QUERENCIA

I was flipping through the pictures in my phone gallery and she sat there with her drawing copy flung open beside me - pumped up with excitement like a pink balloon on seeing me after a shameful hiatus of eight long months! There were two crayons – one black and the other white – and she wanted me to choose one. I asked her what she planned to draw. She said she’ll be teaching me how to draw a cloud… and then went ahead with her cautiously punctuated lecture, “There are two types of clouds. One black and the other white. The black one rains. The white one doesn’t. I like the white ones. They don’t make the street dirty. Now you choose the crayon.” My five-year old cousin.

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As you ‘may not’ like it: The Great Medical Tragedy

 

 

An injection of Paracetamol could have brought down my fever pretty fast and I would have been back to work the next day. Instead, I preferred to take the longer route – the tablets – self-monitoring of body temperature and pulse rate – and again some tablets – over five days. It wasn’t the fear of injection. It was the tepid taste of medical textbooks. A carefully crafted escape route – “Stay bedridden”.

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WHY STORMS ARE NAMED AFTER PEOPLE...

 

Why are we so interested in the ‘abnormal’? What makes us believe it’s going to be worthy of our time to study them? By ‘abnormal’, I mean – abnormal heart sounds… abnormal spleen… abnormal gut flora… abnormal gait… or wait… abnormal people? May be it is the newer horizon they have got to offer. Or maybe, just another interesting food for gossip. Either ways, it is still the ‘abnormal’ which is the most ‘sought after’ and the most ‘laughed at’. And the next time we encounter one such thing, let us remember that our need to know the ‘normal’ is simply a need – a need arising out of our desire to understand the ‘abnormal’. The latter is a desire. An unquenchable curiosity. And then, we might just learn to settle with a hesitant smile.

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