desire to live or even to merely exist. We live so that our parents, wives, children and friends don't need to grieve (there are those who make their near ones grieve every moment of their existence, but they are exceptions). We must act as if we don't owe anyone anything but we must make everybody feel they owe us something.

I am here to please my Maker, I go to school to please my parents, I strive for good grades to uphold the honour of my family and school, I get married to please my parents, then I live for my children, after which I renounce everything for a better afterlife ( which is apparently the only instance of my wanting anything for my own sake).

In the TSL scheme of things, one does not express a preference for any item of food or even to eat: one merely eats in order not to displease the one who cooked. The usual refrain is, "not that I want this or that, I eat whatever is placed in front of me in order not to upset the cook ".

It all starts harmlessly enough with an inability or unwillingness even to make a choice, express a preference in food, an item of clothing, or even to say he or she needs anything. In all fairness the females of the species have no problem in expressing what they prefer; the problem is that not only they tell you what they want done, but leave you in no doubt as to how they want it done. It is the male of the species who show preference for TSL. Does it sound like a positive preference for something? Then I must be wrong. There is nothing positive about it. TSL is built on an strenuous avoidance of expression of a preference for anything. Is it negative then? It is certainly not positive. I am inclined to be very charitable today and say that it is neutral.

The votaries of TSL appear as though strenuously denying accepting anything; while being served food it looks as if they are fighting it. Eating is something they do in order to avoid wastage of food which is bound to follow the act of not eating... An extra helping is justified as saving someone else from having to eat leftovers the next day...so on and so forth.

They touch material objects as if they were red-hot or is about to bite them back. They don't consciously go to a place; they merely drop in on something / or someone on their way to some other place. Don't embarrass me by asking if that act of going some place else isn't itself an act of wanting (to do) something. I still haven't got this fully worked out. One day I will. For the nonce the reader has to be content with my empirical observations. They will accept a ride in your car if you are very insistent and that too only because not accepting your offer will offend you.They are quite prepared to walk miles, mind you, but accept a ride in your car lest you will drive alone; Or to help you use the Bus Lane which otherwise you may not be entitled to.

The cornerstone of the TSL is relentlessly professing detachment from all things material. In practice it is like what was said about Mahatma Gandhi - that it cost others a great deal to keep him in poverty.

It takes a lot of effort to help someone  live the Simple Life.

TENDULKAR'S MONKEY II

The monkey is off........

THE WORM TURNS........

Let me start with an apology for a mistake the readers might make in equating worms with young women who are the subject of this post. The link is clearly not mine nor the error, but still the apology is worth making for its in a good cause, namely, today's young women.

The proverbial turning of the worm is supposed to denote a victim giving up his victimhood and successfully turning on his tormentor. Or, as in this case, her tormentor.
What brought on this inquiry into victims, worms, women and tormentors? Simply put, some recent stories of matrimonial match-making in my extended family.

Recently an uncle of mine was very upset with his cousin's daughter for embarrassing the family (and no doubt him personally). He was trying to get the girl - the girls' parents actually - interested in his wife's cousin's son. For those unfamiliar with this format of matrimonial alliances, let me briefly add that in this part of the world, marriages are arranged between two families with the bride and the groom constituting two necessary but not sufficient components. If they are happy, it's considered a bonus. Their happiness is not, in the crude American neologism, a "deal-breaker". It was assumed that with the efflux of time (a phrase we love in these parts) the two would find a satisfactory working arrangement somewhere between physical war on the one side and happiness on the other. In my younger days when  my thoughts were quicker and my tongue was a swashbuckling and somewhat irresponsible organ, I would have - actually was known to have - described such alliances as driven purely by the economic considerations with one side aspiring to greater wealth and the other needing to find a match for a fast-depreciating asset. With age has come certain circumspection and amusement has replaced anger. Enough said about me.

The young lady in question was allowed to meet the eligible young man who, as already noted, was the said uncle's wife's cousin's son. My uncle in a way was the meat in the sandwich and was caught in the middle. His stakes were very high indeed. The young lady met the young man suitably supervised. Not in Chennai the Victorian-style chaperoned meeting for the lads and the lasses with the chaperon trailing discreetly behind, within eyesight but out of earshot..

