Bitter Pill

I would not quite call myself a hypochondriac, but I do end up visiting the Doctor a tad more often than most other people do. Well in my defense, I have always ended up a victim in the eternal tussle between my desire to eat everything and the ability to do so. It also doesn’t help that where most normal human brains would conform to the “Fight or Flight” reaction in stressful times, mine deviously registers “Throw-up” as the only response. 

When I first moved to Bombay, my version of acclimatization involved throwing up every once in a while. Vani, my friend, flat-mate, and fashion pundit very succinctly summarized the situation and labeled my weekend vomiting bouts as the “Sunday Syndrome”. Being new to the city, I refrained from visiting the smaller neighbourhood clinics; not due to a misplaced sense of snobbishness but because of a generic assumption that the bigger the medical facility, the more credible it would be. 

The first center on my list, was what seemed to be a fairly huge medical college and hospital. A familiar landmark around where I lived then. It was a weekday and Simi, my friend, flat-mate, and philosopher very sweetly offered to take me to the nearest hospital before heading to work. I found myself in an elongated room with three doctors sitting at identical tables aligned in a row; two of the Doctors were already attending to the patients seated opposite them. A grim-looking nurse brusquely waved me towards the empty stool while the remaining patients at the doorway watched on impatiently for their turn. A scene from the CET counseling room during my pre-engineering days suddenly surfaced from the depths of my memory as I walked towards the Doctor.

The moment I seated myself on the rickety stool, I was assaulted with a barrage of questions in rapid Marathi by the Doctor. When I hastened to explain to him that I didn’t quite understand Marathi, the ward-boy (who in this case just happened to be a burly, middle-aged lady) clucked disapprovingly and nodded her head reproachfully with a ‘Don’t-know-where-they-keep-coming-from’ expression. The Doctor switched to a less rapid Hindi interrogation and I answered with equal parts relief and uncertainty (my barely functional knowledge of Hindi was no match for his medical terms in textbook Hindi). I must have managed fairly well though, for I did end up with a prescription (albeit in Marathi) from the Doctor; but the Consultation fee of a mere thirty rupees left me quite confounded. When I went to a Chemist to buy the drugs, my confusion was fuelled further, for they told me that they did not stock “that kind of medication”. It was when my confusion switched to alarm that they patronizingly explained that I had just been to the local Ayurvedic hospital!

If the thirty rupees fee raised my eyebrow, I soon ended up at a hospital where the consultation fee made my jaw drop. This time around it was a case of burning eyes and a nagging headache. Triggered by suggestions from colleagues at work and a spot of ‘Googling’, I went to a renowned (non-ayurvedic) hospital close to my locality. They had insisted upon creating a file for me so that “it would be easier when I would come for a treatment the next time around”. Their confidence in my falling ill again was mildly disconcerting. I was then ushered into an elaborate eye examination room where after much ado I was told that the discomfort was not due to some exotic eye infection but because my power had increased from -0.5 to -0.75; and yes, the fee was an astronomical eight hundred rupees! It only added insult to injury when Simi (who had in her unfailing show of solidarity accompanied me to the hospital) wanted to pick up a pair of glasses. When we reached the Optics Showroom, the optician offered to check her power; and yes, for FREE!

That did it.  The day I was attacked by a vicious bout of cough, I resolved to advance to the next segment – non-ayurvedic, non-highway-robbing medical centres. This time, I took my Landlord’s advice and visited his family physician whose clinic was a stone’s throw away. When I turned up at the hole-in-the-wall clinic however, I was a little miffed to find that he was a child specialist. I hung around nevertheless amidst wailing babies and curious mothers (probably wondering where my ailing child was, for clearly, why else would I have turned up!). I was the last one to see the Doctor who thankfully, unlike the mothers outside, wasn’t very curious. In a very matter-of-fact-way he asked me for my symptoms and before I could finish, he started penning down the prescription while simultaneously calling out to his assistant to bring the prescribed drugs.

And that was when I practically fell off the stool in shock. I don’t quite remember which caused the greater impact - the prescription that he handed to me on a yellow Post-It note or his instruction to his assistant “Sheela, woh naye sample waale tablets lekar aana”! I quickly spun around to scan the room for some sign of reassurance- a framed MBBS degree certificate or even a graduation photo with a stethoscope around his neck but the search was interrupted by the sight of Sheela walking in with a big yellow box with STD, ISD, PCO written on it. She went towards the small bed in the corner and emptied what was clearly a public telephone booth signage box. Out came a deluge of colourful pills in various shapes and sizes. She sorted through them and handed over a few of her favourites to the Doctor who promptly folded them in a used math notebook sheet and passed it over to me. I just managed to register a blur of blue capsules, yellow tablets and a dozen baby pink pills staring at me with a few algebraic equations in the background. No expiry date, no pharmaceutical composition, and definitely no logic. 

