Gastroenteritis: A message from the Gods

I remember a wedding I went to. I was much younger then and very very hungry. I had always been at a loss when I went to weddings. There was so much food around and not enough place in my stomach to eat it all. It seemed that I was able to eat lesser than usual when I was in a buffet situation. I was always way too full, way too quick and never fully satisfied. So that fateful night I came up with a plan. Ideas usually need catalysts. Mine was a huge cauldron of Chilly-Chicken right in front of me. It was not very well prepared – extremely oily and brimming with spices. “What if I ate only Chilly-Chicken that night and nothing else?” It could be eaten without the aid of roti or rice which would take up unnecessary space in the stomach. The idea was spectacular and so was the time that I had executing it. People marveled at me. “The kid is so cute and so smart. He picked the stuff that he likes best and is having a ball of a time”. I think some thoughtful persons did warn me but I was having such a good time that I heard nothing but the sound of the munching in my head and the taste of heaven in my mouth. Helping after helping kept coming and I was sure that this was how I would spend all the weddings for the rest of my life. I will pick the one food that I like best and eat that alone. They say that when we over eat and then eat some more, we lose the ability to know the limit. Meaning you feel that you are still not full. I feel that way all the time. But that day I felt so even more and I kept shoveling helpings after helpings of the greasy stuff into my mouth. I think the eventuality hit me the minute I went home. I don’t remember how it started or whether I got some warning before it happened but what I remember is that I was writhing on the bathroom floor and crying tears of repentance. The repercussions were swift in coming but they left a burning sensation as they came. I was in the loo for about an hour and so and every payload seemed to slice off another layer of skin from the place where the sun doesn’t shine. I was lying on the floor praying to god that I would never overeat again. I would never indulge in any kind of excess ever. I remember that day even now. Even breaking wind hurt. Poisonous corrosive gas.

I took it as a message from the Gods. That the same carnage will follow in life as well if I did not learn to avoid temptation. I must have shrieked out the same in between my pain coz my parents seem to know how I came to my resolve. I held true to it and it kept me in the right through the 10^th boards and through IIT JEE. Then as time went on I guess I kept forgetting about it. I never completely forgot about it though just that I felt that I would never go to those extremes again. And then it happened. My guardian angels must have noticed this new poison in my life and that I was taking a liking to it. Booze.

I have easy money now, something I had never had before, and freedom to spend some of it in a way that was all up to me. So booze and fast food came easy. Subway after subway, Long Island Iced Tea after LIIT. I was sure never to go over the top because I remembered the pain of the blades I shat that night. But this was a new sort of excess. Slow but still an excess. It kept adding and came to a conclusion by a complete stoppage of all gastric functions. There was no malfunction. They just went on strike. The Doc says that it is Gastroenteritis. That it can happen anytime when there is a dip in immunity and what not. I think it is another message from the Gods. “Yo, you there with the sometimes fuzzy sometimes shiny head…watch out!!”

What can I say? My guardian angels have a cruel sense of humor….but they do their job all right.

Me? Nopes…not complaining…not complaining at all!!

tata