SERVING ENDORPHINS
“Why do we need to laugh? We need to laugh for our health. When we laugh, we release small protein molecules called endorphins. These endorphins energise our brain and are supposed to be anti-aging. So, if you laugh for 15 minutes a day, perhaps you could live up to 300 years of age,” joked Dr. Quresh Maskati at the Rotary meet last Tuesday. Dr. Maskati’s topic was: Humour in Medicine.
As laughter energises the brain, the chances of developing Alzheimer and other such diseases reduces. Additionally, Rotarians have a motto of Service Above Self. So, if you live longer, you serve longer, said Dr. Maskati. He then shared some of his laughter lessons. He said, “You crack jokes for your own benefit, not necessarily for someone outside. Every one of us is capable of cracking jokes. I hear people say that they can tell a joke to a single person but not in front of a crowd. This means that you have not chosen the right audience. Everything come with practice so when you start telling jokes, it is good to practice on your grandchildren – I am assuming that most of us here have grandchildren. Go to the grandchildren before they begin to understand your jokes. They laugh because you laugh – they love you. So, two things are necessary: a good audience and a good hand grip.
Your grip, initially, when you are practicing should be strong. I learnt this from my friend Vihang Vahia who was a psychiatrist. He would bump into me in hospitals and, every time, he would hold my forearm with a firm grip and say: ‘Quresh, have you heard of this one?’ Chances are that he had a repertoire of five jokes and I had heard that one. But I could not escape because of his grip.”
“The worst thing is that because he had short-term memory loss, five hours later, in another hospital, he would repeat the same hand-grip, and ask, ‘Quresh, have you heard of this one?’ I would say it was the same one he had told me at Breach Candy. And he would laugh, say it was different and start again. So, a good hand-grip is important. The other thing I learned from Vihang was to tell the same joke multiple times in a day. Vihang would tell you the same joke three times. So, by the time he got to tell it the fifth time, hopefully to somebody else, he would actually be good at it.”
Dr. Maskati shared his first day at the GS Medical College, when a professor started talking about the human body. “He asked, ‘Do you know which part of the human body when aroused or excited expands to 10 times its size?’ One of the students was a girl from Beed, Maharashtra, who was offended. She got up and said, ‘Sir, we come from a small town and we are good girls. We are not used to being asked such shameful questions!”
“Without batting an eyelid, the professor said, ‘Young lady, there are three things wrong with you: one, you have now entered medical college where not a single body part is shameful – you have to learn every part of it. Secondly, your knowledge of anatomy and physiology is extremely poor; I was talking about the pupil in the eye. And the third is that lady, you are going to be disappointed when you get married.”
“I was then living with my father in a building facing the sea and we were on the 11th floor. Early morning, I used to get up to do Yoga and exercise. I stretched my arms out of the balcony and thanked the lord for the beautiful day and suddenly felt something falling into my hand. It was a glass eye. I looked up and saw a neighbour from the 13th floor in a transparent negligee looking down. I was already a Rotarian so I ran up to the 13th floor to return whatever was in my hand. Part of the four-way test. I rang her doorbell. She opened the door and said, ‘Come in, what will you have? Coffee? Tea? Or?’ I chose the ‘or’ option. One thing led to another and time just flew by. I said, ‘I must leave now, I have a surgery at 9 am but tell me, are you this hospitable to all your neighbours? She said, ‘No! Only to those who catch my eye’.”
It is difficult in our field of work to get good staff. One time, I was interviewing a male secretary for the job. We always tell them not to tell the other interviewees what they were asked inside. But job aspirants always surround the person coming out of the interview room. The same happened with this person. He said, ‘The interview was easy and going smooth, I was answering everything correctly. Then they asked me one thing and I think I made a mistake. They asked me to show my testimonials and I think I showed the wrong thing.”
One great rip-off is our concept of five-star and seven-stars hospitals having executive health checkups. An executive who has absolutely nothing wrong with him, pays a good amount of money to the hospital, which then runs a series of tests on him, to then tell him, at the end of the day, that there is nothing wrong with him. This is a racket that= goes on and on. Mr. and Mrs. Shah, both in their 60s, went for an executive health check-up. They were seen by the doctor and the doctor then said, ‘Mr. Shah, everything is alright, you are perfectly fit, do you have any questions for me?’ He said, ‘Yes, since you asked, as you said we are perfectly fit, though in our 60s we do enjoy sex but the problem is that the first time I have sex, I feel all cold and clammy and the second time I have sex I feel hot and sweaty; I don’t understand why. The doctor asked Mr. Shah to leave and looked up Google but couldn’t find the symptoms. He called Mrs. Shah and asked her about Mr. Shah’s complaint. She said, ‘He is a stupid fool. We have sex in January and July!”
“In medicine, there is no shortage of humour. Once, as college students, we were on a train from north Bombay to south Bombay. There were four or five of us from= Elphinstone to Churchgate. A pretty young girl got in at the next station and saw us staring at her and said, ‘If you all give me Rs 5 each, I’ll lift up my skirt a little higher.’ We all gave the money and she did lift her skirt a little higher. We thought it was great. One station went by, and we were still staring. She said, ‘If you give me Rs 10 each, then I’ll show you where I had my appendix removed.’ Being medical students, we knew where the appendix scar is. So, we were thrilled. We gave her the last of our money and asked her to show us where her appendix was removed. She showed us Saifee Hospital!”
“Sometimes, no matter what we advise, patients take advice from elsewhere. A patient went to Vihang and said that he couldn’t sleep at night, he dreamt he had monsters under his bed and that they would eat him up. Dr. Vihang said, ‘You will have to go under a long treatment and medication and it will cost so much money. In about 12 sessions, I’ll be able to cure you.’ Of course, the patient never came back. Dr. Vihang met him on the street one day and asked what had happened. He said, ‘No, I went to the pub that day as I was depressed and I told the bartender my problem and he gave me a ten-dollar solution. After that I had no problem. He simply told me to shave off the legs of the bed. End of problem!”
One of my classmates went abroad as a doctor and made millions. He decided to get married for which he came back as it had to be a Gujarati. He came back and met about 15 girls and selected one. Married, they went back not knowing much about each other. He had a lovely palatial home with a big TV that could have dish antenna to watch a cricket match. The new bride walks up to him and says:
Wife: One of the steps is a little lose, I might trip.
Husband: Do you think I have ACME hardware written on my head? Don’t disturb me. At the drinks interval, she told him about a bulb fused in the kitchen and asked him to fix it.
Husband: Do you think I have Phillips written on my head? Don’t annoy me. She waited till lunch and for the third time, she told him about the loose gasket of the refrigerator, and asked for help to fix it.
Husband: Do you think I am a GE mechanic? I am so annoyed with you! I am going to the pub to watch the match there. He left and an hour passed by. He felt that perhaps he had been a little too harsh. So, he went back a little guilty only to find that everything had been fixed. He was amazed and worried and turned to his wife and asked what had happened within that one hour?
Wife: When you were gone, I was crying and our kind neighbour Mr. Smith passed by. He asked why I was crying and I narrated everything. Now the husband was sweating a little.
Husband: And then?
Wife: Mr. Smith was kind enough to fix everything for me.
Husband: And what did you have to do for it?
Wife: Well, Mr. Smith said, ‘Either you can give me wild and passionate sex or you can bake me a cake.’
Husband: What cake did you bake for him?
Wife: Do you think I have Mongini’s written on my head?
