Eyes eyes anyone??

Scratching, itching…. Using the fluffy towel to camouflage the attack….gouging almost!! Watery, runny side effects…..perpetually red eyes, fear of the famed 'madras eye', self medication, self assurance, assurance from amma, washing washing…four days of agony….four days of stupidity….four days of denial…. fear of turning blind...that's what made me rush into the emergency room of a huge corporate hospital…..male nurse, asks me to lie down on the stretcher with my head hanging down …suspended in mid air….walks in with a syringe….fills something in it…I shrink…want to bolt and run….he turns to me…snips of the needle (thank god!!) …I just hope he has washed his hands…tells me he 'vaants to jest irrigate' my eye…..(what I thought that's how we grow rice!!)….shoots the liquid in….i was so scared stiff, you could've thought it was rigor mortis…..i flinch…..then he uses his hands (yeah both of them) to part my eyelids…(what were you thinking??) ….peers inside…I thought my eye lids would tear….he was so close I could see the hair in his nose…tried not to …but that close!! Looks up…looks down…disappointed…. Says "nedhig ees they're….sori"…repeats the same to the duty doctor….who then tells me…see we can't say if something is wrong…or if there is an infection…we're not eye doctors…. Go to LV Prasad…they have 24 hr emergency services…. I was like "what?????" why didn't you say so before?? ……….Irritated K….driving at break neck speed….me feeling sorry for him (long day…it was almost 9 p.m) and myself….fear of turning fully blind…..visions of michelle mc nally and all those nightmaric images like montages…..almost dark hospital…..winding hallways…..unsmiling doctor…(of course she wouldn't smile….we interrupted her enroute to dinner!!) …..totally crumpled, "I've surely seen better days and a smaller waist" salwar kameez…..frantic phone calls to the dinner companion to be….spoken in bengali but hardly masked disgust about an emergency 'case'……here my eyes are threatening to go blind…and she asks me questions to fill her form….ever had any surgery? Any serious illnesses? Any allergies? Married? On any medication? Family history of eye disease? On? And on? And on?.....didnt stop even seeing my runny eyes….. impatient – concerned K asking question after question…only to be told curtly "how will I know unless I check" to which he retorted… "then why don't you just check?"…imagine my plight…..at the mercy of a hungry, tired, just been insulted doctor….. face strapped to a contraption…..bright light shot in from a miner's helmet kind of thingie…..2-3 more calls in between….. warns me not to bat my lids….yeah!! I can hardly keep them open…they're that scratchy….. I tell her…she leaves the cabin……..yeah great!! Now what…comes back with something that looked like paper matches….pours some drops onto them and touches the upper lids of my eyes….before I could ask what she was doing….. I felt like I had something the size of a medium potato growing under my eyelids…… have your eyes ever been anesthetized? I guess not…incase you need to know how it feel…it feels like you've grown potatoes under the lids……more checks….more instruments…more peering closely under the eyelids…..i am so dazed, I hold my breath each time….nothing said…tension mounting….for both me and K….then she goes nextdoor again…..they are twin cabins separated by a plywood partition….open top….i hear her asking the other (hopefully more experienced doctor) what to prescribe…..she's back…tells me she'll dilate my pupils…..i ask why? …routine check up….since you haven't had your eyes tested in 12 years!! (which I told her during the rapid fire)…. Ok cool…. Things will be a bit hazy for 4-5 hours she says…hell I'll be glad if I can keep them open to see hazy atleast….so I have something dropped into both of them and wait for half hour…. I think she finally has her dinner…..sitting with your eyes closed is more difficult than I thought….edgy K gives me a lecture knowing I cant run away with my eyes shut and dilated…. No more internet…you're always on the computer…that's why this is happening …blah …blah….i am summoned again…yeah everything is hazy…and magnified…..some more miner's helmet aided checking…then the verdict…severe allergy…nope…not because of kaajal….maybe dust and pollen….wash eyes 3-4 times a day with cold water….some shiny bottles of drops as many times…nothing to worry…… no no…no blindness…. Come back if you must after a month….thank you!!

What!! An allergy!! I could have kicked myself for waiting 4 days….just one dose of one of the drops and for the first time in 4 days I didn't feel like gouging my own eyes!! Jackass!!

