I have been diagnosed with Lotajokamanixosa. The doctor had a grave expression when he informed me of my condition. But unlike the Nova Corona virus my condition is not caused by a virus. It is not even caused by a bacteria. Actually, the doctors are not sure of its cause. They have been observing me for a few days and have managed to get an idea of the cause of my condition. They placed me in a big machine; I think it is called CT scan. A doctor sat in the another room watching the insides of my head through a set of monitors. Apparently, my brain is in black and white. I was inside this big machine and could not really see the screen but I could see the corner of a monitor placed in a corner of the room from the corner of my eye and it showed that a corner of my brain is in black and white and as a result I concluded that all corners and the middle of my brain should be in black and white.
NOTE: The previous line is a clear symptom of my condition. I could hear a voice in a corner of my brain tell me "If you continue to build long sentences containing many corners, you will find yourself in the coroner's office". But in my current condition, I pushed these words to an inaccessible corner of my cornered brain. For the very last time, corner.
As I lay in this big machine, I heard the door open. A few of my friends walked in garrulously and the staff at the hospital had to tsk-tsk them to silence. They looked at me sheepishly and waved a set of hellos at me. I waved back. The nurse walked up to me and asked me to start talking to my friends. I talked to them about CAA and NRC and my friends listened. They shook their head this way and that in agreement but did not say anything for the fear of being tsk-tsk-ed again. A few minutes later, the nurse walked up to me and said "Not this kind of talk but your usual talk". I looked at her for a moment before starting a new thread of conversation. I started talking about Deep Purple, Savatage and Fates Warning. My friends looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They started shuffling their feet and one of them requested to leave as he wanted to visit the toilet. Once again the nurse came close by and said "Not like this. Be funny". I looked back at her shocked and asked "What you mean be funny?" She said "Tell your jokes". I was offended by this statement and nearly shouted "I never joke". One of my friends came closer and asked "What are you doing inside this machine?" I looked at him from the corner of my eye and said "My large head is inside the large head of this machine in this large room". My friend went "Ha ha ha" and a few said "good one da". I smiled and continued "The head doctor of the department that looks into people's head is heading towards the next room to look with his eyes which are situated on his head at the pictures of the insides of my head which are transmitted from the head through the head of this looking-into-heads machine on one of the terminals that is above or below his head". My friends started laughing uncontrollably. Some shook my hands. All of them showered praises on me - "Good one da", "Super da", "That's a heady statement da", "You are the best man", "How do you do it!" From the corner of my eyes, I looked at the nurse. She was not laughing. Instead she was looking at my friends and me bewildered. It seemed that her eyes were ready to pop out of her head.
The head doctor walked into the room and said "That will do! Please meet me in my chamber in 30 minutes". I looked at the head doctor who was visible from the corner of my eye and asked "you have a chamber?" The head doctor responded with a touch of anger in his voice "My room!" I placed my head back on the machine and said "Oh room!"
The doctor was sitting behind his desk looking at some papers when I walked into his room. With his right hand he directed me to sit on the patient's chair. I looked at the chair hesitantly. For the past few weeks I had been a regular occupant of that chair. As a result I did not like sitting on it; it was also placed close to the doctor. When I was young I went through a dreadful disease that required me to take injections every day for two or three months. I did not cry or make a scene when the doctor injected me with some dreadful medicine but I always hated the sight of the needle approaching me. Since then I have done my best to keep away from doctors. The trauma of those days has resulted in me not talking to a cousin once he became a doctor.
I walked towards the seat hesitantly and sat on it tentatively. The doctor said without taking his eyes off the papers "don't worry the chair will not bite you". I looked down at the chair and responded "That's reassuring." The doctor turned around and looked at me for a moment. He held a grim expression on his face. He cleared his throat and said "My friend!" He did not continue but continued to look at me. Like Anand in the movie Anand, I wanted to tell the doctor "Babu Moshay! Kah daliya doctor saab, Aapka man halka ho jayega". After a few second, the doctor once again said "My friend!" and went back to silence again. My jaw dropped to the floor like Jim Carrey's in the movie Mask. The doctor cleared his throat, brought a grave expression on his face and said "My dear friend! I am afraid you have a condition that we refer to as Lotajokamanixosa". I was stunned. The whole world started spinning around me. My world started falling apart. I felt the hand of death tightening around my throat. All of a sudden, death loosened its hand and the world stopping falling apart and spinning. I cried out "Wait a minute! What the hell is Lota-whatever-whatever." The doctor placed his hand on my shoulders. I was tempted to take that hand off his shoulder but unfortunately I don't give into violence and so I let him have his hand. He said in an annoyingly soothing voice "It is not Lota-whatever-whatever. It is Lotajokamanixosa. It is a serious medico-psychological condition that is seen in some parts of the world. Twenty seven cases have been identified so far. The patients afflicted by this condition are all in their teens or twenties. You are the oldest". For some inexplicable reason, the doctor decided to stop. Somehow nothing he said made sense for me. I asked "What is this Lota...? This disease what does it have to do with my headaches". The doctor got up, he placed his hand on my shoulders and said "let us sit on the sofa".