The Doctor mistook my incredulous expression for one of gratitude and launched into a friendly banter which was more of an interrogation of my personal life (definitely more detailed than the discussion of my symptoms). When he surmised that I was working in a bank, staying on rent and had done my Telecom Engineering before my MBA, he actually said, “Why don’t you send me your resume and I’ll try and get you a job with BSNL. Government jobs are more stable and you will even get a Government quarters. But no promises, huh?”

This time around I left with both, a raised eyebrow and a dropped jaw.

Null & Void

She was walking around with that huge gaping hole in her heart for over a week now. It felt as if someone had taken a giant bazooka and shot an iron cannon ball right through her chest. It was surprising how such emptiness could weigh so much. For though she felt like a large part of her was actually missing, the void in itself seemed to have an interminable weight which sapped her strength, bore her down, buckled her knees and pinned her to the ground; so much so, that the ground beneath her feet and the world around her collapsed under the weight of her emptiness.

Oh, she had cried. She had cried until the tears poured out, in the vain hope that they would flood her heart, fill the white void and seal the emptiness. And the tears had obediently arrived at her behest, like an all too eager vulture waiting to swoop down on a dying animal and end the ordeal. But they did nothing to kill the pain or heal the wound. Eventually, she told herself that she had to stop crying. But the tears still streamed out in silent batches; stealthily creeping down at the slightest hint of a trigger – a song here, a sign there. They now seemed to have a will of their own and she watched on haplessly as they took over her life.

A funny thing then started happening. She began to notice this other void emerging in the recess of her mind. The tears now seemed to be leaving a new void in their wake. Her suspicion was confirmed when she felt an emptiness take shape in her head - as if reason had deserted its abode, leaving in its place a huge black emptiness.  But in a strange way the numbness in her mind or the Null as she referred to it as, now complemented the Void in her heart.  For when the mind ceased to register the songs, the signs and the memories, the heart knew not what to languish for.

And she woke up one morning, on another grey October to find that the wellspring of tears had now run dry. But the path that they had traced between Null & Void was etched deep in her soul. And in a weird way, as the black Null embraced the white Void, she felt a strange grey wisp of peace settle round her.

Parting of the Protima

Well, I had originally penned this verse almost 2 years ago. The trigger was a rather evocative picture from the Durga Puja celebrations in Calcutta, captured by Shuboda on his website: http://wanderfulwalk.net/2009/11/13/in-the-long-run/

The reason this came rushing back to me earlier this month was, because I had ventured out on my 1st Pandaal hopping spree this year with a bunch of fellow enthusiasts (aptly spearheaded by Simi). We covered 3 Pandaals and I must admit I was completely floored by the elaborate idols and decorations. But what pleased me to no end was the sumptuous spread across the Oh Calcutta, Hangla and Sweet Bengal stalls at the venue. The exquisite, spicy sting of the Jhalmuri, the heavily layered indulgence of the Mughlai Paranthas and the delightfully crisp chicken chaap did their part to contribute to a divine experience of the culinary kind! Also, there is this inexplicable thrill of eating non-vegetarian food (legitimately, mind you) on a Puja day... It almost feels like you're flouting the rules *and* getting away with it : ) Anyway, before I digress and turn this into a food fest, here's the verse I was talking about:

After the telltale conch
Sings victory
And the rich vermilion

Proclaims glory;
With evil vanquished
And a job well done,
Yawns replace trumpets
As the mortals return
To scooters and tiffins,
To life's mundane call.
For, come Monday morning
Even the mighty fall.

There's also this picture that I had taken at one of the Pandaals in Juhu. I was given to understand that it was Rani Mukherjee's Pandaal (...No, I did not spot any Bollywood stars there!). But this is the sort of elaborate set-up that I was talking about.

Flight of Fancy

They gave you wings
To let you fly.
They taught you to dream
To reach for the stars in the sky.
They set you free.
They let you be.
They stood by your side.
They watched with pride.
And when you scaled new heights,
It warmed their heart
But higher meant farther
And that tore them apart.
But words remained unspoken.
Love didn't permit them to say
That you'd found your path,
But you'd lost your way.
For you never turned back
You didn't see their concern
The cage was golden
But you wouldn't return.
There soon came a time
When you paused in the sky;
You've travelled this far
But you can't remember why.
You're suddenly tired
As you stand there alone
You want to go back
But now you can't find your way home.