I lost all my headings

I am technically challenged…the whole world and its cousin knows this….i cant understand html coding and so many more things that keep this blog alive….i didn't exercise much thought while choosing where to publish my thoughts…I just did a google search and (naturally) landed up at blogger….. I cant seem to understand why I cant have headings to my posts…I can do it only when I type in word and publish as a blog post….but this means I don't get to tag the post (which I can do from blogger)…so today when I tried editing and adding the taglines….i lost the headings!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh …… I've seen many other blogger blogs which seem to do just fine…then I thought maybe I'd change my template, but the thought of having to redo everything just tired me out!! So here I am stuck either without a heading or with no key words…..sad….

Its past 2 and I am dead beat….have had a really long day…infact the last 4 days have been crazy busy for me….i need to sleep….i need my eye drops before that……so g'nite all!!

stereotyping

Let me warn you that this is a rant….. no point cursing me at the end of this…..i hate stereotypes….and try to stay as far away from them as is possible….am not again putting myself on a pedestal and standing in judgement….i am just asking why?? Why do we want to segregate, bottle and label everything??

Ever since I can remember I have heard statements which surprise me….. growing up, I rode a scooterette to college which was 15 kms from where I lived, and took computer classes after that….since the day involved something like 10-11 hrs for me, I found wearing jeans and t shirts the most convenient….not because I was particular about western wear (why not on second thoughts) but simply because I could'nt manage to keep salwar kameez and dupatta as fresh and wrinkle free as jeans and shirts…..i also wore a helmet…and a jacket against dust and pollution…..naturally people took me as boyish, aggressive and intimidating!! I've had these labels thrust at me not just by men, but more by women…. It was also taken as a huge surprise when my mom would praise my cooking…..relatives / friends and just about anyone would be astonished that I cooked!! And did it well too!! the common refrain that I got was "oh but she drives a bike and all so I thought she didn't do anything at home!!" ……… what?? Yes…. I did and I did all of that pretty well….i also was a medal winning student; I finished amongst the top 5 of my class scoring the highest ever score in english in school, won medals in college for being the highest scorer in political science two years in a row, got the second best score for my project work when I did my master's and not that I was mousy (why do we expect this stereotype??)….and not that being a high scorer gives you a plume of success later in life…most achievers either never went to school or dropped out….i took part in dance, singing and other co curricular activities and generally knew how to have a good time…….then I began working, I would be given feedback that I was too aggressive and that people felt intimidated by me…. Well tough luck for them….if people feel that insecure when encountered with a confident person (man or woman) then that says a lot about their personality…….when K and I chose to marry, no one in the extended family blinked cos somewhere they all expected it!! "oh but we'd be surprised if she opted for an arranged marriage because she was always 'fast'…..we expected this…" imagine!! I've been asked with skepticism "so do you cook?" or with a bit of mirth "so who does the cooking?" so many times that I have lost count….mostly I answer with a "of course not….we eat out every day!!" or a "no yaar, I can't even hold a knife" or a "of course I don't, that's why I got married" depending on my mood…..it has immediately shut people up….. random people who have seen my house and said "wow!! I never thought your house would look like this" (what…did I ever tell you I lived in a pigsty for you to think that) or "how do you manage to keep the house like this yaar….but of course you hardly spend any time here!!" it goes without saying that they've not had the fortune of coming home again……Its just not me…I have heard so many things that people say when they are shocked and their image of a stereotype falls flat…. For example the other day I was at a training session….the person conducting it was a petit, pretty, young doctor with a master's in psychiatry…she looked like a model…with straight streaked hair, had on a saree, knew her subject and demanded everyone's undivided attention…..naturally when a couple of guys sitting at the same table I was at kept jabbering away or tried to interrupt, she firmly put them in their place….mind you they were of the same team, one a doctor and another a very senior manager….. the next thing I hear from one of them is "this female thinks she's god's gift to man kind huh!!" oh yes she is!! For starters, she was just doing her job, something that she was damn good at….secondly, would you have paid more attention or taken less offense if she was a middle aged matron who didn't challenge your maledom so much?? I don't know…she didn't care, and that's when she won herself a fan in me….Many others….like my entire family and the extensions ostracizing a cousin of mine and swearing under bated breath that he had "got mixed up the wrong way" just because he grew his hair, people always assuming that a bad driver on the road is always a female, asking a badly behaved child if his mother has'nt taught him manners (pray isn't his dad as responsible??), so why do we expect a woman to know everything about cooking?? She may not have spent a min in the kitchen or had any inclination towards it…..why cant a man take to the kitchen?? ….why does he become a sissy if he does??....why is someone interested in books expected to look like a nerd?....why is a beauty queen / king expected to be dumb?....why is making money (not illegally) bad?....why is failure crucified so much?....why do we want to judge someone all the time? …then why do we hate it when we are subjected to it?I've also been guilty….many times….but when I catch myself trying to box people and label them, I shake myself out of it…that's the best I can do….correct myself……

Cant wait!!

