Sunday Morning

It’s not often that you wake up with a food allergy on a Sunday morning. A hang over is usual, so are digestion problems if you had been trying to make the buffet worth every penny you had spent for it, and sometimes there is food poisoning if you had been wandering the city for the temptation that is street food. But food allergy is rare; at least, for me. So, when I woke up at about seven this morning with the upper half of my body extremely itchy, I blamed it mentally on the non-existent ants, bedbugs, or some intruding insects, and tried to fall back asleep. I obviously couldn’t and realized after a few minutes that it was quite intense. I walked to the washroom, peed, came back, and looked in the mirror. My chest, my neck, my jaw, and the lower halves of my cheeks were covered with rash. My first thought was: Shit! My second thought was: I should have shaved yesterday, now I can’t, and will have to go to office unshaven on Monday.

I came back to bed, switched on the computer, and like every twenty-first century person, googled and wikied for my symptoms. It was just seven-twenty on a Sunday morning and the nearby medical shop opens at eight, so I had a good forty minutes left. The itch wasn’t dying down and I was reminding myself to not scratch more and instead slap near the area of sensation in order to fool my neurons. The ‘research’ told me it was either of the two: A food allergy or an insect bite. I ruled out the latter as it wasn’t hurting. At all. Anywhere. Therefore, it was allergy. I decided to get an Avil tablet, which was what I was going to do anyway before the research, and walked to the mirror again. I looked at myself and the first thought was: David Lynch, Anthony Hopkins, 1980, Elephant Man! My second thought was: Shit!

I was, sort of, looking like the Elephant Man. My throat had acquired, by then, magnificent proportions and had become continuous with the jaw. I couldn’t see the windpipe. The blobs on the jaw and cheek from the rash had become larger and had turned colorless while the surrounding skin had remained red. The right side of jaw had swollen and looked like I had an abscess or maybe two. And all the mass that my body had acquired in the past fifteen minutes was completely numb.

I returned to the Wiki page of Food Allergy as I remembered reading one of the major symptoms was the swelling of throat. For some reason, I was relieved that it wasn’t insect bite. Some other symptoms of Food Allergy were impending sense of doom and extreme anxiety. Now, being a neurotic, I have these symptoms all the time, but reading them in the list got me even more panicky and I started thinking about the Mayan prediction about 2012 and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and what not. I decided all the information was messing with my head and closed the laptop and went back to the mirror. I was beginning to not recognize myself any more. My face looked like a candle that has been extinguished midway and the molten wax remained exactly where it was at the end, shapeless, threatening to drip, but never doing so. My face looked like the glutinous mass that Hollywood movies reserve for aliens, except they show it in green. Mine was wheatish – as the matrimonial ad would say.

I was beginning to feel heavy in my throat now with all the numb mass. I wrapped a towel around my neck in the manner of a boy scout to cushion it and sat down on the bean bag with my face against my knee. I had no option but to wait till eight. Did my whole life flash in front of my eyes? Well, yes, some of it, at least.

*

The pharmacist woman gives me a dirty look at first. The reason is I buy condoms from her shop. Now, I too am against condoms being sold at medical shops. Not that it is not a suitable item to be sold there but that I hate going over to the counter which already has a man who has been bitten by a dog, a woman who has broken her arm, and an oldie who has lost his head, and having to ask for a ‘pack’. No matter what the code word is, no matter how well the pharmacist wraps the pack in a small brown bag underneath the counter before handing it out, I always feel everyone muttering under their breaths: How can you make merry amid the disease, the death, and the general misery? I feel like a rogue version of Buddha deciding to ignore the three signs and getting back to the harem.

She squints as I came closer and then allows me a little sympathy along with the disgust. I ask for Avil and she points in the direction of the adjoining hospital and advises that I had better get an injection. I agree at once.

The hospital is a privately run one for the middling poor. The reception hall is huge, has blue plastic chairs arranged in rows, and there are three attendants in all, two women and one man. I decide to speak to the first woman and as I start my premeditated complaint 'I woke up with Food Allergy' in English, I see a broom in her hand. She is the cleaner. I walk sideways until I am facing the male attendant and he gets only the second half of the sentence: '... with Food Allergy.' The attendant nods at my throat and asks me to wait for the doctor. How long? Just coming only sir...

I look at the broom the cleaner has: it is made from coconut bristles. My maid has been almost pining for a year now for a broom like that. The ones with plastic bristles just don’t make the cut for her. She keeps asking me to buy one, and I keep forgetting. Buying a broom with coconut bristles for the maid somehow never makes to my Saturday shopping priorities. The doctor hasn’t come yet. A poster announces that cervical cancer has beaten breast cancer in terms of victims the previous year, and thus deserves more popularity. There is a poster for a blood donation camp. The drop of blood has two red eyes while it is white in color itself -- they can not make a blood donation poster look like an Eli Roth movie poster you know -- and hence it looks eerily similar to the Ghostbusters poster. I look around for more banal observations; the doctor has still not arrived. The notice board has the doctors’ schedule and there is a noticeable pattern just like at the multiplexes. The gynaecologists come at odd hours: the afternoons and mornings; the dentists occupy the peak hours: the evenings; the psychiatrists come only on Mondays. Here is my doctor.

