Malaria Madness...

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just a few lines to unload before i bury myself in the thick blankets to catch up on lost sleep... classes for the afternoon are cancelled... blood tests are going on... i donated my own 'one drop' to the testers... after a scream that echoed down the corridors and brought people hurtling to see who'd been 'Texas Chainsaw Massacred'... the tests were for the malaria scare that is doing the rounds... one fell sick 3 days ago... one is affected and in the hospital's CCU for the past two days... not good news... not good news at all...

the malaria's affecting not only those directly affected but the rest of the batch too... the trek group to which all the sick people belong, are now paranoid and developing psycho-somatic symptoms that they learnt by heart during their UPSC preparations as the actual symptoms of malaria... one of them is limping and though i'm quite sure that isn't a bullet point for the 5-mark malaria symptom question, i haven't the heart to tell him... i am quite paranoid too... despite the fact that i'm aware of my psycho-somatic powers, i can't control them... and i'll develop all the right symptoms in 24 hours after a clean search of the wikipedia... that explains my blood test though all we did was sleep in exhorbitantly luxurious AC Tents for our 'trek/trip/picnic/pilgrimage' to Amarkantak...

the whole batch has started functioning like an organism... the way only a crisis can induce it to... at midnight, there were a dozen guys watching out for the sick guy... though only one was allowed to stay in the hospital, three others kept watch, 'just in case'... some probably had never interacted with Dash, the chap in CCU, being prayed for by all, or most... (atheists duly excluded)

one of the other immediate effects of the malaria outbursts is the cancelled CGM Dinner... H is sad that all the songs he practiced in the long baths in his bathroom will have no audience but his own hazy reflection in the mirror... but all the team is also unanimously sad that we'll not get to wear the all-black outfits we'd planned to don for the D-day... well, one must learn to accept the harsh-realities that life throws at us! we will survive! yes, we can! mera bharat mahan! ok, now i've totally gotten carried away...

the other activity affected is our 'village visit'... we were to stay for 5-6 days in some little villages... cut off from the lectures, the PT, the dress-code, the HOPE meetings, the Committee sessions!! after the first malaria finding, it was decided that the 'visit' would be too hazardous a thing for the OTs and we were offered Rest Houses & Circuit Houses to rest ourselves in... but now that another has been admitted to the hospital, it's been decided that we'll stay right here and just visit the village from the safe havens that our hostel is... we'd be leaving after breakfast, which, with our sharpened sense of punctuality would be anywhere from 10-11... and be returning from the villages at 6pm... quite a hectic schedule if you consider the traveling... some worries have been voiced on the lunch table by the more vociferous ones...

"there's hardly any time to interact with the villagers!" is countered by
"there's hardly any activity after sun-down! hardly any night-life" retalitates a bangalorean night-life addict...

but other questions are less adeptly tackled... like

"though they might sleep at sundown, the village life starts with sun-up... 5:30am... when we're still in the non-malaria beds in the hostel!"

"who'd be in the village from 12noon to 6pm to interact with!... children too small to go to the school or ancient old men"

"we would never be accepted completely if we kept leaving every day..."

"if the villages are malaria-prone, won't the villagers also be affected... couldn't we try and educate them about the healthy ways..." one of those NGO/Social Service types..

"yeah, true... didn't we all claim in our UPSC interviews that we were only in the service to serve the downtrodden??" one of the righteous, change-the-world types...

"isn't this hypocrisy?? differentiating between the health of villagers and ourselves??? trying to save our own skins instead of being where we can actually put into practice whatever we learn in the class??" this from someone who nods off 10 mins into the class, every class, every day...

some are more realistic...

"the academy just wants to be wary... they don't want any more sick people than they can handle...."

"it is for our own safety"

"villagers' immunity will be higher than ours" the metro-breds...


arguments flash back and forth..... i listen... i collect... i retaliate... i write...

and just as i finish the piece, i realize the lessons spilling in the past 24 hours are more real than the months of classes in the modern-class-room...

Inertia Rules!!

all about Amarkantak

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it's nearly 1am and it's tempting to sleep... i have a choice of cleaning up all the odds and ends you accumulate on unpacking after a week long trek in the Amarkantak... stinking dirty socks, muddied tracks, water bottles, band-aids(unused), shampoos, soap, needle-and-thread combo, etc, etc... and all this without waking up my roomie... and in the half-light... so instead i choose to write this tortuous blog...

it was a week long trek... or atleast i think it was.. you lose your sense of time and day among a lot of other senses as you trek through jungles all day long... as i saw more sal trees than anyone ought to in one life time, i wondered if our forest officer wasn't taking us in circles just for fun... after all there's little in amarkantak... except the 'narmadaji' river, ashrams, temples in all stages(functional, decrepit, under construction) and a lot of cows... which with spectacular accuracy walk right to the middle of the road to have their thoughtful rests... our 'ambulatory van' which we earlier thought was a very-slow ambulance built to deliver 100 percent fatality because it never breached the 10kmph mark stopped every 100m to honk these cows out of the way...

it's hard to summarize such a long trek... but a few moments stand out... the first day at ashram... our room had a sunken bath but little lighting... and the food there did little to improve my appetite or energy... it wasn't an altogether bad place... if you're 70, retired, old, on a pilgrimage, want to wonder about your existence and all that... but for a bunch of excited 21 OTs rearing to jump onto a trak, it was the coldest water... we didn't realize how much we disliked it till the evening when waiting for the Commissioner and the IG we discovered the Holiday Homes... in the strongest bit of team building we shifted successfully into the luxurious new tents for the rest of the trak...

the trek ranged from hectic on the first day to picnic on the third day... there were some tough terrains to conquer... some serious scratches to treasure... we barely took our eyes off the path sometimes coz it was so steep, slippery with trampled green leaves and every step on those round stones threatened to throw you into the steep jungles below... there were a lot of dhara's... rudra ganga, shambu dhara, laxman dhara... but the best one was kapil dhara... visited three times and viewed from every direction possible - from the top, the bottom, the left and the right... from the front and best all, from behind... we bathed in the furious waters, sat in the pool, discussed geographies, approximated heights... and the other high point was a swim in the narmada... my swimming lessons finally paid off and i managed to freestyle a couple of laps... even as our team leader frowned at my 'unlady-like' behaviour as i kicked off my shoes and jumped into the green gushing waters along with the local brown boys... for the record, before any of the macho guys did... just avenging myself for the whole 'girls don't choose IPS thing'... ;-)

the evenings mostly consisted of sitting around the bonfire playing games... dumb charades, lateral thinking (do not smirk at 'thinking'... it was one of the funnest games... that is, if you are equipped with the equipment required...)... 'do you know - what' and 'zip-bang'...

we also had good times in the Dosa Point especially on the second day when we accidentally swindled the shop-keeper of 265 bucks... and had the hardest time as everybody explained everything to everybody about how everybody else was not understanding the whole thing... finally, we went back and re-adjusted the cash so that in the end, we were swindled off of 35 bucks... which like our saintly conscience-keeper Vikram said,  is somehow better than the other way round...

chalo, i have to attend some seriously boring lectures tomorrow... am keeping my fingers crossed that i'll be shuttled from the first bench finally...

ciao!!