Concrete Jungle

It’s a beautiful world, the world I’ve seen,
In an unyielding grey and a glorious green;
Made of equal parts foliage and fibre glass,
It’s an elegant mosaic of cement and grass.
Forests may morph into buildings real tall,
But tenacious creepers still crop out of cracks in their wall;
It’s a tolerant world where trees and towers mingle
Welcome to my world, my Concrete Jungle

A Sinner's Soliloquouy

The sky embraces a murky night,
A mob of clouds trample the moon;
The intoxicated trees sway in a trance,
To the winter wind's melancholic croon.

But I embrace a murky fate,
Destiny tramples my life, my dream;
My hopes are crushed; I'm in a trance,
I can hear the death bells scream.

Lightning flashes an ugly smile,
The thunders roll in derision.
"A sinner pays the price of death",
The whole world screams in unison.

But in the gallows, the clouds condole,
With sepulchral tears all night through;
Until my sinning, putrid blood,
Stains the morning dew.

Be a Sport!

The massive gold rush at the Common wealth games made me nostalgic and brought back memories of my formative years in the sporting arena. Not that I had much of a gold rush or even an adrenaline rush for that matter. It was more of a mad rush to try not be the last person left on the tracks, and come to think of it my sporting arena was never more expansive than the school ground.

Nevertheless my earliest memories of sports is that of the school annual sports day in KG 2 where we had to roll a length of paper ribbon into a wad and make a dash to the finish line. Though I was the 1st one to finish rolling the ribbon; in all my socialistic benevolence, I waited for the others to finish rolling theirs as I had the misplaced notion that the actual race could begin only after everyone was done rolling. So I waited patiently with a beatific smile on my face, much to my parents’ consternation and the teachers’ perplexity. A couple of seconds later I saw one girl start running. And in a classic example of those tell-tale irritating kids in class, I turned to complain to the teacher who had flagged off the race with her whistle, except my vision was blocked by another girl who broke into a run; followed by another. It was then that by an early display of herd mentality which prevailed over common sense that I broke into a frenzied run for the finish line.

Now in the 1980s, annual sports days in school were quite flamboyant affairs. The dress code for this particular race in 1987 was blue and the format was a frock / gown. I had gone all out with an ankle length ball gown replica with ruffles which proved to be quite a hindrance while running because it wasn’t quite designed for heavy sprinting or even rapid shuffling of feet for that matter. However here again the concept of relativity made an early entry into my life though I didn’t recognize it then. The 3rd girl who had run past me seemed to have gone one step further than me in designing her dress and seemed to have added a blue veil trail to her ensemble which was well in line with the latest autumn –winter collection but didn’t quite go with her running shoes, because it kept getting under them!!

And that was how I managed to salvage the 3rd place (bronze) in the ribbon race with an amusing insight – Lesser clothes works better in Sports as well.

I then moved onto the annual sports day in 1988. This time I was a year older and much the wiser from my previous exploits. Turns out the school was as well. The school tailor in all his sensibility designed shorts for all contestants (to eliminate any added disadvantage that the attire may confer upon the contestants). My parents for their part had geared me up by giving me the added advantage of a healthy breakfast replete with a glass of glucose and all. When the instructions for the race were doled out, I got to know that the task was to drink a bottle of Thumbs Up and dash to the finish line. This time, my socialistic benevolence disappeared as fast as the Thumbs Up which I glugged down at a speed of 1000 cc/sec. The moment the last drop left the bottle I started running towards the finish line but I didn’t get very far. There is something about idlis, glucose and thumbs-up which apparently doesn’t go well together because my sprint was cut short within the 1st few metres by a stupendous, spontaneous arc of puke which effectively blurred the finish line.

And that left me with the 2nd invaluable insight - Wherever lesser clothes don’t help in particular, lesser food definitely does!

Over the next few years I had tried various forms of sports - the lemon and spoon race, needle and thread race etc. I can’t comment about the skipping race because ironically I had to ‘skip’ the race as I tripped over my rope and fell down even before the race started! As for the sack race and shot put throw, both me in my sack avatar and the shot put orb that I subsequently hurled, ended up travelling the same distance (2 and a half feet, I was told) after which both rolled over unbecomingly to the side of the track.

Anyway, years later I can safely say that I am still in touch with my sporty side-

a) I actively participate in the corporate rat race
b) Play ball with the mails that hit my inbox by proactively bouncing them off to other stakeholders with an ‘fyi&a’ note
c) Attend marathon meetings which begin at 9:00 in the morning and go on till the cows come home.

P.S: I try to steer clear of the sack race at work though, for that’s one race where the last one to finish actually gets the sack : )