A Childhood Memory

“Chicken pox,” the doctor pronounced wisely and smiled. I could not understand what the smile was for.My mother took the one week’s medical leave certificate from him and led me out of the clinic. The doctor had also said that I would recover in ten days.

When we arrived home, my grandmother overruled the doctor. She was a great believer in home remedies. She pointed out that in India, where she came from, home remedies were in existence when the western world was running about in skins. She got my father to go and bring about a ton of margosa leaves and hung them all around the bed. The shade and smell of the leaves would drive out the chicken pox to wherever it came from. I was apprehensive: I always was when I was left to Grandma’s remedies. Dad could not say anything; she dismissed him as a little boy who did not know anything. Hadn’t she cured him of the disease 20 years ago? Dad retreated into his bedroom.

I was warned explicitly against looking into a mirror That was enough to make me want to look, more than anything else. I looked. I was very upset: That wasn’t me in the mirror. I had angry red spots all over me.I looked like an alien. I lay in bed. M temperature rose and fell regularly every hour, I was prevented from taking any medicine: by Dr. Grandma. I lay in bed trying to think of something good about the whole thing. Then I remembered that I did not have to go to school or do homework. I reached for all my comics and started to reread them. Then my mother walked in. She wasn’t afraid of being infected; as she had suffered from the disease before. She brought me the telephone: It was my teacher Mrs. Goh.

She told me that she was sorry I was sick. I was not to come to school — or even near it – until I was well. As she was sure that I would be missing my homework,she was making arrangements to send it to me everyday through my brother who was in the same school. I was not to worry about anything. I put down the telephone in anger and made a list of people I would like to infect. Mrs. Goh’s name was on the top of the list,I did not get a chance to do it though, I could never slip away from my bedroom, let alone the house.Grandma was on guard.

I lingered between life and death for several days— seven to be exact. During this time I could not eat much. Everything tasted like cardboard. Grandma forcefed me three meals a day and several snacks in between.

Anyway, when the seventh day arrived, I was given a ritualistic bath and told that I was cured. Grandma was triumphant and reminded everyone that everything had turned out just as she had said it would. I had recovered in, seven days — without any medicine. No one dared to tell her that chicken pox, in all cases,disappeared after seven days — whether you took medicine or not.

After that experience, even school was better,Anyway I went back to school to a hero’s welcome,Everyone looked at me with awe in their eyes. I had survived chicken pox.

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