No, I don't think so...

The most bothersome part of a hospital stay is the complete shedding of identity that begins the moment you register. You become a serial number on a file and your entire existence there revolves around your ailment and the treatment there of. Here, you are your illness!

Determined to remove the very last vestige of your dignity, they make you change into those awkward and unbecoming gowns that no one ever thought of adding a bit of cheer to. The dullness of it all is sure to kill you before the illness does.

 

Then of course, the practised politeness of the surgeon and his team. Just get the job done well boys and girls, don’t bother with all the niceties. To add to the misery, you discover that the anesthesiologist is a rather handsome man who insists on smiling charmingly as you lay there butt naked with your senses leaving you in a hurry.

 

Knowingly, he asks, how are you feeling. I have been better Doc, I try to croak through the fogginess. But why bother asking me, if you are going to crank up the IV before I can even shoot a suitable riposte? The truth is - I feel terrible, lying here at my most vulnerable, with tubes poking my arms and chest and whirring machines all around. Yes, I am a bit scared and more ashamed-to-be-scared. And I am embarassed. Since you have seen more of me than any man, lately. I hope never to meet you again Doc. After this indecency, I cannot imagine us sharing a drink to cheer good health. So yes, as I lay here as Exhibit A, please, just do your job and I pray you do it well.

So as Dr.PlayGirl (or maybe the serum makes him look that way!) keeps asking me to relax, I wonder why could we not have met under more pleasant circumstances. Now, I cannot imagine flirting with a man who has seen my innards, literally. Sigh!

perhaps

Another birthday approaching, bro. And we continue to live in our existential void where one day folds into another without even a whimper. Our life seems to have fallen in this regulated rhythm of a life support machine. While it supports life, there is not much living in there. We will again go through tomorrow like we have since you left. Ma’s silent wet eyes, fresh garland on your photo frame and Baba desperately trying to hang on to any conversation that doesn’t mention you. Sometime, I want to shake them up and get them to shriek how much they miss you. Maybe, that will ease my guilt somewhat. Maybe, it will also ease the strain of nonchalance. Perhaps then, I will be able to hold them again and tell them that everything will be ok, eventually.

Pain is like eating a jelly sandwich. Even after you have gulped it all, the crumbs stick to you at odd places, making you look sloppy.

not now

You say the guy you once knew may not exist anymore. The slightly sentimental, never-settle-for-less-than-perfect, sometime-self-flagellant-and-sometime-bratty, brilliantly-witty, scared-of-creepycrawlies-braveheart has changed? What has life done to you my friend? What has life done to us....

Thanks Melody

Yeah, we are at yet another new year. I have been trying to recapture the highlights of last year only to realize the year passed by in such a dizzy speed that there isn’t really time to isolate the highlights.

This year begins with a lot of hope. Unlike many others in the past. And I already see glimpses of it in life’s trivia. Like last evening, out of a whim and in complete aberration to my nature, I requested the RJ for a song while driving back home. Lousy drivers, loud honking and mad traffic do incite unnatural behaviour. Or so I told myself. One would least expect such a request to be played since the cynic in me knows that the radio stations and their RJs pamper only regular listeners who pour out a lot of mush on them. But lo behold. The radio starts grooving my song. And then as the song ends, the RJ mentions my name over the airwaves. There goes my quarter-of-a-second fame. Grin. So one of the resolutions for this year is not to snigger at folks who bare their personal lives over the radio. Like the lovelorn Romeo who begs the RJ to convince his Juliet to forgive him. Like the husband who wants the DJ to play his wife’s favourite song because it is her birthday. You are saying, aww so sweet. But I have always wondered dude, if it is your wife’s birthday, do I need to know? But in the day and age of Facebook and Twitter we are all wannabe rockstars trying to claim our fame by living as public a life as possible.

The couple of other things in my list for the year :

1. Laugh more
2. Read even more
3. Save for a rainy day
4. Stick to the gym schedule
5. Improve my impaired motoring skills

Not an impressive list but this will do for me for now. So Cheers. Here's to another year of living and loving.