Saturday 21 July 2012

Fade out

"You recover fast" my cook said to me yesterday. I felt super proud. In typical 80s ish-tyle, I would have pulled my collar up, if I had one. Like one time one of my college friends said I look "muscular" - she was clearly on dope - but I strutted around feeling all proud about that too. This is why you see me try hard to convince you with photographic evidence that I am strong and muscular and all that.

"I like your squishy arms" says the child and quickly bursts my bubble. She is a bit of a show-off and actually has better biceps than me thanks to the swimming (and the fact that I am on a hiatus from all upper body workouts thanks to mysterious shoulder and wrist pains), and doesn't hesitate to rub it in my face often.

Yeah I been sick. Not the mysterious shoulder and wrist pain. Some mysterious overall illness which started with what seemed like an upset stomach (possibly caused by milkmaid. Not a lady who milks cows but the condensed milk I love), which proceeded to a headache, eye burning, back ache, overall body ache and finally, a stuffy nose and itchy throat.

I treated it like I treat these things. "I am dying" I said and divvied up my material possessions among near and dear ones quickly. Blog readers got nothing - so ha. I walked around looking like a pale ghost with an infinitely suffering, martyr-like look on my face. I desultorily popped a couple of crocins. I slept through workouts. I substituted my coffee with tea.

"You look awful" everyone said. Oh yeah. Its a good trick. At the merest hint of illness I start to look distinctly seedy and evoke a lot of pity. So much so that when I went yesterday to perform my duties as a responsible volunteer at the convocation, my colleagues said, "Go home". I hung on with a misguided sense of loyalty or whatever.

After about 3 hours of (possibly unwashed) bodies of a large number of students in (definitely unwashed) convocation robes filed past me, pushed me to the wall, breathed fetid breath in my general direction, I couldn't take it any more. I make my excuses and left before I did something awful like faint. Ugh.

This morning I took the beaten up body out for a "Shake Out" run - a merest 5 k. It has survived. I am not dying. Yet. I hope when I do, that I go out, like a light switched off. No dragging around ghost-like, please. A quick decline and a quicker fade-out. Yes. But thats scheduled for later. For now, I declare myself "recovered, with remnants of a cold."

2 comments:

dipali said...

Valiant! Stay well.

Choxbox said...

Aha. Convo and all. And I missed my own one too :((