Not so common anymore

There was a time when I would catch it easily. If I didn’t have it every month, it was as though I had missed a major event. A friend in college always envied me for it. She’d say, ‘I love your voice when you have it’ and she would hang out with me on those days hoping she’d catch it too. Her body seemed immune to the influence of the tiny living thing.

As a child, I was famous at the local hospital in the township we lived at, just because of what it caused to my throat. One thing would lead to another and I’d be prescribed penicillin injections. I am talking 1970’s. The nurses at the hospital remembered me for it even twenty years later.

As a young adult, I’d look down with disdain all the home remedies ma would suggest. It involved, turmeric, ginger, honey, lemon, tulsi and everything ma could get her hands on. She would make jeera milagu rasam and suggest I steam and gargle. The more fuss she made, the more I resisted. Somewhere I had read, ‘Treated, it lasts only a week; Ignored, it can last 7 days’. Sometimes, I would turn to a cure from allopathy.

Now, when I am older, and I have it rarely (maybe my immune system is better?), at the first sign of it, I rush to fix myself ginger tea and milagu rasam. I may even steam or gargle when it gets worse. Some stubborn streaks refuse to die even as you mellow with age.

Acchoo! Bless me.

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