I hate it. That irritating habit some people have of showing off their assets, physical or otherwise. I have bigger, better muscles; I have a bigger, better car; Mine was a better, more expensive/exotic holiday; My kid is smarter than yours…

The list just seems to go on and on. And if by chance these guys get a modicum of decency they don’t say these things upfront, but instead contrive to bring the conversation around to suit their point of discussion. So while the group may be discussing a movie, things can be manipulated so that the focus shifts to the costumes the heroine wore and that opens up an opportunity for Mrs. B to throw her sarees around.

I have always hated this breed of people. And in fact my circle of close friends and even business associates has been filtered down to people who are more honest and more sincere than those braggarts who use tall claims only to cover up their short comings.

I don’t therefore dye my hair, wear a toupee or a corset, don’t high heel my shoes. I prefer with a passion to be in ‘as is where is’ mode and I slip into a wonderful comfort zone when others think like me.

Over the years these opinions of mine have become public knowledge and people have been enormously kind and excused me from their displays of exaggeration.

But ever since I have come out of hospital and a pretty torrid couple of years I have run into a wall of a totally different kind. And the wall is what I call the ‘My Misery is Worse Than Yours!’ wall.

This is a domain reserved for recent survivors of some medical emergency and people seem to enjoy showing off…

I was in ICU for over 3 weeks…

That’s all? I was in ICU for over 3 months…

My hospital bill was about 9 lakhs…

Oh that much, we spent on tips…

They removed a part of my intestine…four feet long…

My appendix that they removed was eight feet long…

I have four stents…

I have five…

I am in the third stage…

I am in the fourth…

And so the conversations go on. From multiple organ failures to multiple fractures of the bone the details keep becoming more and more, well…detailed.

And before you know it, there is a damn hierarchy in place. Senior Patient, Junior Patient and so on…then there is the rich patient, poor patient divide.

I was treated at Apollo…oh you were able to be only at Vijay Clinic?

I had 5 doctors and 7 nurses round the clock…

I had a dozen doctors and 2 dozen nurses…

You get the drift?

I mean really…given time, maybe I can get used to a ‘I have a Merc, what do you drive, eh’ kind of guy but these guys who want to compare miseries can knock on another door, in another planet perhaps. I for one want no part of this charade.