On The Road Again
Another day brought about yet another train trip, unplanned as usual. A good thing to do in India, unplanned train trips. In the rickshaw to the train station we pulled out the Lonely Planet and inspected the map for India. We soon realised that the only way to go was north and the first destination north: tiger watching.
Upon arrival at the train station we looked at the confusion and chaos around us and spotted the crowd piled up around the counter. We wandered over and stood patiently at the back. More people seemed to join the throng while others left but it was hard to say because they all looked like the same moustached Indian to me. Our patience didn’t seem to be getting us any closer to the counter and we spotted a man laughing at us. I looked at him and he told us that in India you don’t wait in lines, it’s the survival of the fittest. Get your elbows in and push your way up to the front.
By this stage Hannah was looking a little ill but I decided to put it down to her drama queen antics. We had a little chat before deciding that she should try and get into the throng of moustached men and get the tickets. I mean the last time I checked the book of etiquette it said something about ladies first so I was only too happy to oblige. Hannah tapped the first man on the shoulder and flashed him a million dollar smile.
“Hello” she said.
“Hello, are you wanting to get tickets?” he asked.
“Oh yes please, it is so hard to get tickets isn’t it.” She graced them with another smile.
“Well, why don’t I get you to the front.” He pushed a few people out of the way, mumbled in Indian and pointed at the woman. This miraculously parted the sea of moustache before them. This wasn’t the way I planned it going but I could handle that.
“Did you see that Mika? They just let me right to the front!”
“See I told you, you should go and get the tickets. I knew they would let you through.”
“Mika you said that if someone had to wait ages in the line it should be me, because you had to go to the toilet.”
“Rubbish.”
Girls sometimes get things all so confused. It was about then that I made her the boss of getting tickets at train stations.
So we waited 2 hours for the train which had been due any minute. The time was well spent getting frustrated and hassled by beggar kids wanting our attention and most probably our money. We were at the first station on the train line so managed to score a seat next to each other. It was a regular train, not an overnighter sleeper, so it didn’t have facilities such as a kitchen. It did however contain a toilet. I decided not to visit that right about the time I walked onto the train and past the doorway and the putrid smell.
The first hour or so of our journey was pleasantly spent watching Kerelan jungles slowly morph into moderate urban sprawl and endless rice paddy fields. This little state of affairs didn’t last long and after about an hour the train started to fill up steadily. Things got hot and I started sweating with all the bodies piling up on top of us.
The gay couple sitting opposite weren’t really helping me feel much better. They were getting quite friendly with each other and I was tempted to tell them to ‘get a room.’ Things got worse, starting with the sweating. In order to feel better I tried to get some fresh air by moving the man’s legs off mine and then the bag which was on top of that, whilst keeping the gay couple from getting any more friendly with my ribs. This meant that I could get the guy who was sitting on the floor to move a bit, so I didn’t have to hold him up, giving me a spare arm to finally open the window. This more or less didn’t go to plan and only made me feel worse.
A few hours later, I came to the realisation that it wasn’t the sweating moustached men sitting on me which was making me feel sick but rather the sweating, feverish, shivering feeling I was experiencing. I nudged Hannah and explained to her that I felt sick. She wasn’t looking too crash hot herself. An hour later when the people had started to get off the train and I had room to wiggle, I pulled out the lonely planet and attempted to diagnose the diseases it had become apparent we were both experiencing.
I flipped open the book.
“So Hannah, how are you feeling?” I said after I shifted the bags from between us and moved the guy out of the way. All I got for reply was a wave of the hand and profuse sweating.
I decided to start with the first disease in the book. List of symptoms: Insomnia, fatigue, malaise and nausea. I was pretty sure I was feeling all of those. I didn’t know what malaise was but I was still sure that I was suffering it because I couldn’t really explain half the pains I was griped with.
“Hannah I think we have jetlag.”
She started clapping her hands and the sweat dripping off them made me glad that I was only sitting near her and not on her lap like we had almost had to do when the train was fuller.
