I have a cold and the flu too due to some unwelcome organisms inhabiting my person. They are actually welcome to stay if they are willing to follow in house rules like 'no wanton multiplying' and other obscene stuff. Now dear friends the ‘cold’ is not actually ‘cold’ in the thermal sense. It is actually a term that has been coined to describe the absolute helplessness faced by General Practitioners in curing the said condition. In other words, the ‘cold’ bacteria or virus has left the GPs in the ‘cold’.
I am now taking a break from work and enjoying some ill deserved rest at home. Mom is making sure I do not miss the stress and tension of office by her constant commando style raids to my room to check on my meds. The decreasing number of tabs is carefully noted to ensure I am actually swallowing it. I hate the cough syrup prescribed by my doc. I prefer the sweet and mentholly Vicks Formula 44, but the doc has prescribed some icky, chemically, nasty, sleep inducing stuff. And to add to his sadistic pleasures, he advised my mom to ‘ensure’ I drink it down. I am gonna change my doc if I survive this illness, but cannot get rid of him completely like the ‘cold’ because he is my cousin…. grrrr.
To make sure I don’t miss the office cafeteria atmosphere my mom is making some of her own cure all decoctions that 'mallu' moms are so fond of making. The smell of the decoction is all-pervasive and I can see a steady stream of cockroaches leaving the kitchen. I tell her that she will make a pile of money if she could only sell the recipe to some MNC insecticide maker. Her sharp glance cuts off any further hopes of talks with Bayer India Ltd.
I am missing the peace and quite of my cubicle and the sonorous snores of Subbu from the next cubicle. Having said that, I need to go to the nearest Greeting Card outlet and buy a ‘Missing You” card for my Boss, my Big Boss, my HR, the Cafeteria guys and my entire department.
Tomorrow I shall go to work a changed person with some noble resolutions.
I will appreciate every corny joke, every 6:30 pm call for a meeting just when I am ready to go home, every vendor call and the 2366th design change to the website. I will take every call asking me if I am ‘Housekeeping ’ and transfer the call with a sweet smile to ‘Housekeeping’ instead of HR/Applications Team/Testing Team as I usually do. I will swallow the cafeteria food if I have to forcefully wash it down with water and offer a gracious thank you to the lunch caterer instead of asking him if he was a prison cook as I regularly do. And lastly, from now on I will avail my medical reimbursements by checking myself into the nearest hospital next time I get a cold!
And I owe all these changes in my attitude towards work to my Mom. Thank you Mom. Because of you I just can’t wait to get back to work.
Btw the cough syrup….. do I have to take a bottle three times a day or a teaspoon three times a day? Damn the doc’s illegible handwriting!!!! (hic)
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38 comments:
Whoa! All you have is a cold and there you are, snuggled under a blanket, drinking the (wonderful) stuff that your mom's made for you. And look at me: I too am having a real bad cold and a sore-throat, and having exhausted all my leaves on that Himalaya trip, here I am in my cubicle, staring at the monitor trying to make some sense out of the alien figures and designs dancing on it... :(
Can we switch places?
@snm: yes pleeease.There is so much 'kashaayam' and 'chukku vellam' left that if I stay at home one more day, I will smell like "Kottakkal Ayurvedashala" lol
Get well soon :)
I suppose the thing about cold is very true. I used to have a perpetual cold which gave rise to sneezing fits in the early morning. But that was kinda useful for me because it was an excuse for not waking up early morning.
Me and my folks consulted every single doctor we knew, but to no avail! Then suddenly one day, it just stopped! That's the brilliance and irony of the Cold! You go after it, it keeps on going. You leave it alone, it gets bored and leaves for colder pastures.
About mallu moms' concoctions, I would disagree wit you. My mom's had a 90% success rate with it!
You keep the 'Kashaayam' for yourself, and spare the 'chukku vellam' and other nice things for me :) (Did your mom make 'chukku kappi' also for you? I just love that! If you still have it left, pleeeaaasse, lets swap places :D )
Get well soon, you too!
u have certainly made lotsa resolutions. ur company should be awfully happy. i can already see a big sigh of relief by all managers, HR, and support functions!
ahem...and abt the cough syrup. check with dad (without ofcourse telling mom) whether he has any brandy. If he has any brandy, then dosage is: cough syrup a teaspoon three times a day and brandy a bottle a day (atleast!)
If he doesnt have any stock, try begging with him. if that too fails u can have 3 bottles of cough syrup a day (its an imperfect and yucky substitute!)
cheerio
MoC
Whoa! Your daily dose of blogging must have made u feel better :)
@Neil: My mom too has a 90% success rate of killing my taste buds... and usually the cold too. But I LOVE to make digs at her 'naatu' medications :)
@snm: No 'chukku kaapi" left. And you dont get to choose. You HAVE to have the 'kashaayam'.But you are welcome to trade places. Hope you have life insurance lol.
@matterofchoice:Tried brandy y'day night. Works great for dad and daughter bonding but not for the cold and Dad is ever ready to share :))
@parna:Thank you girl. It's such a delight to see your comments :)
@J: Welcome back, yes I am actually feeling better now.Daily dose of blogging...hmmm must remember that :)
cute ..you are a bit spoilt too i think..
:))
Hi,
Get well soon.....
Then no, thanks! I'll put senti to mom and get her over here to make 'chukku kappi' for me :)
I dunno if u have already noticed this, but even ur Y! display name had a cold from Yday morning ;_) do take care of tat too...
An unrelated newsbit: A prominent tech firm of Bangalore has declared a day off as a celebration day, and all the employees are flown over to BlackThunder by private jets. Even after repeated tries, PR was unwilling to reveal the reason for celebration.
