Ae Pill Hai Mushkil
alt English title: Pill(ow) talk
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about bills. Today I am going to talk about a greater evil — pills.
Swallowing these huge chunky pills, in the event of sickness or injury (and I have had quite a few of the latter), has been the bane of my existence since childhood.
When I started writing this post, I thought it would be rather embarrassing to acknowledge this. You dare say that ingesting pills is an issue for you, and a thousand people will go, “Oh, right! This is your problem! What about our soldiers battling in sub-zero temperatures, huh?”.
So, I did what I do. Google. And here’s what I found.
Difficulty in swallowing is up there in the most-frequent difficulties — second only to breathing. And what do people find difficult to swallow? Food, saliva (oh tell me about it!) and tablets. The struggle is real, folks!
Over the years, my parents tried many a trick to circumvent this issue — myriad forms of deception involving sudden tablet feeding in the middle of a conversation and, on more than one occasion, covering up the tablet in a plate of rice that I was about to eat. Needless to say, I was more than up to the challenge every time.
And promptly spat out the tablet.
Swallowable medicine is plain weird. For one, tablets are, more often than not, awfully big for being popped in without chewing. And God forbid if one ends up on your tongue, it starts eroding and leaving behind a plaster like residue on your palate. Eww!
And seriously, what’s the deal with capsules? What is that medicine that needs to sit inside aplastic container and be jettisoned inside my body on a mission? Why can’t those smart lab researchers take some lessons in gastronomy and whip up their potions into something edible?
The sheer ridiculousness of these medicines is the prime reason why I wholeheartedly embraced my mother’s interest in Homeopathy — despite the striking lack of scientific proof of its effectiveness.
Hello, little balls of sugar. Oh, you are only a few millimetres in diameter and taste like candy. Great! I will have a bunch of you. Thank you.
It is only in recent years that I have managed to gain some ground in this mission to uneventfully ingest tablets — which is basically saying my entire household isn’t panicking when I am taking my tablets. Quite evidently, I believe I am still some distance away from taking a chill pill on this exercise.
My biggest fear, however, is being in a post apocalyptic scenario where I am visited by Morpheus. What if he offers me the choice between the blue and red pill? Which one will I choose?
If I choose one, will I be able to swallow it?
If this struck a chord with you or brought a smile to your face, let me know by tapping the ‘clap’ icon — it keeps me motivated to write more. And since I will be writing more anyway, how about following ‘Dilettante’s Den’ to make sure you don’t miss any story?
