Resigning to vaccination

Right in the middle

While standing patiently in a long-winding line for my Covid jab, I harked back to my younger days in my village when school-going children were mandatorily administered smallpox vaccination whose four roundish scars are still visible on my upper arms. They are as enduring as the personal identification marks recorded in my school leaving certificate.

I often find it amusing to turn over in my mind how my cousin and I, agemates, strove to avoid vaccination. For vaccination, we learned from the already vaccinated senior students, caused excruciating pain unlike a single shot of injection. And it involved multiple puncturing of our arms by a two-pronged, bifurcated needle. Foreknowledge of the ensuing pain prompted us to steer clear of the vaccination.

One evening, as we returned home from the play, we were greeted by unpleasant news: In a couple of weeks, all school-going boys and girls would be inoculated for smallpox in the school. Since my cousin’s father, head of our joint family, was the village officer, the vaccinator, we were told, would come home for inoculations — an ordeal the village officer enjoyed!

Besides, there were about ten boys and girls eligible for inoculation at home, justifying the vaccinator's home visit. Nearly terrified by the news, the next few days our efforts were focused on how to be in the good books of Krishnan, the vaccinator’s son. He was our schoolmate, a year junior to us. We wanted him to talk his father into exempting us from vaccination.

As sops to Krishnan, we decided to give our textbooks to him and his cousin, Krishnan’s classmate, in the following academic year for free. Usually, such books extracted a price from the juniors. Krishnan would like this idea, we assured ourselves. Upon hearing us, he couldn’t help having a mirthful laugh.

Though Krishnan’s initial response bordered on indifference, he did talk to his father who asked him to tell us that those who have shunned inoculation did so at the cost of getting infected by the life-threatening scourge which had killed many and left people dreadfully disfigured.

Those scary words made us throw our disinclination for inoculation to the winds. Moreover, there was a reassuring factor. The vaccinator’s face was always writhed in a disarming smile, exuding bonhomie, giving one an impression that he was incapable of inflicting pain on anyone, leave alone schoolchildren. All this led us to resign ourselves to vaccination.

Smallpox no longer disquiets us, thanks to vaccination. Undeniably, vaccination would make Covid-19 too a history. In the meanwhile, let’s keep our fingers crossed!