“The best six doctors anywhere

And no one can deny it

Are sunshine, water, rest, and air

Exercise and diet.

These six will gladly you attend

If only you are willing

Your mind they'll ease

Your will they'll mend

And charge you not a shilling.”

-- Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

Health, is so highly unappreciated. Heavily taken for granted, is the internal state of our body. The outer self, well, somehow manages to get a much higher attention from the person - the skin care, the hair-do, the hair removal, the mani- and pedicures; I’d have perhaps known more of these procedures if I were not so heavily disinterested in the topic of “outer looks”. And alas; I have not even mentioned the monstrosity, that is cosmetic surgery!

So, why am I going going on about health? Well, so as to not to indulge y’all in a mystery, I shall spill the beans - I’m sick. I don’t want to be, but then, there ain’t much of a choice, is there? I’d have broken my own personal record for being physically healthy if it weren’t for the great monsoony-weather of south Gujarat. Fit as a horse when everyone around me fell sick, and when the sun finally shone for a couple of days more than the ordinary, delicate darling Parth falls sick. Yay me. But what could have I done to prevent it? I did not drink water from unreliable sources; did not eat questionably inedible food; washed my hands regularly, through the day, doing my very best not to allow any germs to fight their way into my system, have done nothing, but rest the last days - I mean even more rest than I normally take - and as God as my witness, I am proud to say that I have never exercised and tried to maintain my body more than I have in these last few days in my whole life. I’ve had the chance to have some of the most wonderfully scrumptious meals in these few days, healthy and the perfect balanced diet - Which of the natural “doctors” have I not consulted! But alas, the very air that I breathe found it’s way to my Achilles’ heel.

What and how. The very air I breathe, the very air that’d keep me alive, the very air that makes me feel home - I feel betrayed, and forsaken! And it’s not that this danger was not anticipated - I was on preventive medication; a nasal spray that’d normally protect me from the air-borne germs. But it now just feels like a psychological trick by the pharmaceutical companies - basterds, I tell you. Pardon the french, but what the fuck man. A week before my flight, a week before a happy reuniting, a week before perhaps the most anticipated return journey of my life till now, how does my immune system decide to prepare me for it? It decides to give up to the germs that it was fighting the last two weeks - Quitter. Why, my friend in misery (literally), why!

It gets you thinking, the timing of this catastrophe, gets you thinking, what heavenly or hellish forces are in action here - how was this planned on me, how and why? “Why me?” - I had stopped asking myself this question for a while now, but now it begs to be asked - “why the f*** me, and why the f*** now!”. Its the last week in my homeland, and I shall be spending it feeling like a heap of excreted mass. Great timing, Big guy upstairs, just, just thank you, but no thank you.

So I’m writing this, hoping somehow the germs would’ve exited my body, pushed by the hatred I have so descriptively authored into these ridiculous lines of my dormant blog. And these last few days, can I not enjoy the sunshine on my face, the sweat that’d build on my brow as a work out, the very air I breathe, the very water I drink, the very food I do not even have no more, the appetite to eat!