Cold comfort
Call it by any name, it’s a nightmare for the common man.
It’s that time of the year again in Bengalooru. The sun makes a brief appearance giving a semblance of a hesitant visitor. The wind and the rains engage in a merry dance playing havoc with the environment. On the streets in the morning, schoolchildren wait for their bus braving the cold while shivering in their cardigans and mufflers. Visiting rooms in hospitals are inundated with patients.
The onset of monsoon unearths every virus known to man. Fresh entrants on the bacterial scene are prodded and analysed in research laboratories. Call it dengue, chikungunya or just the plain old virus, it’s still a nightmare for the common man.
When I go to the doctor sniffling and coughing, he writes down a prescription and mumbles something. “What’s that?” I croak aloud unable to hear him as my ears are completely clogged up. “Take a weekend break to Mahabalipuram — clears up your sinuses in no time,” he repeats without batting an eyelid. For a few seconds, I’m not sure whether he’s joking. But he’s dead serious.
Back home, I make a quick call to my cousin in Chennai. “This heat is unbearable. I’m coming there for the weekend!” she announces before I have a chance to explain the reason for my call. When I try to talk her out of it, she is adamant. “I’d prefer rains any day over this enervating heat. I sweat all day and am totally drained in a few hours after I wake up in the morning. You don’t know how lucky you are!” I bite my tongue resisting the urge to take umbrage at her comment. When I feebly try to come up with a rejoinder, I end up in a paroxysm of coughing. “Oh, you have a nasty cough. What did the doctor say?” I am tempted to give a blow by blow description of my visit to the doctor but my cousin is already on travel mode.
In earlier trips to her house in Chennai in summer, I often ended up looking like a dried prune by the end of the day. When I bitterly complained about the weather, my cousin would look askance and say, “It’s all in the mind, dear” as she sailed through her household chores. The cheerful smile on her face with the sweat glistening on her brow simply added to my ire. I could hardly wait to get on that train then to salubrious Bengalooru. The wheel had indeed come a full circle.