The night doctor looks nothing like a doctor not because of lack of the suitable clothing but because of the lack of suitable pretence. I suspect him to be an attendant too, but decide to keep it to myself. But he is doctor-ish in a lot of ways: He opens his notebook before taking a look at me the patient. Very bureaucratic. Name? Whatever. Age? Twenty-three. He picks up an Eveready steel torch and directs it at my throat: He has been briefed about my condition on the way. Open you shirt, comes the polite command. The top button was not done in the first place; I decide to undo two more. I congratulate myself silently on not wearing a tee in the event of which I would have been asked to remove it altogether. The attendants are lurking at the door. As I undo the buttons, I realize something: There are hickeys on my chest. Three of them, I remember looking at them in the mirror in the morning. One each at the shoulder blades, and the third a few ribs below on the right side. I look at them and nope, they are not camouflaged against the the rash. I silently pray to God that he chooses to focus on my dietary habits rather than my sexual life. He shakes his head. Not an insect bite. It’s food allergy. I thank God profusely. What did you have last night? I try to recall. Was it Brownie Fudge Sundae? Should I say Brownie Fudge Sundae? Would he be interested in knowing the particular type of Sundae? I should just say Sundae. But I ate Sundae sounds like I ate Sunday, and what if he wants to guess the allergen? I should mention Brownie also then. But it doesn’t matter; he will give me anti-histamines no matter which the allergen is. What’s the point of saying anything at all? Just say Ice-cream. Meanwhile, the doctor, noticing my quandary, summarises- So you ate outside. Yes, yes, that’s right, I shake my head.

He prepares a prescription. There is no mention of an injection. I tell him of the pharmacist’s advice. He approves readily and calls the female attendant. Give him an injection. The nurse asks me to follow her and we go inside the O.T. Room II Remove Your Footwear Outside. I forget to remove the footwear outside as the phrase ‘an injection’ keeps ringing in my head. Is it a placebo? Should I tell the doctor that I have dabbled a little in both statistics and biology, and am quite familiar with the idea? I say sorry a couple of times or maybe even more to the nurse for not removing the footwear outside, as one should do to a woman who is going to needle you in a minute. I sit on the bed and try not to imagine the other patients that would have occupied it in the near past. I roll up the left sleeve of my shirt and it’s then that she motions to me to lie down. ‘Are you going to inject me in the hip?’ I ask her point-blank but without meeting her eyes. 

Hip: that’s how an average Indian addresses his or her ass when it is meant to be non-sexual and non-derogatory. Buttock is used sometimes but it’s hard to keep yourself from giggling while pronouncing it, so it’s better to be safe and say Hip. 

Yes, she says. Loosen your jeans.

Sunday Morning. Wake up and find yourself turned into the Elephant Man. Then open your shirt while a guy lights a torch at your bare chest, much like the jobless idiot with a laser at the cinema hall in 90's. Loosen your jeans and lie butt-naked in a room with the doors open, on a bed which is so blotchy that it seems to be suffering from leucoderma, while waiting for a woman to needle your ass. Well, it could be worse, I tell myself.

*

I am transported to the Medical Inspection Room (M.I. Room) of my Alma mater. It has been in news recently. For wrong reasons albeit. All the major news channels have been showing an MMS clip of what has been called ragging to third degree torture. I say ‘what has been called’ because people there will scoff at the term ragging: It's a way of life there. Not a breaking ice ritual as in the engineering colleges. Rather every day for the rest of your stay. Why? I am not advocating it but it is kind of a Making Men Out of Kids thing. So, what about me: Well, there are always a few bad apples.  

Anyway, coming back to the M.I. Room. There were a lot of stories about the place and when you heard them the first time you knew they had to be taken with a packet of salt but you, a ten year old kid, were scared nevertheless. A batch mate told us how he was injected: The doctor, who looked straight out of a late night Hindi horror movie, asked him to lie on his tummy, pulled down his shorts till his knees (unnecessarily, he had added), and put the needle in the hip with his right hand while holding tobacco in his left hand, and then he saw an ant crawling on his right foot. The doctor began to flail his legs around trying to get the ant off his leg, while his hand remained on the syringe and the kid cried in pain. When he finally managed to lose the ant, he decided to chew the tobacco in celebration, and began to beat it using both his hands. The syringe was still in the kid.

This particular anecdote instilled in us an unshakable fear of the M.I. Room for the rest of our years there. People went to great lengths to avoid it. They preferred to go to the town and pay despite having paid the annual medical fee. I was sent once to the M.I. Room by the Class Teacher, forcefully needless to say, as I had puked the porridge I had for breakfast in the assembly area. The doctor immediately announced I needed an injection. In my bum, of course. It was painful, but I decided not to be that kid, and strutted around telling everyone ‘it was in the arm, fuck you’, while the walk belied the talk.

*

I remember that and feel okay. I conjecture a little on whether to loosen my pants while lying on my tummy or to get up, loosen the ants, and then lie down again. Whether to offer the right cheek, or the left, or offer both the cheeks and let the lady decide. She is ready. She asks me to draw a deep breath; I can see her approaching with the syringe in the reflection in the steel surface of the Autoclave in the corner. Rub the spot with the cotton, she says and walks away. My fingers grope around the spot but the swab has already rolled off. Where is the cotton, I ask her but she won’t turn back. Her Sunday Morning was already bad enough.

She comes back after a while though, finds me still lying on the bed on my tummy, and is surprised. 'Done', she says.

*

The injection and the tablets have worked fine and by twelve I looked remotely human, but of a different race or tribe or nation. The maid studied the surf packet – she had specified that she wanted white Surf and not blue Surf – but didn’t ask me anything about my new look. By four in afternoon, my face has toned down to merely an obese version of myself with a double chin and all. The newspaperwallah with the monthly bill kept looking at it curiously and then the other way when caught. By nine in evening, it looked like I have been just punched on my right jaw. And now I have no reason to bunk office tomorrow.