Musings from Deutschland-2

Animals
The other day I came across a pathetically black cat near my window. She was perhaps devising some schemes of entering my kitchen in search of some delicacies (Alas! the state of affairs in my kitchen is perhaps not known to her). I was willing to offer her hospitatlity but I wasnt sure about the tastes and preferences of a German cat, esp. a female one. A German cat, like a German girl, is unpredictable (For that matter most girls, irrespective of their nationalities, are unpredictable!). Had it been a Bengali cat, I would have gladly offered her delicacies like fish and milk, but a true memsahib like her may not like such native food, so I offered her some biscuits along with tea. She refused to degrade herself by touching such lowly means of sustenance and looked at me with such contempt and disdain that I was ashamed of myself. Finally she, perhaps being a little irritated at such abject lack of manners, strolled away leisurely. I heard from one of my friends that in Germany every cat and dog is registered. That there cannot be any unaccounted cat or dog roaming on the streets. Cats and dogs are parts of Government database and census in conducted on domestic pets. Its truly amazing! My mom who is an ardent lover of cats and dogs (she routinely attends to some 5-6 stray cats and dogs daily by supplying them with free food and shelter in one corner of our house) was delighted to hear this. She exclaimed that such treatment of dogs and cats differentiates a developed country from a non developed one. Everybody is entitled to his or her viewpoints on developed and non developed nations. But such a profound economic statement is hard to find even in the grand theories proposed by Neo Keynesians or Neo Malthusians.German dogs are really a treat to watch. There are varieties of them - from the most menacing bulldogs and shepherds to tiny peeping Poms (not to be confused with peeping Toms - They do not peep with any malintention, certainly not with the intention of seeing the queen in B'day suit). Every second person on the street is led by a dog or vice versa. By vice versa I do not mean that every second dog on the street is led by a person, but simply the fact that either a dog leads, or, in the most unusual cases, it lags. And German dogs do not bark, without a valid reason. One of the valid reasons, for instance was somehwat like this - while walking past a house whose prominent member was a bull terrier, I was humming a melancholy tune to myself. Suddenly I heard a thunderous roar of appreciation coming from that house - from Herr Terrier himself. Who knows, may be dogs are true lovers of music and can appreciate a budding artist like me, who is much detested by friends and foes alike for trying to nurture such artistic talents. I felt for once much encouraged, but for reasons unknown to myself, I never attempted to hone my musical talents while venturing past that particular house again

Doctors

Beware of doctors and medicine........This was the motto that I was following since my choldhood, to keep away from doctors, ever since I was a kid I hated doctors because of two non essential factors - 1. association of doctors with injections having sharp needles that prick 2. the picture of an evil smirking doctor beside a patient in pain, which I had seen probably in a comic strip. When I grew up I also learned to live with both doctors and phobia of doctors. But then the both the fear of injections and the image of an evil smirking doctor had largely faded away, giving way to benign andgood humoured family doc's face.So far so good, untill couple of close family members expired because of apparent lack of care and proper treatment on the part of the doctor, and phobia gave way to distrust.But then I always thought, may be Indian doctors are like this, they are less professional than their overseas counterparts.But the myth was shattered, and badly too, after staying for 1 and half years in Deutscheland.The story goes on like this -One of my colleague has a tooth ache. He goes to a doc (called arzte in Deutsch, to be more precise zahn arzte for a dentist). The arzte fills up the cavities and advises a small surgery to straighten the slightly curved wisdom tooth. That his wisdom tooth is curved is easily deductible provided wisdom and its namesake tooth has a perfect correlation. He agrees and goes for a surgery. And the tooth which was supposed to be healed in 3 days goes on creating more pain and swell every day,and the zahn arzte washes the wound daily,routinely..All goes well, till an eventful Saturday. On weekends, likemost of his German counterparts, the zahnarzte is not available and my colleague still has pain. So after lot of pleadings the zahn arzte finally agrees to refer him to a hospital for dressing the wound over weekend. And after visiting the hospital my coleague receives the shock of his life. His tooth condition was almost fatal, if not operated immediately it might cause harm to his heart and apparently the zahn arzte has made a wrong whole to drain the wound, instead of draining it from upper protion with the aid of gravity, he had tried to drain it from lower portion, defying all possible laws of physics.Rest of the story can be put in brief, It took my colleague another 2 weeks, 6000 Euro and loss of 10 Kgs to fully recover.Moral of the story - irrespective of their caste, creed, race and nationalities and the language by which they are known doctors are still doctors.