She reportedly took the lead in what my uncle described as an "inquisition". Considering that the current day Chennai boys of certain social stratum are best described as "duhs", I was not surprised that it was so. She proceeded to ask him about his career, future prospects, pay ("gross as well as net", my uncle recalled with indignation)  etc. Then he was queried on his "liabiliies"  which my uncle felt was very forward and very impertinent. He is a product of the times and mores in which the women were supposed to concern themselves with making and raising babies and the men took care of everything else. Then came the clincher which blew my uncle off. Even at this distance in time he is barely able to contain himself, thinking about it.

The girl asked the boy  if  he would come into the marriage with "any baggage", a line of inquiry which even in retrospect has my uncle seeing red and seething with unspeakable anger. "The audacity of it" he exclaims while narrating the story. For a while I wondered if I should let him know that being a modern girl she could have been inquiring after his "package" which she would have to live with the rest of her life.Wiser counsel prevailed and I resisted the urge. He would have burst an aneurysm. Needless to add that the boy's family didn't take kindly to being considered "baggage" and the talks broke down.

Another recent story involves the parents of the boy going to meet the girl. The plan was that if they approved of her, then a "skype meeting" would be  arranged. It amazes me how a traditional ritual is being modernized in its structure but not intent. This process known traditionally as "seeing the girl" involves the boys family visiting the girl's home where she would have to serve refreshments (expected to be made by her own hand, but much cheating has been known in this aspect), speak when spoken to, pay her respects by genuflecting before the boy's family, sing a song or two (classical - Bollywood a definite no-no) and may be even do a step or two of dance where such proficiency has been claimed by her family. In other words a thoroughly humiliating experience for the girl (to briefly slide back into my youthful ways of describing it) while the boy's side took it all in to the accompaniment of sweets, savouries and coffee.

This story has a happier ending - at least in my opinion. But I am in a minority of one. The boy's father for one was totally aghast. When the boy's family walked in, the girl was reportedly seated one leg crossed over the other (a cardinal sin and sign of utter and unspeakable disrespect in these parts), and in deep conversation on her cell-phone. Much to the annoyance of the visitors she failed to get up. She also failed to genuflect before them. She continued her phone conversation, after waving a "Hi" somewhat airily  in their direction. That the visitors were offended is putting it mildly. Saner counsel prevailed and she quietly withdrew deeper into her home with her phone leaving her parents with the by-now-impossible task of carrying on a conversation with the visitors.

See what I mean by worms turning? de Beauvoir, Friedan, Steinem, Greer, Firestone, Millet, et al may have written tomes on women freeing themselves from the men-allotted historical roles. But here in Chennai we see them actually doing it.

And I am loving it  (despite having have a son who is yet to marry)

AN ERUDITE NATION

We are very erudite people. Indians in general are. Mind you, only some of us even more so.The world is told ad nauseum how in this nation of 1.2 billion people less than one-third can read or write and that even fewer can do those things and add and subtract as well. The population that can read, write, add, subtract, and take the nth root, all at once, must be countable on one finger. But we can all multiply and do that very well too. Division is best left to the British - who specialize in it - and to our politicians. It will be safe to say that those who can do all the above and integrate and differentiate as well is practically zero. I would have said zero, but there is the slight chance that there is that one person somewhere in the darkest corner of Bihar who has made it his life's mission to do all these things simultaneously in some sort of grotesque mathematical multi-tasking.

Such facility with mathematics is grotesque because it is not natural. Consider the fact that many primitive tribes do not have a plural in their primitive languages; they just repeat the word for a mammoth or lion to mean more than one. The problem is, if you kept  repeating "the lion" ten times to indicate having spotted a pride of ten lions, by the time you finished counting you were breakfast for the lions. So the prehistoric people kept it neat and tidy - if you spotted lions you start saying "Lion" and after the second time you winged it faster than your neighbour. What I mean is that notwithstanding some dubious research, we humans are not hardwired for mathematics. In any case not the ones who survived the predators. There are exceptions and Chennai seems to provide most of it.

As part of being erudite we are also a nation of men and women of letters. Literally. Letters that we prefer to affix before and after our names: Dr, Mr, Mrs, BA, MA, MBBS, MBA, Phd, etc singly or in combination as in BA; MA; BEd. Our first President had a Dr affixed infront of his name. So was our second and then our third after which the standards took very precipitous dive. After that one's proximity to G was more important than academic credentials. The G's themselves shunned academic credentials.

