On the Road to Recovery

The patient is resting, uncomfortably. I think poor Sir has quite a bad case of the pox as I don't ever remember being as covered or uncomfortable as he has been. But like a trooper, he is handling it well.

We had a pretty low-key weekend consisting mostly of movies and bad television, reading and snacking. We (and by we I mean he) tried sleeping on the Neem leaves Friday but I don't think he was too keen on that. He woke up Saturday with the leaves sticking all over him, hiding the new spots that appeared and feeling worse - a little frustrated that there is no miracle cure.

I went out on Saturday for a bit to see if I could get some more juice and something to help with the itch. An usually talkative Chandan was apologizing that it took him so long to get the Neem leaves. He had said it would be about a half hour but it took him about an hour and a half to return - not that this made any difference to us. But apparently, he was planning to just roll up on a Neem tree and pull the leaves off. From what I gather, he went into someone's yard but was told he couldn't just take the leaves. "They are very valuable. People pay good money for them." So instead of inciting the wrath of a perfect stranger, he called his friend. "I told him my Sir was sick so he helped me out but I had to drive further than I thought I would." My Sir. I have visions of Chandan in his black pants and white Hertz shirt defying gravity, trespassing and bounding up a tree, stopping at nothing to to help find a cure for his Sir.

Truth be told, I think the timing worked out well for him as Saturday was the Dussehra holiday (not to be confused with Diwali which isn't until the beginning of November). Chandan told me there is something like 380 different Hindu holidays. Dussehra always comes before Diwali and puts the country in the holiday spirit. I am thinking it's a bit like Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Chandan was in a particularly festive mood on Saturday and had the car decked out with a string of flowers on the front grill and more flowers hooked onto the windshield wipers. (All the rickshaw drivers, were busy prettying their cars with flowers and leaves as well.) He also had painted a red bindi between his eyebrows for the occasion. Men sometimes wear the dot as well although I often think it looks more like a schmeer than a dot. Chandan said he was just wearing it for the holiday. So I asked him if this was a big holiday and he said it was for some but he was really looking forward to Diwali because he would be going home (we will be in Singapore). Apparently, he grew up in a house with his brother and sister and about 30 other cousins. He said his father has 4 brothers and all of their families grew up in the same house.

He left us for the afternoon but I asked that he come back to take me to pick up a pizza. We've found the Dominoes is the best pizza we can find yet, strangely, there are none that will deliver to our apartment. Isn't that there whole shtick, Dominoes Pizza delivers? But this is India. All of the pizza places offer a variety of "international" pies - like a Chinese pizza with "szechuan spices" or a Mexican pizza made by an Asian chef in the commercial, and of course a variety of Indian pizzas with paneer cheese and curry spices. So to get anything resembling a real pizza, we go to Dominoes. Chandan was a little late coming back (and overly apologetic) because he was at a party and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, there were also more leaves and flowers on the car. I immediately felt bad for making him leave his party so I could go 5 km to get a pizza but he seemed more concerned about being late.

I saw the gecko again in the bathroom though I can't be sure if it was the same one from before or a friend. I think it was smaller though. And you can add one more to the "rats seen alive" tally. Saturday afternoon as I was scouring the streets for treats to make Sir feel better, I ran into another one although also very small almost like a mouse but I'm still considering it a rat. It makes for a better story, when you come home with only a deck of pink Barbie "Fairytopia" playing cards with princesses and glitterbugs on them, to say you searched high and low, even encountering the likes of skittish rats for fun games to take the patient's mind off the pox.