Return of the Native.

I had a hard time when I immigrated from India. Driving on the wrong side of the road was a simple matter compared to coping with freezing weather and all that goes with it. But I was young and hot-blooded, fell in love and married Monika, a wonderful local girl. Before I knew it, she was training me. I learnt to enjoy the fine points of bland Western food and to honour her wishes unlike in India where a wife anticipates her husband’s whims and fulfills them before they are expressed. Our holidays were to exotic places on this continent and rarely did I go ‘home’ to see my family.

Last time Monika and I were in India was five years ago. It was past midnight when we arrived at my brother’s home and after a drink of hot creamy milk we hit the comfortable bed under the canopy of a mosquito net. Sleep was not in the cards though. Noise of continuous traffic in which blowing the horn every ten seconds is de rigueur, recorded prayers blaring on a microphone in the nearby temple, call of a muezzin, again on the microphone, in a mosque across the main road are not conducive to a restful slumber. Fortunately we got used to it in a couple of days.

A tropical travel specialist in Calgary had prescribed a number of pills to be taken daily and some others as required. The need arose two days after arrival. Monika was attacked by Delhi Belly – diarrhea by its Western name. When pills did not help she started the course of antibiotics. After two days she could keep the delicious food in again and we breathed sighs of relief. A little too soon, as it turned out. At the breakfast table the next morning, I coughed gently with a handkerchief on my mouth. Every one noticed it and a barrage of questions were let loose.
“Do you have phlegm?” asked brother Vijay.
“Did you cough in the night?” asked sister-in-law Nirusha.
“Were you cold in the night?” asked niece Kamala.
Nephew’s wife Manju shot the final arrow, “Did you sit under the A.C. vent on the airplane?”
Monika, a real doctor and most concerned with the health of her only husband, tried to interject but no one let her. They did not listen to my replies either. Vijay rushed to a cabinet and returned with a musty old bottle and shoved in my mouth a tea spoon full of green syrup spilling some on my sparkling white new kurta (long shirt). He did not notice the spill and confidently assured every one “His cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Nirusha went to the kitchen and brought an Ayurvedic powder wrapped in a brown paper and a bowl of tomato soup with a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. “Take these” she commanded and assured all who would listen, “The cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Kamala produced a yellow tablet from her handbag and handed it to me, “I took this last week and my cough was gone in ten minutes.” Manju watched me consume all this medication and thankfully did not produce any herself. But she did offer this bit of advice, “Stay in bed and drink a lot of sweet chai with cardamom. The cold will be gone by the evening.” Her prescription seemed to me the most attractive because duration of her treatment was a shade less unrealistic than that of the others.

Monika watched in consternation as I consumed all the offerings and prepared to stretch on the sofa with a cup of prescribed chai. The doctor was the only one who thought that the much ballyhooed cough was merely a sneeze and was nothing to worry about.

I later discovered that the duration of every event in Delhi is ten minutes whether it is a two hour drive to visit the relatives at the other end of the city or an hour wait for a visitor who announced his imminent arrival on the ‘mobile’. As for my illness, every one turned out to be wrong though no one admitted it. It was indeed the cough but it took much longer than ten minutes to go away. In spite of gaining several inches around my waistline due to the consumption of syrups, pills, powders, gels, soups, teas and miscellaneous brews, the cough persisted during the whole stay in Delhi and left only when the dusty grimy air of India’s bustling capital city was a memory.