“But I am convinced that we also have a few other diseases because that sweating isn’t listed as a symptom.” She nodded in agreement, causing the sweat from her nose to splash.
Next on the list of diseases were coughs, colds and chest infections. I looked around us and realised that the train had not in fact become less crowded but the hacking, barking, cough I was intermittently producing had given me a buffer and produced some space for the sick, white, fool tourists. I put a tick next to that one. Even though it could have been 3 different diseases, I was sure I had all 3.
Dengue fever was next on the list: a mosquito borne disease. I thought back to the day I went to the doctor in London and had £35.56 to vaccinate myself against such things as mosquito bites. I certainly didn’t remember getting any shots for this so called dengue fever. In fact I didn’t remember getting any shots of anything, seeing as the cheapest came to roughly £36.00. I had figured my mosquito repellent being 98% DEET would cure all mosquito-related problems at a fraction of the price. Yet here was dengue fever which induced high fever, severe headaches and body aches. Tick, tick and tick.
“Hannah we also have dengue fever.” She started to pay attention then.
“You haven’t taken any aspirin have you?” I continued.
She croaked out something about having had a couple.
“Well then I am quite sure you have hemorrhaging as well. It says here that aspirin will do that to you.”
I was glad that I hadn’t taken anything for the pain. Hannah at least had hemorrhaging, something I was quite sure wasn’t happening to me, although I couldn’t rule it out entirely.
Next was Hepatitis A: yellow skin and eyes, nausea and lethargy; infects the liver. Over the last year my liver had taken quite a beating and was still doing whatever it was supposed to be doing so I assumed it could take a little thing like Hepatitis A. Although in certain light, our skin was looking a little yellow.
Hepatitis B: it said you got it from sex. All the symptoms were there so I assumed I got it some other way.
Hepatitis E: transmitted through contaminated food and water. I thought back to Hannah and I sitting down in Indian restaurants and looking at the menu.
“Ok Hannah you get the one with the scribble that looks like the ocean and I will get the one which looks like grass.”
We had then pretended to read the menu carefully before explaining to the Indian, who didn’t speak English and was picking his nose, what we wanted. To avoid confusion we pointed confidently to the menu, vainly hoping we didn’t get fried duck feet or any other foods which you shouldn’t eat in India.
On receiving the food, I wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t duck feet. I was however quite certain that it was part of an animal and with my knowledge of animals, I guessed a diseased liver. I did have nausea and lethargy so I was sure that I had Hep E, and coming to think of it I probably had Hep C as well. Hep C wasn’t listed in the book but I was confident that I had it. To feel this bad it had to be something serious.
HIV: I was quite certain that I didn’t have it but to be safe I checked my ribs to see if the gay guys hadn’t given it to me. There was a rash but it wasn’t bleeding, yet. I didn’t recollect any transference of blood or fluids between us, but to be honest I couldn’t recollect much of anything by this stage. I crossed HIV off the list, for now anyway. You can’t just add diseases wily nily as that kind of behavior would most likely result in a heart attack. This brought me to the painful realisation that I was probably experiencing a heart attack. My arm was getting quite numb and I knew that was a number 1 symptom. I tossed up the idea of bringing this to Hannah’s attention but as I looked over I realised the reason my arm was numb was due to a lack of blood. Lack of blood to an arm will make it numb and right now there was a crazy girl gripping my forearm with all the feverish fervor she could muster. I crossed off heart attack and instead added to my list the vice like grip of a boa cnstrictor.

We continued down the list and I confidently came to the conclusion that we also had Influenza, Japanese B Encephalitis, Malaria, TB and Typhoid. I didn’t have diarrhea but it was such a touch and go situation. I had been living on a staple diet of anti diarrhea tablets in the vain hope that prevention was better than a cure. So I assumed I did have it but didn’t know it yet, so added Amoebic Dysentery, Giardiasis and travelers diarrhea.
