Its a dark night. The nascent moon is deeply hidden by the dark cumulonimbus clouds forming over Mumbai. Heavy rains have lashed the city. Nothing is visible outside the glass window of the hospital guest lounge overlooking the Arabian sea. The relatives are waiting with bated breadth for the doctors to come out of the diagnosis centre to get an update on the patient. Their worst fears haunting them. And then , the doctor comes out and nods his head in affirmation. He has confirmed the disease. Another chip down to this deadly new disease: OA/OD. She has consumed most of the world and almost every 2nd person is inflicted.
I remember distinctly that each decade throws up a new disease which leads the charts for a long time till something better and newer emerges. So the period of the 1980’s belonged to Tuberculosis. TB as we know it by its nick name. The 1990’s belonged to Heart disease. Attack aayega toh? (hindi for : what if one gets an attack?). This fear ruled this period. The 2000’s started with cancer raising its ugly head. And cancer went all over the place. Disease had gone global with the world economies going global. A heart attack would mainly relate to the heart. But cancer was more cosmopolitan. It could affect any part from your brain to your liver to your breast to your prostate. I reckon it had a larger reach than even the best logistics companies like DHL, UPS, Fedex etc. Another reason why these diseases ruled in their times as the undisputed leaders of human body misery was the fact that they captured the creme de la creme of the world like celebrities in movies, business, politics and fashion.
So Nelson Mandela had TB.
David Letterman, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Walters had heart disease.
Bill Clinton had heart disease. Common, even the Clintons have it.
Hugh Jackman, Sheryl Crow, Lance Armstrong were caner survivors.
Back home in the Indian subcontinent, our very own Amitabh Bachchan had TB. The founding father of our neighbour Pakistan ( love thy neighbour said Jesus, anyway) had TB. The tallest leader of the universe The Thalaiva Rajnikanth had Chronic Bronchitis and believe it or not Viral fever. What a shame. And then Yuvraj Singh and Lisa Ray are the cancer survivors we know.
It has also been observed that as you go up the value chain in the economy and as your individual wealth and nation wealth increases, you qualify for better diseases which is why the poorer nations get TB even today, slightly more wealthy ones get Cancer and Heart Disease. But then all of the above does not cover the disease which I want to talk about. OA OD. The disease that is the ruler of the information age. Took birth around 2010 and then onwards at its peak today.
Over Analysis ( OA) Over Discussion ( OD) . OA OD.
In textbook parlance , the situation in which the tongue and brain make an unholy partnership and the ears sign off on a pilgrimage is called OA OD. In this disease, the tongue keeps saying something on the brain impulses and one talks and discusses on topics ranging from politics, national interest, sanitary pads, cricket, economy, logistics business, trade wars, GDP, baby burps, yawning, size of the male ….. ego, god, religion, buildings, cars etc
It is important to note that ears need to be logged out and you need to have ZERO listening skills or minimal listening. The environments in which the disease grows is social media, conference rooms, meeting halls, forums, news rooms etc The person discusses everything yet achieves nothing. In the end, what comes out is only “Khichdi” ( Indian staple diet of lentils metaphor for gross confusion) In a chartical representation, I enumerate that the stages of human growth are as follows:
a. Talk
b. Think , Talk
c. Listen , Think , Talk
d. Listen , Think
e. Listen
When you reach stage E, you are up there. OA OD entangles you at stage B or stage C.
I have written several paragraphs on this disease. Do I have the symptoms? God save me.