Sunday, July 21, 2013

Tamaso Ma - 19

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So the D-Day came inevitably...on June the 17.

And my son led me to the Eye Care Clinic. They were happy that the sacrificial goat worth all those 40,000 rupees arrived in due time...they knew that if everything goes right he will be back for the other eye worth an equal amount.

This time I was led to the General Health Checkup Chamber manned by a male...for a change. The business now was that I should be certified that I was in good enough health to undergo the surgery (although cataract is dubbed just a 'procedure').

This chap took my temperature, pulse, BP, and such other trivia and said that he would now take my ECG. And my son was worried. I had never had my ECG taken earlier. But I know that my heart is fine...I have always been lionhearted...the trouble is elsewhere...upstairs in the head.

And I was made to lie down on my back on a hard bench and the chap clamped as many as half a dozen electrodes here and there and started the machine. And as the paper wheezed out I recalled Luigi Galvani's experiment with twitching frog leg and rotating drum with paper attached to it that I saw in the physiology lab of my medico friend half a century ago.

And my son asked the chap if my ECG was ok and was relieved when he said that it was perfect.

Then there was this nasty surprise for me...the chap picked up a vial and asked me to go the bathroom and fill it up and return with the precious liquid.

This time I really felt like a goat...at IIT KGP, whenever a half dozen of us returned from the canteen, we had to cross the ground floor bathroom. And one of us would excuse himself and enter it...and the rest would troop in following him for company and to keep up the chitchat without interruption...it is so tough to stand there starkly alone and wait.

My friend and esteemed colleague, HNA, used to narrate his BC Roy Hall experience on Holi evenings all of 35 years ago when all the trees were green and all of us were bachelors.

Apparently the climax of their Holi revelries was the competitive mass consumption of specially prepared bhang...I never tasted it so I don't have a firsthand experience of its side effects. 

But HNA used to tell me that, late in the night, half a dozen of them would troop to the common urinals that stood side by side and try to stand before them cajoling. Nothing happens. And they would keep standing. Still nothing happens. And then one of them would start giggling and laughing. And all of them would start giggling and laughing. 

And meanwhile there would be a long waiting line. And they too would start giggling and laughing...  

Some BC Roy visual that....


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