Hannah seemed to be suffering all the same diseases as me. She started speaking in Spanish to the man opposite her: I assumed it was Spanish because it was hard to understand. In fact a lot of things were getting hard to understand.
The man opposite that she spoke to smelt a lot like alcohol, but I couldn’t be sure with this blocked nose. He had started giving Hannah the eye so I gave him the old red/yellow bung eye back which not only seemed to inflame my eye more from staring so hard, but inflame the whole situation. Our stop was coming up soon, I wasn’t sure how I knew that but I did, so I got up with all our gear and went to the doors with Hannah. Angry alcohol fingers grabbed my arm and started speaking to me. I hacked a cough which didn’t seem to do anything except add a sore throat to the growing list of my ailments which now also included a sore wrist from alcohol smelling fingers. At least I knew where that little problem was coming from. I looked at the fingers unsteadily and explained to them between hacking coughs that they had my arm. This didn’t seem to do much and the fingers stayed were they were.
I tried a different tact. “Dude you have to speak English for me to understand what you want.”
“Mika, he is speaking English.”
By now the whole train was crowded around and yelling at the body the fingers on my wrist were connected to. He got a little closer and I knew then that I hadn’t imagined the alcohol smell and it was from the breath of the body of the fingers still connected to my wrist. I couldn’t understand what was going on but somehow I managed to release his hold on me and Hannah and I walked off the train.
I tried to think clearly but it wasn’t really happening so Hannah took the lead, although she wasn’t in a much better state than me. There were a few things that I could understand however, and one was the crowds of people coming up to me saying they had called the police and they had taken the man away. I tried to remember something about a man but the only thing clear was that a little earlier some fingers smelling like alcohol had been grabbing my wrist: nothing about a man came to mind.
People must have felt sorry for the sweating white couple as Hannah somehow managed to get us to the front of the rickshaw line.
Upon arrival at the hotel, I noted with faint surprise that it was swaying from side to side. I smiled happily. A swaying hotel, how fabulous.
The next thing I remember, it was morning.

Sickness (Day 1 – Year 26)
I woke up in a pool of sweat with a million angry fire monkeys burning my chest and throat and something or someone bounding up and down on me. I tried to fight off the fire monkeys whilst disentangling myself from the creature but all this did was worsen the situation. I fought for a breath which eventually came and attempted to scream out some freedom slogans.
I finally unraveled the situation to learn that Hannah was better, obvious by the fact that she was bounding around the room screaming out to the world that very fact. Myself, on the hand, was a completely different matter.
I rasped out a croak and a cough which I was convinced brought up some blood, but I was too scared to check the tissue in case I was right. Hannah heard that and fled from the room in search of breakfast. Food was the last thing on my mind and the thought of it just made me cough and sweat some more. I looked down at the clammy bed we had been sharing and almost felt some pity for Hannah. However all the pity I could muster at that point was well and truly reserved for me.
Somehow we had managed to be staying in a really clean and comfortable hotel, as opposed to a hostel. We even had about 100 channels of TV to choose from. I tried to make myself comfortable but that only produced more sweat and made the fire monkeys even angrier. So thus began a 12 hour TV fest. I didn’t even eat, the monkeys made sure of that.
I have been away from Australia for nearly 3 years and right about then I started missing home for the first time. Hot showers, English speaking people, a smog free environment, my mother, a ham and salad sandwich, clean clothes, clean streets, and the list went on and on. Instead all I got were Bollywood movies with the occasional 1980’s English movie thrown in.
At lunch time Hannah peered into the room.
“Hello,” I rasped, bored out my brains and feeling sicker than in my whole life.
Hannah and I both have an attention span of about 3 minutes. If we have to sit in one place for longer than that we get itchy feet and start to go crazy. The fact that we both suffer from the same affliction means that our friendship usually works quite well.
“Just checking to see if you are alright.”
“No I am not alright. I mean about 20 seconds before you came in, and I don’t care what any doctor says, my heart stopped beating for a minute.”
