JOIN USI was reading with pride the news of our Mirage jets pounding our neighbour’s terror camps in cross-border air strike, to avenge the death of our jawans, when my friend Thambiah dropped in for one of his monologues. His subject of the day was not bombs, but differently, balms.
“Today is Monday,” he began as if revealing a closely guarded secret, “which means my wife should have headache. Eucalyptus Oil, Tiger balm, Amrutanjan pain balm, Zandu balm and other ‘cluster bombs’ will always be in readiness at home. Did you know my missus might be the culprit of the depletion of eucalyptus trees felled for the extraction of oil for banishing her pain?”
“You might think other days will be pain-free! No, sir! They would not be. She does not play favourites. Tuesdays are reserved for ear ache. Left ear and right ear on alternate weeks, the regularity baffling even our ENT specialist, who can transplant cochlears, eyes closed. Wednesdays are reserved for pain in the neck, though she uses that phrase as a synonym when referring to me in a chat with her mother."
"Where was I? Yes. Wednesdays are taken care of. Now, a Thursday may fail to follow Wednesday, but not the pain on the right shoulder. It would radiate going over the nape clockwise and descend on her left hand, like Cauvery in Srirangam. Even sessions of TENS, the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (pooh!) did not cut much ice with her.”
He went on all cylinders. “Next is Friday, reserved for low-back pain, the universal tormentor of ladies who stagnate at 40 even after going years past 60. Science may send a man to different planets in the galaxy without turning a hair, but medicine, its curative branch, has no answer for women’s back-breaking backache."
He had never spoken a truer word. "Saturdays enjoy the exclusivity of pain in the knee joints, of the calibre of lumbago, sciatica, gout, or rheumatoid arthritis, or whatever. Surprisingly, only in the right, not left, though both jointed skeletal versions were born at the same time. And finally, we come to Sunday, sir, when it will be pain all over the body, as if it were a plenary session."
Thambiah stood up. “I have to rush to my chemist, who might have nicknamed me a ‘One-Man Balm Squad’. He dances gleefully like Prabhu Deva at the sight of me, since I buy the balms by weight like they offer saris during a SALE. My God! Is that the time? I will have to rush. My wife will be waiting for the carton of Tiger Balm. Thank god, she is not a Shakespeare buff, else she would have paraphrased Lady Macbeth and moaned: 'Here is the smell of turpentine still. All the pain balms of the world could not cure the maladies of my little body.'