I sprint the last 100 meters or so of my early morning 5 km jog/run so my cardiovascular system gets a good workout. On days that I really push it – gasping for breath as my heart explodes against my rib cage – for those 20 seconds I feel closer to my mom who, during her last hospital stay, ended up with her breathing tube yanked off and, I was told, gasped for a while before they were able to restore her breathing.
I shed a tear and place my hand over my heaving chest. For a minute I feel the dusty, particulate-laden but nevertheless life-giving air fill my lungs and my valiant, heaving heart thudding. I wonder at this evolutionary marvel of a pump that would need to keep at it for however long I lived.
With such thoughts of life and death, as I coasted to a stop that day, I craved coffee and my eyes strayed towards the push-cart surrounded by a clump of early-morning work goers who were enjoying their morning cuppa. But my heart sank as I looked at the cups that the vendor was industriously handing out.
Yesterday, the coffee came in disposable paper cups. While the environmentalist in me worried about whether these were really compostable cups, it satisfied my hygiene requirements. But today the coffee was being handed out in steel tumblers. While these eternally reusable containers were ideal environmentally, the immunologist in me felt his stomach churn as I saw the vendor’s assistant grab the used containers 4 per hand, dip them in one bucket with water followed by another final wash before he re-used them.
Several years ago, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid as I wrapped my cold grateful hands around the hot tumbler and slurped it noisily. But education and travel had taught me things – I couldn’t help as my brain kicked into high gear and quickly did the math (or biology or both).
Of the roughly 20 people who had contributed to make the “broth” that was bucket 1 by that early hour, assuming that one person carried a disease transmitted via the oral route, if the bacterial/ viral/ parasite load was high enough, it would still deliver a good dose to me despite the >10,000 fold dilution after the containers were rinsed in the 2nd bucket.
So despite the coffee being scalding hot, I stood a good chance of inoculating myself with a potentially deadly bug. Which bug though? I wasn’t going to let a potential garden-variety strep throat infection come in the way of my post-run elixir enjoyment, but I knew I was only indulging in some wishful thinking as what I really feared was the spectre of TB. But wait, if TB was commonly transmissible through shared saliva, the dise-ase would be more widespread than curr-ently believed. Perhaps it is, perhaps not.
How about that garden-variety strep-throat that I had so airily dismissed a minute ago? It would probably infect the epithelial cells lining my mouth and esophagus and upper throat over 12-48 hours and be a full blown infection with peak bacterial levels after 72 hours before my valiant immune system would have a chance to beat it back.
That was a satisfying outcome, but that potentially left my throat out of commission on days 2 and 3 with a temporary loss of voice over a two-day period as a worst-case scenario. I would have been willing to take that chance too did I not have a meeting with the boss man on day 3. I just couldn’t risk it, I realised.
Thus, it was with a heavy heart that I passed the coffee vending cart and walk-ed home to greet my sister-in-law, who, despite being in a rush to get ready for work asked, “Sunna, would you like some coffee?’’ Meekly I say, “Sure!’’ and while I sip some great coffee from a clean cup, I still feel wistful at my loss of innocence.
Published 30 March 2016, 18:20 IST