Hello all..its been raining in Bangalore and when I am feeling better I like to think of it as pretty romantic weather. Only now, I don't.
Over the past few days I have eaten more than a sane amount of ice cream, I have gotten wet in the aforementioned 'not so romantic at the moment' Bangalore rains, waded in cold cold ankle deep rain water and watched the 10PM show of Hancock in an air conditioned theater while eating still more ice cream.
To cut a long story short I have landed myself with a crammed throat, running nose and the persistent need to breathe through my mouth like a fish. No they breathe through gills don't they ? Anyway I am only drawing a visual analogy to them opening and shutting their mouth from time to time..lets not get hung up on the technicalities here! Gills..Lungs..whatever...when you have a cold its a blessing to be able to just breathe!!
This 'running nose hurting throat' and I have some sort of a history now. Like 'crouching tiger hidden dragon', 'running nose hurting throat' always brings images to mind. Not of people in white flowing clothes flying from tree to tree, but of several white tissues and a red nosed me trudging from room to room.
This one time while working in Bombay, I was down with the worst throat infection ever!
First the left tonsils then the right and then the entire throat pained and pained, my nose was all stuffy and my head felt so heavy. I put off going to the doctor cause I hated it. My roomie introduced me to a maroon colored Ayurvedic syrup, I was drinking it down with warm water like the COCA COLA beverage. No effect.
Then I was prescribed hot desi ghee. For three nights I smeared it on my throat and chest, wrapped a muffler over it and smelling like a dairy farm, lay like a mummy in the hope that I would awaken to an infection congestion free morning. No effect.
A good friend also tried Reiki on my throat. I was getting desperate.
Staying at work was getting tough. I sounded like a mountain goat. The colleagues gave me looks soaked in sympathy infused with amusement.
I was irritable and my temper was hanging by a thread. Mentally, I would issue warnings - anyone making fun of my voice will get bathed in chrome yellow “it don’t drip-it don’t ooze-it just sticks” - super yucky PHLEGM! Beware you have just irked the she-demon of super infected tonsillitis!
Ok so.. I wasn't feeling good at all. It was only getting worse and then one day I lost my voice!
In a hoarse whisper that was not sexy at all, I explained my state to the Allopathic doctor. Yes yes you sadist I have finally come!
Over the next week, I consumed an unhealthy meal of four kinds of pills, each of a different shape and color, one cough syrup and one other medicine to gargle with.
After all those years its back!
The common cold is the most deadly mental ailment! It renders people irritable, restless and sometimes violent lending serial killer tendencies. I have been tempted to clobber every other person I come across as merely their voice penetrates like a hand drill through my phlegm filled head! Quite scary I think.
Sometimes I blow snort bubbles like a mutant toad! I am sure I make a funny sight.
Not to mention gross.
While everything I eat and drink compulsorily includes ginger,pepper,honey or all three, every concerned friend calling home, suggests THE ULTIMATE home remedy for the common cold.
From gargling with tea decoction, drinking tulsi and ginger juice, inhaling turmeric fumes, to eating raw onions and immediately falling asleep! I have been prescribed it all!
Well, the bright side is I have so many will wishers. Let's hope all the well wishing makes the cold less common.
