A DIFFERENT ORDEAL

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

 

24/I/2025

 

It is after a long gap that one picked up the camera and striking my laptop keys to register one’s thoughts. The forced break was because of things beyond my control. The cold weather in the Sun City got the better of all of us. Cough, cold, running nose, watery eyes, chest congestion and the works had imprisoned us .

 

How does one catch a cold? This viral infection gets you down to your knees? “Sar dard, kamar dard, chaati dard…. Kuch lete kyon nahi”, is the state. You name a body part, it aches. After a little while, one fears to cough as your lungs and entrails diaphragm downwards pain like hell.

 

Doctors write down tests galore. You get worried that the consultation for cough and cold and may find twenty other parameters which may get highlighted in the lab reports as abnormal. The list of medicines and tonics extend into rolls of paper. You are damned if you don’t eat them and damned if you do.

 

With strong medicines, your sense of smell and taste goes for a six. Water tastes bitter, gargles become painful, the whole house smells as if it is a hospital.

 

Gargling, steaming or inhalers do not work for me. It is either a ‘cough syrup’ or the time tested ‘Mandel’s throat paint’ which brings relief. Vicks and Halls lozenges are sidekicks for change of taste and some freshness in the mouth. A Chota peg (30ml) of cough syrup and a deep application of the throat paint down the tonsils with a home-made applicator called ‘furrehri’ is what works.

 

What do you eat? Soup and khichri, something liquidy, easy on the stomach, filling enough to take medicines and be nutritious enough to give some strength but for how long. Your taste buds revolt.

 

Room heaters were pulled out. Blankets and Quilts of the heavier kind, had to be aired and sunned. Layers of clothing to keep the body warm had to be adopted, whether you liked it or not. ‘Sheet laher’ had to be kept at bay. Dare someone opened the main door, everyone would shout in unison, “band karo…”

 

The sleep cycle goes for six. You are awake when the whole world is asleep. Cough doesn’t let you take even ten winks. What position do you sit or lie down to avoid coughing? Half lying down, lying to one side or lying supine, nothing is comforting. Every time you try a new position, a bout of cough makes the whole body shudder.

 

Medicines make you feel drowsy. You want to sleep and rest but then the cough won’t let you. One cannot help looking at the mobile to read or watch some reels but the eyes refuse as tears roll down. The ‘specs’ get wet blurring your view further. A shooting headache follows making your head tizzy. Overall, it’s a pathetic state of affairs.

 

While heavy breathing through an open mouth leaves it dry. A blocked nose continues to haunt you. You slip into slumber after staying awake all night. Twenty winks and the call bell rings as all those who are normal people have to do their jobs. A tired you gets out of the layers. Catching more cold would be the last thing one can ask for.

 

Well, it has taken a good two weeks plus for us to partially recover. The cough returns intermittently giving you the creeps. A recurrence would be killing.

 

Every changing season, this happens to many of us, especially me. Medicines work, but then they take their own sweet time to settle things down while the body fights to limp back to normal.

 

We got exposed in a few unavoidable functions we attended in the weeks gone by. Now the weather is warming up, giving us much relief. Till then, take care my friends. Stay safe and healthy.

 

How many of you went through this ordeal of severe cough and cold this season? I wonder!!!!!!!

 

JAI HIND

©® NOEL ELLIS