Stamp Stamp

I stamped it with my left foot, with right foot in the air. Then similarly with my right foot.  No change. Stood on top of it with both feet on. Exerted some pressure, released some pressure. Absolutely no change. I am talking about the bathroom (weighing) scale which is always kept under the stairs and never found a place in my bathroom!  I sadly realised that my strict exercise and diet regime for over a month became an absolute waste. But what fascinated me is that even after getting stamped over and over for years, that poor fellow still obediently displays me my weight with no grudge! In fact each time he needs a stamp to perform!

 “Thalla chavuttiyal pillayku kedilla”, they say in Malayalam. Kind attention to all mothers and kids – what it means is “if mother stamps on her child, no damage will do to the child”. Of course, symbolically this means a lot. But this fact obviously was not derived by watching 50+ kg mothers and 3+ kg kids found in human race. This phenomenon was observed in chicken. Those pretty birds that always get killed. Get killed, eaten by humans when they are healthy and culled and buried/burnt when they are found with any of the bird-flue variant viruses. One should watch them when they hatch and baby chicken emerge out of those egg shells. While taking them around, the mother hen will stamp on those little ones mercilessly. And those little ones get more energised after each stamping as if nothing has happened. So, yes, some types of stamps appear to be harmless, on the contrary refreshing!

Stamping inadvertently can create some trouble. This person in my village was walking on the road and he stamped on a snake like thing. Lucky for him it didn’t bite him, but unlucky for the snake, he had a hunch that it had crawled and settled in to a nearby rat hole. People gathered. They were dead sure that if it is a cobra - by the way cobra was abundant in that area – it would remember this stamp for ever and it would trace him down one day and take revenge. What options now?, locate the snake and kill. Crowbars arrived. Pick-axes arrived. Shovels arrived. Digging happened. Within ten minutes they were able to extract the snake out, kill it. They were right– it was indeed a cobra. They were sure it was a baby around 2 feet long alright, but it was adult enough to recognize who had stamped it and was capable enough to build its own family in a few years’ time. To follow the stamper and launch a massive attack on him and his family. Sad part was that the killed cobra did not know any of these facts!

Indiscriminate stamping can happen, in stampedes. It can prove costly. When your life is in danger and you run to escape, you don’t care on what you are stamping on. You are least bothered whether it is another human being under your feet or anything else for that matter. We had gone to watch a musical night by Malayalam playback singer Jayachandran during nearby temple festival. He was a good singer, he used to get one or two songs in a year, while the legend K J Jesudas used to sing almost all other 100+ songs. But those one or two songs by Jayachandran were mega-hits. Even I sing those old songs, especially when I get angry and it is good way to contain my anger. It became a solid trait in me, everybody in my family knows when I will sing those songs. So these days I eagerly wait for an angry occasion to hum those lines, else it would result in a total misunderstanding of the situation. 

While we were enjoying the songs we heard somebody shouting “Aana virande, Aana virande”( Elephant became rampant !). It could be quite possible, after a day’s hard work in processions, one of the elephants would have got wild, how much ever melodious way our man was singing! We had to believe. Luckily we were at the back and we rushed to a nearby building and stood pretty on its terrace. Then I did see those stampings, indiscriminate ones.  People were running helter-skelter. We didn't see any elephant ! Fortunately, it was an open space leading in to the road, so no body died. There were injuries here and there. Elephants were happily relaxing at the back of the temple. People who misguided the junta by deliberately shouting that elephant got rampant were also happy. They were happily counting how many gold chains they could snatch in the whole melee.

In general, any type of stamping is not advisable. It does no good to stamper or the stampee! But you will find certain small percentage of people around you who are like bathroom scales. That behavior is pathological in them. They can show output only when they are stamped. By all means please stamp those bathroom scales, if that is the only way you will get desirable output from them. But then make sure that your stamps are optimum, delicately placed, in such a way that they are hale and fit for subsequent stamps down the line!