One of our Assistant Professors was getting married.
"Now you must learn to walk like a woman" said another woman Assistant Professor to her. "You need to appear delicate and womanly, not like a soldier on march."
The to-be-married one smiled at that. I did notice a little slowing of her gait for a few days afterwards, but not much change in the style. She went to have a good marriage. When I mentioned this to my wife, she said there were grooming institutes which taught such things. One of the methods recommended by a knowledgeable person was to keep a heavy book on the top of the head and walk without dropping it. She wanted to show me how.I had my Gray's anatomy. But I loved the book, so I decided to give it to her. I settled for the preventive and social medicine book, which she dropped on the third step. I had dropped it enough times when I had gone to sleep reading it, so it was not damaged further noticeably. But I got the idea. That was quite some time ago. I noticed something new recently, which reminded me of that training exercise. Two of our senior resident doctors were walking ahead of me towards the hospital building. their gait was real slow and careful, quite different from the usual rush to get things done. Such gait is usually seen only in TV ads. I wanted to ask them if they were in training, or if they were getting married and someone had advised them to walk differently. When I drew abreast of them, I saw they were holding small plastic cups of tea filled to the brim, walking carefully so that the hot tea would not spill and burn their fingers. I distanced myself from them, lest they spill the tea trying to show respect to me [which they do until they pass out :-)]. But this could be an exercise better than the one with a book on the head - books are expensive and have a better use.
