Bora's Banter Series 1. Episode 3

Series 1, No 3 December 2020

 
Who eats “Meat Bones”?

A very close friend of mine, Sanath, migrated to England in 1975. He was a qualified veterinary surgeon and had found work in the meat industry. Not long after he arrived, he had the following encounter with his local butcher.    

Sanath enjoyed good food and was an excellent chef. He had invited Kumar (his cousin) and me to lunch that weekend. He had promised to give us a tasty meat curry, something our taste buds were yearning for. So he went to his local butcher for fresh meat. Whilst in the queue, he noticed a pile of small, fleshy meat bones.  A wonderful beef curry with lashings of bone marrow must have flashed before his eyes! 

When Sanath finally reached the head of the queue, the butcher asked him, “What can I do for you Sir?” Pointing to the pile of bones, Sanath started to reply, “Those meat bones look ideal for a curry….” The butcher abruptly interrupted him and said loudly and condescendingly, “If you eat those bones, what will you feed your dog with?” 

Sanath smiled mischievously and replied, “I feed him Fish and Chips”.

Burt the Colostomy Stoma

I started to play golf in the early nineties. I formed a regular three-ball with Jack, a very nice English gentleman, and Sarath, a Sri Lankan doctor. Jack had a past history of Ca colon followed by colectomy and colostomy. He used to refer to the colostomy and stoma as “BURT”. 

One day, while he was with his granddaughter, the colostomy began to play up, making him grimace with pain. She asked, “Grandpa, what is bothering you?”  

“Oh dear, Burt is giving me problems” said Jack. She shouted in exasperation, “Burt is a bloody arsehole!!” 

A Matter of Life and Death: Objectively or subjectively interpreted?

A very good friend of mine was a fanatical football and rugby fan. He was ecstatic when he managed to get tickets for a F.A. Cup Final at the Wembley Stadium.  On the day of the match he had an early morning, short elective surgical list of minor operations. Postoperatively, he discharged all his patients from the private hospital he was working at and gave very clear instructions to the ward nurses not to bleep him, except in case of a life and death emergency. This was a time when mobile phones were not freely available and doctors had to be (contactable) out of hours through “bleeps”. 

As you all probably know, the F.A. Cup Final is like the Super Bowl: a hugely popular event and a sellout.  Over 70,000 fans attend. The surgeon and his wife had an uneventful journey to the stadium. They were at the turnstiles, about to enter, when, much to his surprise, he was bleeped. He had to get to a telephone booth immediately.  He rushed out, saw a telephone booth, but with a queue of people waiting to get in. He looked around for help and spotted two mounted policemen. He rushed to one of the policemen and explained his predicament. 

The policeman got to grips with the situation immediately and proceeded on his mount to the booth. Within seconds, his megaphone boomed: 

“We have an emergency. A surgeon needs to call his hospital urgently. This is a life and death emergency. Vacate the booth and let this doctor have access to the phone”.  

Within minutes, the surgeon was in the booth.  People had gathered outside the booth to witness how the surgeon was going to deal with this emergency. 

All eyes were on the surgeon whilst he phoned the ward. The nurse who bleeped him apologised profusely and told him that she had received a call from a very agitated Mrs X whom he had discharged that day. When asked whether the call was urgent, Mrs X had declared that it was indeed urgent. 

She said, “My husband is eager to find out when we can start having sex again!” 

A Judicial Check on Executive Power!

Mistaken Identity

Mr L.W. De Silva was a famous Thomian: a contemporary of Warden R.S. De Saram and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. Like the English Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he was a Classics Scholar who composed and translated Greek poems into English and vice versa. It was LW who translated “Garland of the Muses” (“My mind to me a kingdom is. Such perfect joy therein I find” Sir Edward Dyer I think).

I got to know him well through the Old Thomians Association, U.K and I would visit him at home. He related the following story to me. 

When Mr L.W. was working in Ceylon in the nineteen fifties, he was the Commissioner of Assizes. He had an appointment to see his minister at the Secretariat which was behind the Old Parliament in Galle Face. 

He got into a crowded lift. As the doors were closing, a nondescript looking man charged in, pushing the existing passengers aside. Mr L.W. gently tapped this man on the shoulder and politely asked, “By the way Sir, do you happen to be a Minister?” The man, delighted to be mistaken for a minister, asked Mr L.W, with a broad grin, “I am not, but what made you think I was one?” L.W. promptly replied, “Because you are behaving like one”. 

ANATOMY VIVA: Give us another one just like the other one

A Block Senior, Jega, was repeatedly failing in anatomy (like the Thomian, whom I have already referred to, who compared his failures at the SSC to successive pillars in the College Assembly Hall). This was no surprise as his priorities were W,W and S + gambling. He had no time for books and had not visited the college library. At a viva the Prof gave him a skull. Prof pointed to the foramen magnum and asked him to describe what went through that opening. Jega very confidently said, “Many a pint of Beer Sir”. The viva ended there and unsurprisingly, Jega was unsuccessful.   

Jega’s friends picked an opportune moment to approach the Prof to plead on behalf of their friend. The Prof went soft and told his friends to tell Jega to choose two bones and study them thoroughly for the next viva. At the viva, the Prof asked Jega to select any bone and describe its anatomical relationships in detail. Our friend selected the Right femur and gave a very satisfactory answer. 

The Prof was very pleased and told Jega, “Well done. Pick up another bone, repeat the performance just like the other one and I will pass you”. 

Jega beamed and picked the Left Femur! It was a déjà vu for the Prof who, realizing that Jega had outwitted him, nevertheless stuck to his word and passed him! 

The Multi Faceted “WAL”

The word, “wal” was used in different ways in the Sinhala language: as part of a name and in idiomatic expressions. Look what happens when we use it abroad. 

Going back in time…..

A Sri Lankan doctor was doing his residency in a North American Hospital along with a few other Sri Lankans. One day, the Registrar reprimanded him. Our compatriot got a bit stressed. For a moment he thought that he was in Colombo and blurted out, “Dr Smith ekak kiyannang, wal part dammanne Epa.”(Dr Smith I will tell you one thing: do not act in an odd way). 

Amusing  Introduction…..

I was invited to lunch by my friend and neighbour Derek. His lovely wife Chitra sat me by a couple and very innocently made the usual introduction: “Bora meet Mr Walrajah and Mrs Walrajah”. I was familiar with names like Walgama, Walgampaya but I had not heard of Wal Rajah. Subsequently, I found out that his name was actually Rajaratnam. It is likely that his initials were W.A.L. Incidentally, his sister Shanthi is married to a very close friend of Lucky’s, Daya W. 

A difficult venepuncture

A friend of mine was working at a hospital in North London. He was in the operating theatre and heard an irritated sounding voice making utterances in Sinhala: “Mita Molowapang”.

It was the voice of Dr Artie Stone (a traditional name from Ratnapura), a Sri Lankan male Anaesthetist, who was performing a venepuncture on an obese man. Obviously he had for a moment thought he was back home and slipped back into his native language! 

Wishing all readers a very Happy, Merry Christmas and Prosperous New yea r- Bora