Down south standards actually improved. We not only have educated men and women in our political class, but they in addition were Artists, Great Man of Knowledge (this title has so far only been bestowed on one person,  by common consent), Professor, Revolutionary Leader, Captains, Majors, Field Marshals and sometimes hyphenated combinations of two or more of these. These prefixes were in addition to and not in place of BAs. and MAs  which they preferred to affix after their names. Sometimes you had the slightly oxymoronic Dr.So-and-so, BA; MA.

We love to encourage erudition. We do this by starting engineering colleges and Universities at every venue possible and some impossible ones too. If we had the Himalaya ranges running through  the south, they would be festooned with colleges and universities of various types. Naturally they would have titles like "Highest Engineering college"  for men, women and even those in between. Where the average Westerner would prefer to enjoy a ski-slope we would prefer to study inclined planes. Rain shine or snow we pay respect to the goddess of learning. Er, not learning, really, but "diplomas". This last named is actually not accepted in the South. A "diploma" holder is not really in the same league as a "degree" holder. For example if I had a diploma in automotive engineering (in other words a car mechanic), I wouldn't want anyone to know it. A diplomat, on the other hand, especially the eponymously named malted spirit, is much sought after.

We had a few Chief Ministers who were men of letters. The grand old Chanakya of Indian politics authored an accessible interpretation of the Mahabharata. We then had The Great Wise Man and then The Artist, both with MAs after their names and an artist who was universally known by three initials. Some of them  wrote screenplays for movies and the others acted in them. They were all regarded as men of letters because one way or another they had a lot of letters in front of or after their names.

The highest form of expression of an opinion as also of our erudition is a letter to the Editor of The Hindu, our venerable and soporific newspaper. "I shall write a stinker to the Editor of The Hindu" was and still is considered the ultimate threat which made many quake in their boots. The unshod peasantry didn't care one way or another.

The current chief minister continues this fine tradition of erudition founded on our  learning. Except that she  writes "strong" letters to the Prime Minister. On nuclear power stations, dams, fishing, and terrorism.

She has no letters after her name but plenty in front of it..

PETROSEXUALS

Today I learnt a new word: Petrosexual. I have BBC's infantile and scatological presenter Jeremy Clarkson to thank for it. It is obviously a take-off on Metrosexual which itself is a cheap knock-off of Heterosexual. The Metrosexuals I have seen do not appear to be heterosexuals. Being not a hetero helps perhaps. It is not my intention to discuss sexual orientations and their rights and wrongs here. In addition to my belief that such matters are intensely private I do have a healthy fear of the ire of those who are "differently orientated".


Petrosexual. Who is one? Petros used to be called petrol-heads a short while ago. You see Clarkson's infantile pranks may be popular with certain audiences but he  is not the arbiter of English language trends. So petrosexual is really a wannabe neologism yet to find its place under the sun. I have no doubt it one day will. At this moment it is still a wannabe. Who really is a Petro? For the answers we must perhaps get into the etymology of its more established sibling, the Metro.


Wikipedia defines a Metro thus: Metrosexual is a neologism derived from metropolitan and heterosexual coined in 1994 describing a man (especially one living in an urban,post-industrial, capitalist culture) who spends a lot of time and money on shopping for his appearance. Debate surrounds the term's use as a theoretical signifier of sex deconstruction and its associations with consumerism.
Dr Dictionary has nothing to say about them preferring to dwell on Heterosexuals instead. 


If we follow the same train of thought, then there would seem to be a justification for the neologism. Prima facie. There are metropolitan men who are heteros and who get off on owning expensive performance cars and driving them at high speeds. They fit the other requirements too: urban-living, post industrial, capitalist and prone to spending vast sums on fast women and faster cars. I wouldn't want to deconstruct their sexual signifiers,  although it is rumoured that some had theirs reconstructed.

I object to this bias  in favour of men of certain orientation, to the exclusion of those who are differently orientated. I foresee a protest march by the LGBT. 

