I think, therefore I write
Before you judge my life or my character…
Walk in my shoes, Walk the path I have travelled…
Live my sorrow, my doubts, my pain and my laughter…
Remember everyone has a story to tell…
When you have lived my life, then you can judge me.
Until later 🙂
Be ready for anything.
Hold on to yourself.
Life does go on.
Hope is the best chance.
There are days like…
Missing a bus and waiting for half an hour among the huge crowd at the bus stop.
A can’t-get-a-break busy Monday.
Heavy rains when you are half way and you forgot your umbrella.
Your hair just won’t set.
You start making a hurried Maggi and realize the gas is over and there is no power for the induction stove.
You get into the bus and realize that you have only a 500 rupee note for a 12 rupees ticket.
You didn’t notice your weight increase in the last few months.
Your boyfriend does not understand that you cannot get off work early.
You realize that you haven’t blogged in a month.
Your bus stops a good 20 feet from you and by the time you board, the only space that is left is near the exit.
Your health plays hide and seek with one or the other issue causing daily trouble.
And then there are days like…
You miss a horribly crowded bus and get an empty one immediately after.
A work-done-early Friday.
You step inside your cozy home and it starts drizzling.
Everyone compliments your new hair-do.
You finish all the cooking and the gas burns out.
You have change to manage the entire week.
You suddenly discover you have lost a couple of kgs.
Your boyfriend plans a surprise evening and your boss is on extended leave.
You get more thoughts to write and compliments pour in for your blog.
Your bus stops right at your step and you get that 1 empty seat.
Your health is in a good shape for a while and you are happy.
However the days are, life does go on.
Until later 🙂
My life has had more experiences of the genre Health. Note that I said my life and not just me. Yes, that’s right. I mean health as in my health and the health of my near and dear ones whose health affects my life. How it affects us when one’s near and dear ones suffer from chronic ailments which has to be dealt with a day-to-day basis is a huge thing which would need another post and to refrain from digressing I am postponing that to some future post. My point is when I saw people around me having bigger problems with their health for some reason, I always thought to myself that though I cannot be deemed perfectly fit and healthy, I can be called a normal person who gets the occasional cold and a rare fever, one who is not having a great stamina but otherwise okayish to live a normal life without exerting much. *touch wood*
My history with wheezing is exempted since I have been cured since long and my hyper sensitive skin is an exception that I have written about in this post. But my mind always knew at some level that I was taking advantage of the fact that my body is not hyper sensitive and being the food freak I am, hogged on junk food and food that’s good for the taste buds but not necessarily to the body. I have taken my health for granted at so many instances all the while my conscience reminding me that it takes so much time to heal but just one trigger for the body’s condition to go downhill.
You ask me what brought this all now, my health got back at me giving me a reminder or rather a threat saying that I should refrain from my recklessness else it would fail me. I was down with chicken pox for the past 2 weeks. That was on my dreaded list from childhood. Whenever anyone spoke about it or how they got it already and hence they are immune to it, the fear would come up. I did not have it during my childhood. So, with the vivid descriptions of people who had it, somehow it got etched as one of the most feared diseases of my list. What made it more threatening was the fact that it’ll hit everyone at least once in life and I knew my turn would be any time.
 The only part of my body which is hyper sensitive is my skin. So any bug bite that normally does not have much effect on others will have allergic reactions in me. I am the official bed bug tester at my friends’ place. While all my friends would be happily dozing off oblivious to the bed bugs sucking their blood, I would wake up with multiple allergic eruptions even if there is a single bed bug and hence the bed would be deemed unfit for sleeping and a call to pest control would follow immediately. This is one example out of many instances of hyper-sensitive skin.
I have had nightmares about skin eruptions all over me due to some allergic reactions and they always send a shiver down my spine 😮 So with this history, when I was diagnosed with chicken pox the first thing my mind did was to freak out. My parents had gone to visit my bro in US and were not available for me to turn to. This thought almost caused a panic attack about who will take care of me in such a situation 😯 Thankfully my aunt and grandma were in same town and they were a godsend care in the situation [I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss my mom. There is no one who could match a mother to look after you, whether you are ill or not. A mother is the best whom none can level with]. When the pox peaked, I felt as if all my nightmares were coming live. That was one panicky night which I would never forget in my life.
