December 3, 2004

a minor-surgery-break, and a tube journey

it took a simple-laparoscopy-that-turned-difficult, three incisions on my stomach, eight tablets three-times-a-day, frequent plunges in my blood pressure, and an(other) infection to make me realise how i take my body for granted. i think we all do, sometimes. but this has been a good lesson, perhaps also a practical one…when your body is sick, you are a slave to its demands. no matter how hard you try to run, you will go only as far as your body takes you.

on the brighter side, i have been resting like a baby, cared for and nursed, and i have had the best food in ages (only praveen can make a convincing combination of cabbage and cauliflower sabji)!! i’m still very slow to react, it hurts when i laugh, and i walk like i’m 10-months pregnant (!), but i am recovering fast. thanks to the person who would run away at the very thought of visiting a hospital or a sick friend.

well, not that he had much choice really, but right now, i feel blessed 🙂
touch wood

———————————–

before i hit the bed again this afternoon, i have to write about the one scene that has been on my mind since last week.

…about a dark-skinned father and his little dark-skinned boy.
i was on my way to farringdon station for an interview, and the boy’s quiet preoccupations captured my interest. sitting right next to the glass barrier (which divides the seats and the automatic doors), the boy played with his own reflections, while the father scanned through pages of the metro. when the train stopped at the next tubestation, many commuters got in, some crammed between feet and files, and some leaned against the glass barrier itself, their hands behind them and out of the way. the man leaning against the boy’s glass was bald, white. he had his back to the boy but his hands pressed on to the glass, unaware, revealing a rich white skin and deep red lines where the skin folded.

the little boy was puzzled. he stared back from the glass for a moment, for the reflections he was playing with suddenly vanished. he looked at his father hesitantly, who only continued to browse the paper. slowly he turned to the glass again, and wondered. he was a clever child, for in a minute he slid his little hand around the glass as well, and pressed hard. however hard he pressed though, his hand didn’t turn the shade of white that had awed him at first.

i left the train and the father-and-son, thinking…this must have been the little boy’s first lesson about colours, and one of mine too.

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