No chicken this!

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My travel plans got cancelled.

The culprit is what they call Chickungunya Fever.

First there was this fever. But I had always lived with fevers all my life. Combiflam takes car e of that.

But after a couple of days there is this sweet tingling of all joints asking sort of to count them. A day later the sweet thing becomes sour and then bitter.

Although it is all mechanics and lubrication, the lust for life sort of takes a back seat when the hip and knee joints refuse to do duty; particularly for a floor-siting-and-sleeping soul like me.

And as usual I ignored it thinking that they will ignore me and flee.

But it didn't happen.

So, my son canceled my tickets and drove me (literally) to the CARE(free) Hospital in Banjara Hills.

They made me sit for 2 hours waiting. I can tell you; hospital is s sick place.

Then they led me to an antechamber where the Assistants (Interns) sit. The guy there started asking me all sort of intimate questions like if I smoke, if I ever smoked or drank.

He then measured my height and weight (much like my tailor) and took my BP which was low as usual. And the thermometer showed normal since I took a couple of Combiflams before proceeding there.

He was unhappy and perhaps suspected I was a hypo.

To show that he did his work splendidly, he wrote against pulse: 84, while it was more like 48 (I have an athetic pulse: slow and throbbing).

Then he asked me to wait again. Finally the call came from the specialist in Internal Medicine (what is that agian?).

He was a young chap and asked me to to sit. I gave one of thosed disarming smiles of mine, which sort of embarrassed him and made him feel shy.

He kept his head down and wrote down several tests for blood and urine and asked me to get lost and asked my son to fetch the reports in the evening (without me).

I skip the lab details because they were manned by women and like Bertie one doesn't bandy the fair sex.

In the evening my son phoned me saying that all reports are normal and the doc said nothing can be done; it will go away by itself in another week.

That cost my son Rs 2000.

But IIT training being what it is, deadlines are met.

All packets of booklets have been posted; the ones in India by DTDC and the ones abroad by the good old AIR MAIL... look for the stamps, some are good-looking.

Bye for now!

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