The irony of this whole thing is some part of my rational mind knew that all the skin eruptions are a result of the body’s attempt to push out alien particles and to heal eventually. Body is an excellent doctor in itself. It knows how to heal itself. Unfortunately, we and our lifestyle never give a chance for the body to work its beautiful healing techniques. As I recovered, the panic subdued slowly and the rational part of my mind started its action. It reminded me how people are facing far worse health conditions these days, it reminded me how one should take good care of one’s health no matter how good it is already, it reminded me how my body did nothing out of ordinary in my case and it did what it had to do to protect me from the virus and heal me and in spite of nothing out of ordinary how my mind panicked. It was an already known lesson but not an already learnt one. That mind gives up and panics much before your body does. That mental strength counts so much more in recovering from physical ailments. I mentally saluted the people who put up a brave front to so many health issues on a daily basis while I freaked out so easily for something that everyone faces in life. Although the other part of my mind (it’s almost like an alternate personality) still shivers at the thought of comparatively trivial/smaller issues, I realize that I need to pick myself up and look at the bigger picture of taking good care of my health.
Until later 🙂
P.S: I have written just the first phase of my reaction. There is another reaction phase which is on a totally different note on which I will write another post – The belief that chicken pox occurs because of the wrath of the goddess Mariamman and mostly due to some neglected prayer/offering to the goddess.
P.P.S: Now that I am recovered, my mind plays its dirty antics 😈 to start on the reckless lifestyle and eating habits but this time I am determined to beat it out. I know no one is getting any younger by every day. Start taking care of your health before it is too late 🙂
P.P.P.S: My feed reader is overflowing with unread posts. I promise to read them all as and when I can but commenting on every post is something I don’t have time to. So excuse me. I am just getting into the groove of normal life with so many pending tasks and I have a life to reshape.
On reading this post of Sri’s, it struck me that I have a kind of opposite experience when it came to lost things. I have lost many precious things in my life and have searched for them as if my life depended on them, but they never came back. We all would have had some things – significant or insignificant in material value but that we hold very dear to heart. When we lose them, the feeling nags in the bottom of the mind for a very long time. Even though you let go, some or the other thing makes you remember them and you gaze into the memory lane and dismiss it as nostalgia. But that feeling never leaves your heart.
In my case, this happened twice. One was a silver ring gifted by Adit with a cat’s eye stone when we were in 6th grade. It was given to him by his grandmother which he gifted to me for some reason. It was a normal pretty-looking ring, but I took such an attachment to it since I loved the purplish tinge of the stone. I wore it all the time and I lost it in our school ground when I was playing. I searched for it among the grass for so long that I missed the next class searching for it. I knew it fell just there, a few yards distance but I never found it. Till date, whenever I see a ring (even prettier and more expensive ones ), that ring’s memory and the feeling of possessing it rushes back inevitably.
Next thing was a watch gifted by a friend. Years later, when I think about it now, I have lost touch with that friend and don’t even know where she is but losing that watch which she gifted haunts me still. The clasp was a little loose and I was procrastinating getting it corrected. One fine day, when I came back from my tuition classes, I found that it had fallen off somewhere. I went all the way in a hope that went vain. It was a very pretty white metal watch with pink stones embedded. Many watches have come and gone but this one haunts me still.
I don’t even know why I want this ring and watch because they were in use years ago and have probably become antiques or at the least out of fashion. I don’t know the reason. Just the feeling of losing them and wanting them back exists. When I read Cecelia Ahern’s “A place called Here”, I could totally relate to the feeling. I started thinking about what if that ring and watch had a mind of their own. Would they have wanted to come back to me as much as I wanted/want them back? (I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how I feel) The thoughts extended into something like what if I got lost like the protagonist in “A place called Here”. My mind immediately answered the same answer which was in the book – “I don’t want to get lost, but if I did, I would want to be found, more than anything else”. If that place called here existed, I wouldn’t mind raiding it for my lost ring and watch and I *will* definitely come back from that place 🙂
So what is that you have lost? Have they come back to you like in the case of Sri or have they eluded you till date like in my case? And do you want any particular lost thing back so much?
Until later 🙂
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