The doctor's office seemed more advanced than the Starship Enterprise's bridge. The guy had an affection for the colour white; not surprising for a doctor. This affection became apparent as soon as one entered his room. Other than his stethoscope and pants everything else was white in his room. At one corner of the room, he had placed a white sofa and on opposite wall was a white screen on a white wall. A projector attached to the ceiling, also white, projected whatever the doctor wanted to project, on to the white screen on the white wall. We sat down on the sofa. The doctor dimmed the lights and said "I have a video. This will give you an idea of your condition." I did not like him using the word condition for my condition but I was in no condition to protest so I let him get away with his usage of the word condition.
A video started playing.
It reminded me of the "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" message that is shown prior to movies. The ones referred to as "swasakosam" in a few Malayalam movies. A young chap was sitting on a chair bent forward holding his head in his hands. A few people walk in through the door and starts talking to him. He lifts his head and tells something in Japanese. The subtitles translated his words to "I have a splitting headache". The others look at him with sadness in their face. One of them asks "did you visit the doctor?" He looks up and responds "Yes! I have Lotajokamanixosa". The friends ask in unison "What is Lotajokamanixosa?" He responds "Lotajokamanixosa is a condition of the brain in which the Amygdala grows and as a result the person has headaches". The friends say "Oh!" in unison. He continues "It is not a common condition. Only a handful of people have been affected by this condition. The are no real cures for this condition". The friends once again say in unison "But what will you do?" He responds "I have to take some medicines and also do meditation and Yoga." The friends respond in unison "Oh!"
I got tired of the video. It was worse than the swasakosam videos. It did not matter that it was "Made in Japan". The doctor had not come back yet. He said he will return in 30 minutes and he had been gone for only five minutes. I was unable to put up with another minute of the video let alone another twenty five minutes. I had been in the hospital for 5 hours by then and had no idea how much longer I had to stay. The left side of my head started aching. I looked around the annoyingly white room. A piece of red arrested my attention. I got up and walked over to the white table by the white wash basin. The break in the white was caused by an unopened cake of soap with a red wrapper. The small packing had a lot written on it. I was amused to see the following words written on the bottom of the pack.
It reminded me of the "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" message that is shown prior to movies. The ones referred to as "swasakosam" in a few Malayalam movies. A young chap was sitting on a chair bent forward holding his head in his hands. A few people walk in through the door and starts talking to him. He lifts his head and tells something in Japanese. The subtitles translated his words to "I have a splitting headache". The others look at him with sadness in their face. One of them asks "did you visit the doctor?" He looks up and responds "Yes! I have Lotajokamanixosa". The friends ask in unison "What is Lotajokamanixosa?" He responds "Lotajokamanixosa is a condition of the brain in which the Amygdala grows and as a result the person has headaches". The friends say "Oh!" in unison. He continues "It is not a common condition. Only a handful of people have been affected by this condition. The are no real cures for this condition". The friends once again say in unison "But what will you do?" He responds "I have to take some medicines and also do meditation and Yoga." The friends respond in unison "Oh!"
I got tired of the video. It was worse than the swasakosam videos. It did not matter that it was "Made in Japan". The doctor had not come back yet. He said he will return in 30 minutes and he had been gone for only five minutes. I was unable to put up with another minute of the video let alone another twenty five minutes. I had been in the hospital for 5 hours by then and had no idea how much longer I had to stay. The left side of my head started aching. I looked around the annoyingly white room. A piece of red arrested my attention. I got up and walked over to the white table by the white wash basin. The break in the white was caused by an unopened cake of soap with a red wrapper. The small packing had a lot written on it. I was amused to see the following words written on the bottom of the pack.