Wow, you have a flu and yet put in such a neat blog :). By "ill deserved" do you mean you dont deserve the rest or that you deserve it a lot since you are "ill" :).
Get well soon!
Get well soon :)
BTW i have a doubt :) .... how can a person who is having flu can blog :O
atho ..chumma madi pidchu irikano ;)
things are not so different. either in office or in home :-)) just kidding.. but with a small ego.. u have ur mom near u when u get ill.. but for me i need to travel arnd 2000 kms ;-)
Get well soon. You sure seem to want to :P
Hope you get well soon. Maybe you should try my favourite naaden remedy for the cold - 'Kurumolagu Kaapi' :-) . Hope that makes sense.
Colds are such a piss off.
Try some ice cream though, it always works for me. Either it'll kill all the bacteria or make things worse. Either ways, your still screwed.. if you know what i mean..
talkin of chukku kaappi...i had brought loads of those readymade cubes available in stores...over to the US and my north indian roomie, a caffiene addict,one night having run out of coffee and tea...seeing the kaapi written on a chukku kaapi packet and thinking chukku to mean some kerala brand of cofee...started brewing it...on getting the smell i walked over...and thinking he knew wht he wuz doing i just watched...his expression on gulping down the first mouthful wuz a kodak moment...i never laughed so much at another person's misery!!!
no use getting a cold nowadays...no mom or ammachi to pamper me...i agree if i wuz at home a cold and a few sneezes wud have been a perfect excuse to bunk work!
Any talk of fever/cold reminds me of 2 dreaded syrups rom childhood. Bactrine and Fepanil.The former made me gag/ puke (used to hide under the bed whn mum used to come wth the dose) and the latter was such an yucky icky sweet syrup that all the joy of bunking school was negated after a sip. Add to it; the chukku kaapis and the other kashaayams (yeah me too a fellow sufferer). Then one fine day i discovered benadryl!Fever days were never the same again. There was no need for teaspoon/table spoon again. U just take a swig and crash. Sleep would bring such unbelievable psychadelic dreams with it.Get someone to buy another bottle when one gets over (usually in 2 days)...
Get well soon Anju....Get back tmrw itself or ur cubicle would've already become the floating restaurant. And u can assume duties of Bartender rightaway with ur experience with concoctions
cheers'flaash
tsk tsk girl. its only a cold. get that hanky. lol.
You sure you drinking the right syrup ah ? who knows may be the medical shop guy found the doctor's handwriting as 'meaningful' as you did.
Hello to Kashayam girl. True, don't we all have this surge to hug the world as soon as we are out of the sick bed? You've put it down nicely. Get well soon Silver.
The thing with stuff like kashaayam is that it follows the "stuff that tastes good must be bad for you and vice-versa" concept. Perhaps, it's really the placebo effect at work. You convince yourself that anything that tastes as horrible as a kashaayam HAS to do you some good. And then, your brain realizes that it had better do a darn good job of healing your body, otherwise it has more doses of industrial-strength concoctions coming its way.
Self-preservation is the key here, oh yes.
Anyway, hope you've recovered from your cold.
awww... you got a cold... hmm.. sleep tight. take your medicines on time.. listen to some good rock to sooth the mind... and yes, mommy knows best.. so listen to her.
For once wished your cold does stay on until your next post.Medication errors are thought to cause at least 7000 deaths a year in the United States, a quarter of which stem from drug name mix-ups.
oyee get well soon...hehe u are a crazy girl i have ever seen...u had me in sucha splits that i cudnot control the squeal that broke the pin drop silence of the office...a moment later i cud hear some cross cubicle voices "oye kya kar raha hain"...all i was doing then was cursing u sweetly under my breadth :P...tc
Living_Dead
@HnL:Thanks you and I am not spoilt :(
@arun: Thank you
@geo:So that's where they all went!!!!
@Praveen and Monu:Thank you. I was dying of boredom at home so decided to blog about the experience :)
@Jithu: Yeah i am lucky my mom is 2 metres away.
@Pratish: Yes i want to. It gets boring after a while.
@Sushil:'Kurumulagu Kaapi'does make sense but I hate pepper.
@Alex: Thank you for that wonderful remedy. Lots of people want to appoint you their personal physician. LOL
@Jiby:Didn't know you get Chukku Kaapi cubes.Your poor friend hehe
@Flaash: I like Benadryl too, but the doc prescribed some hellish expectorant :(
@Jake: Now why didnt I think of that? ;)
@Jagan: lol
@Josh: You are right, after a while it gets boring sitting at home. Thank you for dropping by my blog.
@injinuity: I will, I have no choice in the matter but listen to her.
@Madan:Guess I better stick to 'naadan' medicine then :(
@Living Dead: Thank you. Your comments are so sweet :)
regarding posting error....
it wont happen again ..i have fixed it[:)]
i never knew someone who missed work this badly! by the way take the cough syrup in large doses,like half a bottle and ur sure to get a high(similar to alcohol induced)
@Kiran: Thanks to the typo I got two colorful butterflies on my blog. So sweet. And thank you. I am better now and back to work.
Take care.
only u can make every silly thing seem so pertinent,interestign and witty :)
such flamboyant style,i must say.
Take care lady :)
it is nice to get sick once in a while. atleast you would get some rest. as for the home mace concoctions, i am really a fan of all that stuff moms cook up to cure the cold. the funny part is that you get a taste of how the laboratory mice feel.
:)))
green chillies remedy .... ???
the basic cause for existense of blocked nasal passages and colds is that air passes through them continuously. the optimal solution is to quit breathing. no more colds ;)
m'am you have been tagged !!!
all that booze must make u feel better...atleast in the head ;-)
I am sure the home made stuff works. Sad it isn't getting passed down.
-M
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