A petrosexual is to cars what a Metrosexual is to personal grooming. David Beckham was considered the original Metro. Still is. Closer home many failed actors and wannabe page three boys fit that description. It is amazing that although some famously well-groomed men like Anil Ambani were not talked of as Metros. I don't know if he was ever miffed by this omission, but metro or not he can have any girl he wants whenever he wants. Men like him are probably too busy with their business to be full-time Metros. As for Metros being Hetero I dont entirely buy that  description. You wouldn't too, if you have seen anyone officially certified as a metro. I have seen a few officially certified by the arbiter of such things, the venerable Shobha De, and to my eyes they looked as straight as a dog's tail.

A Petro has to be as vain about his car as a Metro is about his looks and grooming. Those cars have to be fast, insanely expensive, totally not-green,  and about as much a family ride as a Saturn V moon rocket. He also has to be someone who knows how to drive such a car and actually revel in driving one. I am not sure that our own indigenous variety of Petros fit the last two requirements: I once caught the scion of a very well-known business family sitting in the ultimate German sports car while his driver drove. He looked very sheepish at being found out and shrugged his shoulder as if to say, "what can I say, its the traffic". He does not qualify as a Petro although he would like to and meets the other requirement concerning fast women.

Unlike Metros, Petros do not have to shave  their chest. 

A TRAIN JOURNEY....

We are justifiably proud of our railways. We have perhaps the longest network if you exclude Russia China and the USA.  As we say we have one of the most extensive railway system (in our version of English "one of the" is always followed by a singular noun) in the world. Unfortunately where we used to have a lot of diversity in the form of different gauges (track widths) now we just have one. Gone is the excitement of starting the journey on one gauge to arrive on another after switching trains somewhere along the way. Gone also is the childish pleasure of seeing a quaint "toy train" of the narrowest gauge and the even greater fun of traveling in one, all hunched and crushed together. Then there was the meter gauge (exactly a meter in width) which was all we had in the South for a while unless you counted a track that sneaked, like a dog that has been caught squarely by a well-aimed young boy's stone, out of Madras and wound its way down to Coimbatore and thence to Cochin. The meter gauge went from left to right, top to bottom and then diagonally for good measure, on a map of peninsular India. My dad, getting on a bit and thus prone to dispensing arcane and at times inane bits of information from his childhood, points out that a meter gauge line ran from Murmugoa (Margaon in modern times) to Machlipatam (the modern day Machlipatnam, or fish town in Telugu), right across the peninsula from west to east, connecting two colonial enclaves- the Portuguese one on the west to the French one on the east with a broad swathe in between of what the Brits preferred to believe was their territory. A resourceful uncle of mine claims to have shipped, when there was some sort of disruption to the Broad Gauge line, trainloads of coal to his factory deep South from the north using only the meter gauge tracks, whose existence was mostly unknown to all except a crafty few.

There was an apocryphal story circulating in the form of an email some time back that the width of the railway track was determined by the width of the rear ends of two horses. Without getting into a discussion how this could have been so or on equine rear ends, suffice it to say that the story has a certain authentic ring to it. History being what it is it is entirely plausible that that's how railway systems evolved. The thing of greater interest isn't so much how railways evolved, as the evolution of rear ends of differing widths of the same genus for, if equine rear ends were what decided the gauge widths, then equine rear ends themselves must have been of differing widths. Not to mention rear ends of horsey women the like of which seem to populate Royal houses especially the English speaking ones. A friend once remarked that a certain British royal had a face like the rear end of a cow but I think he let his dislike of cows overwhelm his better judgement. Whichever animal it was, the likeness of royal faces to animal rear ends is not in dispute. Speaking for myself  I am always reminded of Bombay double-deck buses when I see the face of a certain page 3 personality in Mumbai - and then again I might be doing those sturdy buses an injustice.

A certain gauge is also known as the "Indian Gauge". It is clearly an honour to India that a specific track gauge is named after it. Unfortunately no one else seems to care for it and thus it is in use nowhere else. A pity. It could possibly be the width of the rear-end of a pair of Indian oxen. Now most of our tracks are being converted to this gauge in order to "standardize"  it and increase interoperability (yet another American abomination in which the modern world abounds). Standardizing is not to the "standard gauge" which shall remain confined to some urban transport projects, I understand.

