A perfect lazy Sunday turned into a hazardous blur for a person who chews on more than he can swallow. Lunch was as on most weekends at grand mom’s with lots of good things to eat. At times conversation over the table can get interesting and make me forget about what’s going on in my plate. In the midst of intently speaking about why the Bangalore Metro will be a useless exercise, the space in my mind went blank. Time stopped. I closed my eyes and said “Please no, not again”. It was true and it had happened again. A fish bone was stuck in my throat. Every time I swallowed hard, it hurt. I had to break up the party with my discomfort.  I was advised to ignore the presence of the crustacean mid rib in my body and continue eating – and that’s what I did.

 One by one, suggestions were thrown at me, helplessly I could only do as directed. The first attempt was to drink loads of water and route it to the right of my throat in an attempt to flush out the bone. The second was to swallow huge chunks of banana. Each time I took a bite, someone would scream –“No Chewing” - just swallow. I tried my best but I had to chew on it. After half hour of failed attempts to dislodge the stubborn cartilage, Koki asked me to choke and assured me that he would slap me on the back and that this was a sure solution to my problem.

 I recalled two incidents at that moment. One was in my Biology class, where Mochi(our teacher) spoke about how a man almost died on a flight when a fish bone got stuck in his throat and they had to land immediately and he underwent a surgery to save his life. The second was an excerpt from the book Doctors, in which a black surgeon attempts to help an obese white man who choked on his food in a restaurant. He tries a  rear bear hug which doesn’t work, and then takes a knife and makes a hole in his throat to make a opening  for the white man to breathe. People around attack the surgeon and beat him badly enough to damage his nervous system and give up surgery forever. I couldn’t remember whether the white man survived or bled to death.

Tormented and crestfallen I proceeded to the wash basin.  Its one thing to forcibly choke and induce peristaltic discord in my esophagus resulting in a spasmodic dance with nerves popping out of my head, and it’s another to look up into the mirror with tears in your eyes only to encounter someone uncontrollably laughing at my expense. He didn’t slap my back because he felt the entire experience was extremely comical. I choked myself close to death, stopping only to gasp for oxygen to keep me alive. The dreaded flick of my tongue would only find Nemo’s skeletal element deeply embedded close to my tonsils.

I couldn’t take any more of it. Headed to Koki’s place and watched the F1 race which took my mind off things for a while. I tried tea, biscuits and bread and pretended it was already tea time. The race was nice, and inspiring to see rookie Hamilton on the podium. Fa was determined to try things her way from then on. She made me sit down and concentrate on swallowing freshly cooked rice, one mouthful after another. I was asked whether I would like some background music to mitigate the ordeal. Koki was also ordered to shut himself in another room and not make things tougher. His suggestions ranged from holding your breath and jumping up and down to choking some more. I began to alternate between banana and boiled rice, and walked around the house lest my blood circulation be affected by insane uninterrupted stuffing my face.

An hour passed by and it dawned on us that I might need medical help. Fa calls Dr. Mohan who is more paranoid than I was at anytime. He tells me not to eat anything more and see him immediately at 9:30. But 9:30 was two hours away. Some doctors are that way. My attention shifted to the Bangladesh Ireland clash. While Koki and Fa worked out their monthly expenses, I walked up and down the corridor intermittently practicing my rusty bowling skills. I was turning out to be an entertainment package for this chuckling couple. My phone was switched off and I resolved to leave it that way until my status changed.

Finally, it was time to head to Lakeside Hospital, only to be greeted by a short nurse who was left with instructions for the preliminaries. She grabs an Eveready torch and looks for Nemo’s appendage. Coolly, she says she can't find it and I will have to take an X-Ray to locate it. I refuse to put myself through radiation until the doc arrives. The doc arrives by 11 p.m. in a Kurta and rushes me into his clinic asking me how long ago I swallowed the bone. His face was covered by a mask because of which he looked like a gloating sardine. I prayed he knew what he was looking for. He said relax, breathe, and the forceps went in and returned clasping 15 millimeters of jagged bone. I won’t relate the next five minutes of detailed examination that brought me very close spoiling his brown Kurta. Dr. Mohan is an interesting guy. He kept us for an hour talking about Iskon, his second marriage, his rather speedy decision to have a baby and what might have happened to me if the bone had gotten into the food pipe. In between, he would laugh heartily at nothing and manage to synchronize a high five with one of us. I returned to the nurse for a Tetanus shot, and she refused to give it to me on my arm. I reluctantly agreed only to hear her say “Don’t hold tight, it won’t go in”. Quite a day.

We returned home well past midnight. I was flooded with relief and proudly displayed the fish bone that Dr. Mohan had packaged for me in a bottle. I pledge to cull the culinary carnivore in me and go Veg(umm, for a week), to forget about nine hours of enduring nature's way of making me feel like a "prick".

I never wanted this journal to be a place that I could sob and talk about how life gets hard, primarily because I have never enjoyed blog spaces that indulged in feeling sorry for their writers state of sorry affairs. But, what must I do when a swanky website called cleartrip.com clears me of all my hard earned money(Give me some credit for something) for a flight that I never caught, but only cancelled. I lost 4,000 bucks in a meaningless transaction. Gulp, sob, bigger gulp. How can I possibly pay up that kind of money when I didn’t even encounter an anticipated Jet Airways cute smile from the air hostess?  Boo!! Hoo!!

Aside.

Kurt Vonnegut dies.

It’s time to dedicate a post to someone, someone who turns 23 today.  I wish you all the Hershey’s chocolates one can possibly eat, a great time ahead with a talented stocky Jammer; I wish for you that nicotine never does any harm, that every meal brings a spark in your eyes, that you build a comfortable home in Kochi with a KFC close by, that you never stop not-giving-a-fuck about so many things so many people worry about, that you become a chic photographer capturing people and places like you ought to,  that all the vegetables and paneer around you turns into chettinad chicken and mughlai mutton and that you have a fantastic  b’day (although this come a day late).

It’s depressing to be a fan of Indian Cricket, and even more so when it is unbecoming of you to condemn sportsmen you have admired for a long time. Indian cricket has given me days and nights of disappointment, that fade away sooner or later. But some moments do last a lifetime. I remember the year 1996, (my 7th standard) when I carried my box of 'camel' paints to the India - Pakistan quarter final in Bangalore. With the three Indian colours smeared across my face, I cheered every moment. Sidhu's 90 , Jadeja's cameo with one huge six, Azharuddin’s mere physical presence as captain and Waqar Younis charging in to bowl. The Mexican waves in the crowd only grew bigger each time. Pakistan’s chase to 287 began with Aamir Sohail’s flamboyant batting and him asking Venkatesh Prasad(known as the arm-pit smeller by tandavdancer) to set the field more appropriately. The next ball which claimed Sohail’s off stump was sheer hysteria, taken to greater heights by Prasad asking him to fuckoff.  Deep inside I knew India will win come what may. And when that did happen – a crazy Indian fan was born. Where are you my hero, the one who scored 523 runs with an average of 87 in ‘96? You are above two defeats, how did you let all this happen? I can’t help feeling lost, and can’t feel better because SA crumbled to Bangladesh.

It’s depressing to be a fan of Indian cricket today, when you know the best moments are all in the past.