Two things that have excited me the most this past few weeks….. my impending holiday….. and my weight (yes I get excited when it comes down!!)!!

First things first I finally have a passport!! Hurrah!! Double hurrah!! I found every excuse in the book so far……I didn't have a passport sized foto…was too fat to take one….hadn't threaded my eyebrows….didn't have on a good top……..didn't find a good photographer….. Didn't know where to take one….the list is endless…. If I could make up excuses for 5 years imagine how creative I am!! The real things that were acceptable as excuses were the fact that I had no document to show as proof of identity and address…. So the sheepish admission that I didn't have a passport continued for many years…. till suddenly K was supposed to take a foreign trip for work, and said he'd take me along and post his completion of work, we'd take a break and take in a holiday…so I went into overdrive…guess how long it took after I applied?? 5 days!! all of that…!! I applied through tatkal…hence the quick processing!! But I made an event of it…..!! so celebrate that and a belated valentine's day K surprised me with a trip to Maldives (isn't he the bestest??) !! We leave on the 3^rd of march……….I cant wait to get there….the pictures of the resort we're staying at are beyond words……..

The next is that I have managed to lose 5 kilos and am closer to my ideal weight than ever!! Just another 5 to go….its the first time in 3 years that I have been able to do this…yes I did go on a diet…and no it wasn't one of those "starve till you collapse" ones…. This one is my own concection…..it also means that in the last 4 weeks I have eaten rice only 3 times (sigh!!) but anything for reducing my girth….. since it has all happened in 4 weeks, my friends have exclaimed in disbelief!! If there is one thing that pleases someone more than diamonds (albeit an overweight someone) it is to be told that they have lost weight / look thinner………….

So there you have it……two things that have given me more excitement than anything else these past few weeks!! If you catch me grinning…you know now why!!

Last Friday I decided to attend a cookery class that was being advertised for a while now….of the bouquet I chose Lebanese food and looked forward to the class with a great degree of excitement…not just because Lebanese is one of my favourite kinds of food, but it would be nice to attend a class rather than conduct one…..

I was so wrong….the unpreparedness to the point where halfway during class the cook was dispatched to buy ingredients, most ingredients were being substituted for what was actually on hand anyways….the cook actually demonstrated a few of the items, and all I could think of was if he'd washed his hands……the instructor kept scratching her head throughout (albeit with failed discretion)…..

I politely refused to eat the food…but tasted all of it to confirm if I my gut feeling right or just taking my imagination too far and giving her less credit than she deserved….paid up and bolted….i regretted that I dragged along S….though we had a good laugh afterwards and couldn't stop thinking how all this happened with no remorse….

Let me put it down to spending all that money on a valuable life lesson……the next time I will trust my instinct and run as fast as I can….

i dont need to make all the mistakes myself.....

Seemingly balanced people shocking me…. That's what this is all about at one level…. So called mature, independent, successful people feeling an emptiness that tears them apart….ridden by an angst of insecurity and low self esteem….unable to shake off the lack of success…. Angry with the world for not giving them what they think is their due…. This sense of entitlement that the world and its cousin owes them….our imagination making us prisoners of an ambition we can never equal….. and the same imagination taking us to the pinnacle of success that we have dreamt of….only in the metaphysical state, we are already crowned king and queen….cut to the real picture, where you still are where you were…..just sitting there lost in your thoughts….and unable to accept the picture as it really is…. Living in denial….and not doing anything but waiting around for the red carpet to be rolled out and the rose petals to be strewn about…in reality , the world will go on without you…and if you don't think life is special enough to be savoured and enjoyed, it will pay you back with the same coin…..

I feel sad and angered at the same time…for the times that we are all blinded by our righteousness and cant see what's in front of us……for the times we feel alone and lost and find ourselves with nowhere to go….

I told K last night that I sleep each night with the knowledge that I love him more than anything and I am thankful of his love…and if I can help it…I will never take it for granted …. Sometimes it pays for us to shut up and see the wisdom in someone else's mistakes…. We don't have to make all the mistakes ourselves….just keeping our ears and eyes open and mouths shut can teach us so much….