“Mika do you want something to eat?”
“I can’t eat! The fire monkeys are causing my heart to stop beating! Oh my god, I can’t even feel my heart at the moment.” I replied as I limply raised my hand to my non-beating heart for emphasis but all that did was cause a fresh bout of coughing and pain.
“Do you want anything?”
“Antibiotics. I don’t know what they do but I am pretty sure I have lots of biotics in my body at the moment and I don’t want them there. They make my heart stop beating.”
“Mika you need a doctor – you don’t even know what sickness you have.”
“Doctors, shmoktors. What do they know more than me? Not much and all they would say is that I am full of heart stopping biotics.”
She looked quite dubious but left anyway.
A little while later she returned. Staying within the safety of the hallway she threw in some antibiotics.
“Here, the man at the counter said these should make you feel better. They are called antibiotics.”
The only thing I could do was reply with indignant bouts of raking coughing.
The next 26 years were spent in that clammy bed and me not leaving our room. To calm the boredom I decided to go mad. It wasn’t so much a decision, as something that just kind of crept up on me in the dark. I smiled at the madness and gave it a grin.
I have always had a little secret respect for madness and being cooped up in this room wanting to die was as good a place as ever to go crazy. I mean, I could identify a lot with that crazy lady in Kerelar. I bet she had had these heart-stopping biotics. Biotics rhymed with frolics and frolics was a flying ham. I hadn’t eaten a flying ham sandwich before. I put a mental note down to purchase a frolicking ham the next time I became hungry. Delicious I was sure. Sure of what was wrong with me, those dastardly monkeys. Didn’t I love monkeys? Obviously fire monkeys are like fire ants, I mean everyone loves ants. I crept around the room trying to catch the frolicking ants with Hannah’s sh-norckle. I cackled to myself, revelling in the ant’s genius.
Every time Hannah entered the room, I did my best impersonation of a person without a secret. I was so proud of my secret that I let him hide under my bed, bringing him out only when I was alone. I fed him scraps of toast and praised him for his quickness and sneaking prowess.
The fire ants on the other hand became the scourge of the land. Land or lamb I couldn’t be sure, but I knew if I wanted to scourge something it would be lambs. Mmmm lamb chops. I soon suspected Mary had something do with lambs and she was mad. All girls were mad, just like Hannah was. Speaking of which, I vaguely noticed that Hannah had joined the madness craze but hers was all wrong. I mean I should know. I considered myself quite the expert at this madness thing by now. I made a diagnostic test of why her madness was all wrong. I tallied it up and showed the ants. They giggled to themselves and I quickly caught them with the sh-norckle before realising it just wasn’t cricket so I let them free again.
What Hannah was experiencing was the dark side of madness. The ‘go crazy at Mika for being sick and stuck in this town which contained absolutely nothing to do’ anger type madness. The secret and I chuckled at how crazy she was.
Sometimes the flying pig would bring on thoughts of my untimely demise, so I tried the whole positive thinking deal and tried to picture myself as an old man with grey hair and little kids running around the place and me rocking on the rocking chair yelling at the punk kids to get off my lawn. I would be telling them in no uncertain terms that when we were young we were not so punkish and didn’t have the luxury of these new fang-dangled hover boards and flying cars and gave our elders respect. I soon gave that up when all it produced was another bout of coughing, fever and sweating.
One morning the zoo, that had become my room, left me all alone so upon standing up and realising I didn’t feel all that dizzy, I proclaimed to Hannah that I thought I was finally getting better. As soon as I said the words ‘I think I am getting better’ the dizziness started again but by then Hannah had already packed both our bags and was grabbing the keys to leave. I didn’t really have much choice.
As we walked outside and hailed a rickshaw, I looked around and said, “Man there seriously is nothing in this place, it’s so dull.” The look she gave me could have melted stone. I decided it prudent not to press the matter, for the moment anyway.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.11.2009

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