Whichever gauge, whatsoever their origin, whatever the length and direction of journey, all our stations smell the same - of human excrement. Our trains do too. A friend who is now a British citizen has strong views on this saying that when a nation is full of some stuff the latter shows up everywhere. But we have made progress in the matter of railway smells. The purely biological nature of the railway platform smells have been replaced by the combined ones of powerful disinfectants and excrement vying with each other to overpower the other, succeeding only in overwhelming poor travelers such as me. I hanker for the days of steam locomotives when the stations seemed less filthy - is it a trick of the imagination or simply the cleaning power of steam? I remember those locomotives used to belch substantial quantities of steam with almighty roars. Or may be it was that the combined odour of the steam and coal smoke masked the fetid ones.

The train normally arrives covered in what can only be described as dried up remnants of one giant vomit. I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone would want to get inside something looking so uninviting. There is much jostling shoving and pushing and a general rush to get inside this vomit-covered steel worm.They all must have something important to get to. Once inside things aren't much better except that while the smell of vomit permeates you don't actually see any signs of it. Most of the time. This is all oh so relativistic - I am told that inside worm holes in space you don't notice time. Or mass or distance. Or something. If I was inside a worm I wouldn't want to notice anything. I wouldn't want to be inside any worm at all in the first instance; good job too that I shall be cremated and not buried when I go and thus will not wind up inside any worm..

The insides of our trains look like they have been put together by an army of children with very few tools, even fewer skills and no training at all. It is symbolic of our penchant for the simple life - if something can be done simply and made functional, then why bother with aesthetics? One of the cornerstones of our way of life is the abjuration of anything remotely resembling comfort; for self or for others. We practice it in our trains. As much thought as an amoeba can muster has gone into safety devices too. Spurred no doubt by the results of a previous accident enquiry commission the railways decides to place inside each Air-conditioned coach a hammer with which to break the window glass in order to make one's escape in the event of an accident. Except that then they proceed to screw the lid tight on this hammer. Now you are required to break the glass to get the hammer with which to break the window glass to escape......except some moron forgot to place a hammer inside the little box before sealing it closed. There is however a helpful outline of a hammer painted in red should you wonder what the little glass box is meant for.

Our trains used to be divided into Passenger Trains, Express Trains and Mail Trains. Then there was the Goods Train. You normally didn't want to take the last named unless you are the "Guard" who flagged it on and off with green and red flags which were nearly indistinguishable  from the business end of the train where the driver's spartan office was located. This last named  was definitely not the proverbial corner office, but was warm, spartan black, noisy and offered, if you leaned out dangerously far, sufficient visibility a mile ahead, assuming of course that you  were not myopic. If you were myopic or colour blind you didn't tell anyone about that. Actually it didn't matter. Although it appeared as if the train's movements were controlled by the waving of red and green flags by the "Guard" or at night time by the waving of oil-lit lanterns with red and green lenses, these movements were largely symbolic (not at all shambolic, mind you) and meant for the gawping young boys (girls were generally uninterested in trains except the wedding train). The optimistically named Guard was usually someone too old to drive the train and obviously myopic, with thick eye-glasses. He could hardly guard himself let alone the whole train. But the thing worked on confidence. He acted like he wasn't bothered and generally no-one did bother him. 

The Passenger Trains were meant to carry, well, passengers. They stopped at all stations. They worked on the principle that it is not important when you got to any place so long as you got there. Passengers generally shunned the eponymous trains. Except when it was important to be seen to be making an effort to go some place. Or when they  wished to collect extra daily allowances - the passenger trains were guaranteed to enable you to claim 2 days' worth for a journey that should normally take half a day (usually no allowance for half a day). If passenger trains stopped at all stations, the Express Trains stopped in between the stations and thus the only difference between the two is that lights on the latter worked at night - usually. The express trains also gave their name to a type of coffee, no doubt on account of the copious amounts of steamy noises they made as did the eponymous coffee making machines. The Mail trains carried, well, mail and also important people. The passengers on a Mail train seemed to have a certain je ne sais quoi, and a swagger when they strolled at a wayside station. They looked askance at the passengers on a passenger train and those on an express train. Mail traveled on these trains. So if you wrote a letter and decided to travel to the letter's destination the same day, you would arrive earlier than the letter which kind of defeats the entire purpose of  the mail and mail trains. Some newspapers were named Express and some Mail and the latter mostly concerned themselves with the lives of attractive babes. I am not aware of any named after Passenger trains.

These days mails travel on something called the internet which no one has seen, but which  most people swear by and which appears to work most of the time. Somewhat like God.