Curse the Aedes!

The latest news from the Lakshadweep is that there is now an epidemic of Chikungunya in the islands and the hospitals are overflowing with people with aching limbs and high temperatures. The virus seems to have spread to all 10 islands and appears to be a variant of the one in the mainland with the same symptoms. The only medication the doctors prescribe here is a combination of paracetemols and painkillers and this appears to be quite effective and has had most people up and about in a week.
Except....
I’m not most people. Two lousy days after I got back to the islands, I got bitten and never have I regretted more about not swatting a bug. I now have it all - fevers, joint pains and an overwhelming tendency to crib about it to all and sundry. In fact except for my boss, I’m pretty sure the whole world knows that my feet are killing me (if you haven’t heard, you don’t call me enough :p). If you’ve had chikungunya before you must know what a total pain it is..Its hard to decide whats worse, the excruciating pain or hearing horrible “chicken”-gunya jokes six thousand times a day.


But really its times like these when I miss not having people around me. I tried cooking for myself the first day I was down. Nothing fancy..just a simple rasam and cabbage curry. So much for self-sufficiency. As soon as I took the veggies out of the fridge, I realized I had no tamarind (puli) to make the rasam with. And the problem was I couldn’t even run across to the store and buy some coz during Ramzan, the streets are practically empty during the day. During this month the place is transformed into a sort of carnival island where time enters another dimension. After fasting the whole day, everybody comes alive at night (much like the Thriller video minus the monster element) and people wander the streets and go shopping till the wee hours of dawn when they have to go pray again. To give you a sense of scale..think 1000 people, 3 streets and 6 shops..real mela..So basically the shops open and close to cater to this nocturnal populace and hence, while you could easily get anything from bellbottom pants to washing machines at 2 am in the night you couldn’t so much as get a toothbrush at 2 in the afternoon.

So anyway, coming back to my cooking, I decided (with not much choice) to ditch the rasam. As I sat about considering my alternatives I realized with my “vast” culinary repertoire, the only thing I could actually make at that point was a dal (when in doubt, always go with the dal). I thought once I had made up my mind about the menu, the job was as good as done except I never realized how many motor skills I had inadvertently taken for granted before my limbs decided to spasm. I spent 10 minutes bent over the kitchen sink marveling at the number of muscles it took to open a tap. I gave up trying after a point and decided to glare at the tap instead. Annoyingly, kitchen plumbing usually doesnt respond to dirty looks so stretching sinews and bone, I finally managed to turn the damn thing with as many handy expletives as possible. But that was only the first step. After my tryst with the tap, it was mindnumbingly worse trying to cut tiny cabbage strips for the curry with the same hand using an extremely unwieldy knife. Apparently vegetables don’t respond to menacing glowers either (I also tried willing myself to be telekinetic but that didn’t pan out too well). So once again after much wincing and swearing I cut about enough cabbage to feed a small bird and armed with cabbage strips and dal, I eventually got done about 16 hours later. It wasn’t much but it was food and it was hot. Starving but enormously happy about my newfound “survival skills” I finally sat down for lunch at 4 pm. Smooth as an apple pie, I deftly tipped the salt shaker over the dal to add a bit of taste and ofcourse I ended up spilling the entire thing into the dish...

I wish I was making this up but thats really what happened..

Now if you thought that that episode killed me and I’d become a broken shell of a person after that, you’d be wrong. With sheer determination and strength of will, I somehow managed to get over the dal disaster. I gritted my teeth, steeled myself and took the next flight out to Chennai..

just kidding..:)

But if you're looking for me, I'll be bent over a carton of pre-packaged food...

God bless MTR..