Your skin is exposed to sun, dust and pollution every time you get out. This puts you at risk of skin problems like blah, blah and blah. Regular use of this soap reduce this risk by 95%, giving you healthy and radiant skin, which is why doctors trust it 100%.
* Based on internal study conducted in some month of some year and same month as previously mentioned of some other year.
As one went through the words they seem to make sense but at the end of it I realized it did not mean anything. It gives a lot of information but the information does not mean anything. The writer of these word might be one of the twenty seven persons affected by this condition called Lotajokamanixosa. I threw the bar of soap on the table and went around the room. I looked at the books in the white book shelf. The books were all of dull colour and merged with the whiteness of the room. All the books belonged to the medical field and I was unable to even understand the meaning of their titles. I moved on and looked at the objects spread over the table. I did not find anything of interest there. I went around the room and came back to the couch again. The video had proceeded from the patient in Japan. Now the people on the screen were speaking in Spanish. The video was as boring as the earlier one. I read the subtitles for a few minutes. They were the same as the subtitles of the earlier video about the Japanese patient. I wondered if the persons on the screen were actors or the actual patients and their friends. I observed the people for some time. Their feelings seemed more real than real. Actors! I concluded.
The ache inside my head increased. The doctor will not be back for another fifteen minutes, that is assuming he would not be delayed. I looked back at the room. Its brightness made my head throb. I made a decision. I opened the door and walked out. The crowd and noise of the corridor shocked me. It was a welcome change from the brightness and loneliness of the room. I walked towards the exit. I stopped at the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist to give me a strip of the universal cure for all ailments, Crocin. The pharmacist looked at me suspiciously and asked "Crocin?" I said "Yes!". Suspicion did not leave his face "Nothing else? No prescription?" I responded confidently "No prescription! I came with a friend to meet a doctor". He eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds before walking away. As I was leaving the pharmacy, I saw the doctor's assistant walk out of the corridor searching the crowd. I ducked into the crowd and walked out of the exit.
As I walked out of the gates, a feeling of being free spread through me. I looked at the flowing traffic with a smile and took a deep breath of the smoke filled fresh air. I tapped the strip of Crocin in my pocket and thought "The perfect cure of Lotajokamanixosa lies right here in my pocket. No doctor can prescribe anything better."
* Based on internal study conducted in some month of some year and same month as previously mentioned of some other year.
As one went through the words they seem to make sense but at the end of it I realized it did not mean anything. It gives a lot of information but the information does not mean anything. The writer of these word might be one of the twenty seven persons affected by this condition called Lotajokamanixosa. I threw the bar of soap on the table and went around the room. I looked at the books in the white book shelf. The books were all of dull colour and merged with the whiteness of the room. All the books belonged to the medical field and I was unable to even understand the meaning of their titles. I moved on and looked at the objects spread over the table. I did not find anything of interest there. I went around the room and came back to the couch again. The video had proceeded from the patient in Japan. Now the people on the screen were speaking in Spanish. The video was as boring as the earlier one. I read the subtitles for a few minutes. They were the same as the subtitles of the earlier video about the Japanese patient. I wondered if the persons on the screen were actors or the actual patients and their friends. I observed the people for some time. Their feelings seemed more real than real. Actors! I concluded.
The ache inside my head increased. The doctor will not be back for another fifteen minutes, that is assuming he would not be delayed. I looked back at the room. Its brightness made my head throb. I made a decision. I opened the door and walked out. The crowd and noise of the corridor shocked me. It was a welcome change from the brightness and loneliness of the room. I walked towards the exit. I stopped at the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist to give me a strip of the universal cure for all ailments, Crocin. The pharmacist looked at me suspiciously and asked "Crocin?" I said "Yes!". Suspicion did not leave his face "Nothing else? No prescription?" I responded confidently "No prescription! I came with a friend to meet a doctor". He eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds before walking away. As I was leaving the pharmacy, I saw the doctor's assistant walk out of the corridor searching the crowd. I ducked into the crowd and walked out of the exit.
As I walked out of the gates, a feeling of being free spread through me. I looked at the flowing traffic with a smile and took a deep breath of the smoke filled fresh air. I tapped the strip of Crocin in my pocket and thought "The perfect cure of Lotajokamanixosa lies right here in my pocket. No doctor can prescribe anything better."
No comments:
Post a Comment