knowing your onions

It was good to be a sickly kid after all. It comes back to haunt, oops sorry, help you when you grow older.
Jispa tonsils progressed from bad to worse. They started hurting her ears. At first they hurt a bit and then it started hurting more. We called up the paediatrician and she prescribed some ear drops which we duly bought. After we put them in her pain went sharpened. I guess the liquid medicine seemed to have exacerbated her immediate pain and she started screaming in agony. At first we tried to knock some patience in her. But then I remembered my childhood.
I used to get tonsillitis often enough and the infected would spread to the ear. The ear infection would remain in a dormant state for some time to come. Once millions of years ago, while we were in Pune at mom’s friends place, my brother and I were playing in the garden outside. I dunno what happened but my brother decided to give me a slap. Older brothers seem to love to do that kind of thing. Being the youngest of tree kids has given me enough reason (mental scar) for Jispa not to have siblings. This slap was a not so hard but it was misdirected. Instead of the cheek it hit the ear. Aw aw aw ow owowow ow.. MUMMY… I remember crying out loud and rushing in. Mommy was quite worried and my brother was aghast at what he saw as essentially overacting. According to his philosophy larding over me is fine and I complaining to a higher power was a sign of betrayal and cowardice. A squeal. It was my duty to submit wilfully to his orders. Now you know.
So mom took me aside and instantly readied her remedy. She boiled water and kept it at one side. Then covered it. she then took two napkins and got them warm on the lid. One by one she gave me a gentle .. what’s that word?.. a gentle warm _____… is it called dry fomentation? something we call it ‘sake’ in gujarati. Basically she put warm napkins on my ear, one by one. Lovely feeling and the pain just vanished away in due course.
So when Jispa really couldn’t bear it anymore, I asked Jasmine to boil water and get me some towels. I thought she understood the remedy. Ina few minutes a little warm water came in. I was like ‘I need it boiling Jasmine and get a lid’. Oh ok. She thought you wanted to put some in her ears. It’s not your fault Jasmine. I was the sickly kid. I was the one who knew all the shit that happens and all the possible remedies. So water was taken and heated to boiling point. In the meanwhile we took the towels and warmed them on the food vessels that were already hot.
I got Jispa to sleep on one side and gently put warm dry towels on her ear. In two minutes she stopped crying, in five she was better, in ten she was ok and in fifteen minutes we had enough and wanted to continue to watch her movie. Charlie and the chocolate factory. Roald Dahl might have been a great writer for kiddy books but I guess this made for a lousy movie script.
And I felt that finally after years of suffering as a kid I finally saw some light in His ways. So if you are getting married to someone with whom you might have babies, first figure out if either of you have been sick kids (especially as teenagers, since you would then have remembered the experience). If both of you have been reasonably healthy and not experienced enough of bacteria and viruses then I think you guys will be unfit to raise kids. No chance.
Jasmine is pathetic when it comes to understanding illness. I am the resident expert. She can nurture well enough, and she takes super care; but you really can’t write a treatise on hunger if you haven’t experienced it first hand.