Rough cough and a little spice of cold and fever

Well yes, the title is gross. But when I am suffering so much, a little disgust in you will make my heart lighten up a bit. After all, sharing reduces pain.

The weather in Sonipat has suddenly changed this month. It’s as if God’s appetite to fry living beings and eat their soul was miraculously filled in the month of June itself. When the temperature was more than forty-five degrees. So in July, he gave us some respite. With occasional rains and the sky color of dull yellow all the time. So when God was done with our soul, it was the turn of the little beings. The bacteria and viruses. Somehow, I don’t know how, because I am not the kind of person of travels a lot or meets a lot of people, these little beings entered my body. And since then they have been giving me a lot of trouble.

The first impression that I get when I start coughing is that probably I have been smoking a lot. So the numero uno victim or the villain is a cigarette. I reduce it’s consumption, first to zero and then it increases steadily. After a few days, when my lungs are still making noise, it becomes clear that smoking may not have to do much with it. Slowly you start feeling cold and then feverish. That is the worst part of it. Fever is the Voldemort of this suffering. When it comes, it’s all dark. All you want to do is take medicine and sleep.

An oft-neglected symptom of this problem is the cacophony of noises the nose and the lungs make all day long. You could be reading a beautiful article or story, or you could be writing something. All engrossed in the perceived beauty of the symphonic collection of words. And suddenly your lungs decide to break this trance. They start with a cacophony of sounds which make you shiver a little. In Hindi, we have a term called the ‘Phata hua baans’. That is what it sounds like. After satisfying your lungs and listening to its protestations, you go back to what you were doing. And the beauty is all lost. It is now just a collection of words. The symphony is gone.

I left biology long ago but if I can remember correctly, cough is a way our body fights with these viruses and bacteria. When the enemy is hell-bent on causing you harm, you have to fight it out with the means given to you. That is all fine, I guess. Just that if the fight could be a silent one, everybody would win.

People whom I meet, good people, tell me to go to a doctor. I am going to do it today after struggling for around two weeks now. I have never gone to a doctor for a cold and cough. In my mind, they are too small a problem to trouble the doctors with. In our country, we have doctors in every home, without a degree, who are experts in these kinds of problems. But this time, as if I angered their gods, the cold and cough have decided to stay and take me to the people who are their nemesis. Just to prove a point, maybe.

I could never believe I would start disliking the kind of weather we have here at Sonipat at present. It’s cool and overcast most of the day. It doesn’t rain much and so one does not need to take the pain of carrying an umbrella around. It’s perfect weather unless you have visitors that I have. I hope the next time I face this weather it does not remind me of the cacophony of sounds I have been hearing sitting alone on my desk.

There should be something good about cold and cough. Just like there is with everything. I am thinking very hard now. Maybe something. No, not really, stay away from them.