Main aur meri tanhayi aksar yeh baatein karte hain…
The tanhayi in me is the
voice in my head, a fiery, filter-less, chatty one. You’d think I am walking
alone but I would be talking to that voice.
I wonder what is the big
deal about a candle-lit dinner. You cannot even see your food, and what if you
were eating fish with bones on Valentine’s Day? Maybe they have other sources
of light too.
I am seeing someone since
the last two weeks. I did not anticipate it this early in life. A burly man
with a paunch and the kind of laughter that makes you wonder if he ate a pair
of Bose speakers for breakfast. I only knew of one Mody before I met him. I was
destined to meet the second Mody the day I woke up and could not move my hips
due to stiffness. The sleepy voice in my head wondered if I was already dead
and this is rigor mortis setting in with my spirit talking to me.
A general physician had asked
me to get an MRI before seeing Mody. Mody, a specialist, looked at the MRI
reports, prescribed medicines, and asked me to see a physiotherapist who works
next door (like literally the door next to his). I noticed that Mody’s name and
his spouse’s name have four out of five letters in common. That’s an eighty
percent match! Even sunshine and moonshine are not as close.
I waited for a long time in
the waiting room. I read about all the medical miracles he can do through the
laminated cutouts of printed text he has put all over the walls. Many of them
are written in grammatically wrong English. My inner vice scolds me for
unconscious colonialism for noticing wrong English when English is neither of
our native language. What a hypocrite I am!
I see Mody’s picture
standing next to a tall, White doctor in scrubs. I see names of cities from Germany
and the US printed on those laminated walls. I have no idea what he was doing in
those places (getting trained, I suppose). I wonder if he would post a picture
of himself standing next to a Black doctor.
Mody surely knows how to
market himself.
And when you have a lot of
time to kill, you think of things that do not concern you.
And then the power goes off!
It’s dark.
A power outage! I haven’t
experienced one in a while. Suddenly I hear a lot of footsteps and shuffling
around. A lot of hustle. People talking loudly in Gujarati, which, I can
understand, not!
My eyes adjust to the
darkness and I crane my neck from the waiting room to catch a glimpse of what
is happening.
Mody is attending to his patients
as the receptionist holds up the cell phone torch light. You’ve got to be
kidding me!
I keep hoping that my turn
never comes till power is back. And the woman loudly screams something that
sounds like my name followed by, “Ben aaucho!” (sister, are you coming?)
I enter his room, half
hoping that he will send me back. The woman is now holding two thin candles,
looking like she is about to sing a haunted song from the 1950s by Lata
Mangeshkar. Mody looks scary in the shadow. He asks me to touch my toes. He asks
me to arch my back. He asks me to show a Bruce Lee kick in the air while facing
away from him. He scribbles down the name of some medicines in illegible
writing, prescribes more physiotherapy, and asks me to come back in a month.
On hearing that I work where
I do, he tells me how impressed he is that I am a faculty at my age. I remind
him that young people do not have orthopedic issues (although I want to remind
him that being a faculty does not depend on age). He tells me the names of all
my colleagues he has treated, possibly his way of making me comfortable through
informal small talk. Patient confidentiality (and privacy) be darned! Those are
subjective social constructs, some western society bee-ass anyway! I shudder
thinking which colleague of mine will now learn about my creaking hips that are
threatening to fall apart. Such a hypocrite I am, writing about my health and
daily life on the blog but complaining about privacy.
G’s decade-old forecast that
I may have my childbirth and hip replacement surgery on the same table still makes
me shudder. I remember that line every time my hips creak. Mody tells me how
intelligent both his sons are (also practicing medicine). He shares that he
wanted his sons to study engineering but they did not listen. Good call, I say.
Good riddance, I think!
I ask him if he will show me
the exercises. He says his physiotherapist will. Who knows, his paunch might have
lashed out at me in the dark for asking him such a question.
I get up to leave. I tell him
that this is my first candlelight consultation (I skip the Valentine’s Day
reference). He laughs with an abandon that hurt my eardrums. As a child, I have
studied for many an exam in candle light (especially during summers). I think
that I have turned out to be fine, so this should be okay too.
I walk up to the
receptionist and show her my ID. I write down my name on a receipt book. I pay
nothing. My employer and my insurance will sort it out and take care of the
bills. I count my blessings. One of the many perks here include never paying
for a doctor, medicines, blood work, tests, etc., if I see someone within a quite
extensive healthcare network in India. They have my parents covered too. And
here I am complaining about lack of patient confidentiality!
I walk back to the campus clinic
and hand over the prescription. The receptionist makes a copy and notes my
secretary’s number. Tomorrow, my secretary will collect the medicines and leave
them at my office even before I am there. That was, in a nutshell, my
Valentine’s Day this year. January was all about experiencing COVID-19 and
February has been about getting orthopedic spas. What else will keep me busy this
year, I wonder as I walk back home.
sunshine
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