About the BP wallahs!

Swalpa adjust maadi...

A lion in turn, had to go out and kill a man to demonstrate his lionhood. As these days lions are not exactly prowling around the malls waiting to be killed, there are different means by which men can be separated from the from the boys.

In today’s corporate whirl, you are a wanna-be till the day you get yourself some High Blood Pressure. It’s a rite of passage. High BP marks your ascent from a panting struggler up the ladder of life to someone who can now stop and glance smugly at his altimeter. The higher your BP, the bigger the lion you may have killed in days of yore. And you are certainly someone who is a leading rat in the pack. A mover and a shaker as opposed to the moved and the shaken.

High BP gives a man stature and dignity. And brands him as the rightful inheritor of the chaos of the world. More important, he starts to see himself as a vital cog in the whole creaking groaning system.

You have no BP worth talking about? Go to the bottom of the class.

It shows a distinct lack of ambition and inability to take on stress.

You are a loser and a non-starter. Someone who slumped down to nibble the grass when the other horses took off at a gallop at the starter's shot.

Having high BP provides endless fodder for one-upmanship among competing males. (And all males are competing). “What? Your BP is only 180 by 120? Mine climbed up to 250 by 180 last night.”

The other person chooses to get a little more creative about his achievement. “That's nothing. My doctor looked at my BP in amazement. Never, he said, in the history of medicine have we ever seen BP rising to levels like this…and you are alive!” He looks around  to see if people are applauding his singular achievement. Then he tops it with his punch line.” He had actually called in a priest to give me my last rites.” Now the jaws really drop.

High BP claims are also a subtle reminder of the feeling of martyrdom a successful man is entitled to. When he announces his soaring BP, he is also saying to the world at large and wife in particular: “Look how I take on stress to keep my kids in their Nikes and my wife in her chiffons!” It also give him the most legitimate reason to play truant from office and saunter over the golf course everyday. Under doctors’ orders…but naturally.But more than anything else, it bestows on him the right to blow his top at drop of a pin “Wwwhhhat! How can you let a mosquito in the room! Don’t you know I have high BP? You want me to have a stroke?” Unfortunately the same equation does not apply to women.

A woman with rising BP is seen as high-strung, paranoid harridan or a PMsing or a menopausal giddy biddy.

I do not know what a lion with high BP is perceived as.