Living with Thyroid

My friend called me the other day and told me in a whisper that she had all the symptoms of early pregnancy. That should be a cause for joy, not for muted tones, I advised her.

“No,” she whispered even more urgently. “But we didn’t do it at all last month.”

“Why?” I asked stupidly.

“Oh, this and that,” She hemmed and hawed, reluctant to admit the children-work-laziness-TV quartet that make our bedrooms as stimulating as a yawn. She went on to narrate that she had all the symptoms of pregnancy – her periods were late, she was feeling bloated, she has noticed a few extra pounds, she was tired all the time.

“Immaculate conception, my dear Mary,” I guffawed.

She asked me to be serious.

“Wasn’t there even one day when -- you know -- you did it?” I stuttered.

“No, there wasn’t,” she said with a finality.

She assured me that she will get back to me with updates and we went back to our things that keep us busy all day and exhausted at night.

About a week later, she called again. “I have a thyroid problem.”

“Oh, that is bad, but common enough.” I remarked. I had to explain that she was about the sixth person I know who had a thyroid issue. “Hypo or hyper?” I enquired.

That was not a trick question. This little butterfly-shaped nondescript gland is, for all intents and purposes, bipolar – to say the least. In a few fortunate some, it is normal and pleasant, does its chores without a fuss and does not complain. In a few hapless souls, it goes into a maniacal overdrive, producing hormones and fatiguing out the poor cells in a metabolic orgy. Then again, what is most common especially among us, the fairer sex (if one can call oneself so), is when the little devil switches into a stuporous mode, when it goes into a prolonged sulk and does not produce those hormones which are apparently crucial for our well-being.

Here is a checklist:
Do you feel that your strong, beating heart is all aflutter? No, you are not falling in love, you are just hyperthyroid.

Do you have hair loss that cannot be explained by postpartum, dandruff, bad hair hygiene, simply pulling out your hair, etc. etc.? Son of a gun, you might have a thyroid problem.

Do you feel depressed, downtrodden, irritable, extremely vulnerable? Don’t look any further, you are hypothyroid.

Are you constipated? Or are you going a wee bit too frequent? Your gastroenterologist has reached the end of his road? Consult your friendly neighborhood endocrinologist, it might just be your thyroid.

Decreased – ahem – libido? Searching for an aphrodisiac? Check your thyroid first.

We have our own page three celebrity in our bodies, and love it, hate it, we just cannot ignore it.

So, as I said, my question was not tricky.

“Hypo,” she said. She sounded very hyper though.

“I can understand,” I suggested although she did not sound as if she wanted anything to be understood and it was left to thin air what I really understood. “Did you start medication?”

“Oh, not yet.”

“Is Joseph back from work?”

“No, he will be late today. As usual.” Tiredness was creeping into our voices. Tiredness and boredom.

“So what is new,” I halfheartedly joked.

“Let me get going then.” She was in the clutches of her thyroid, her little procrastinations, life’s indifference. And time for me to return to my own mundaneness.

“Okay then. Bye.”

“Bye.”

“Don’t worry, everything will be all right” I said omnisciently to the stillness after the click.

Of Mars and Venus

“The glass shoe fitted Cinderella perfectly and she and the prince got married. They lived happily ever after.” I ended my story telling, stifling a huge yawn in the process. Happily-ever-afters do get boring after a while – the sour grapes factor perhaps. But my 3-year-old daughter was not bored and not a wee bit sleepy. She sat up on the bed, and despite my attempts at cajoling her back to a horizontal position and calling bluff my empty threats, she decided to clear some issues with me.

“Amma, Cinderella and prince married, you and acha (dad) married, muttacha and ammamma married, Rakhi aunty and Sunil uncle married, who I will marry?”

I told her there was enough time to worry about that after she grew up.

“But boys marry girls?” She had to be sure.

I hmmm-ed. I coaxed her back to lying down with me.

“Amma, when I marry, I wear whale?

“Whale, darling? As in blue whale?” I muttered half asleep.

“Nooooooooooo,” her voice was shrill with impatience. “That thing white they wear, yesterday we saw in TV.”

I suddenly remembered, “Veil, dear.”

“See, I told you, you forget.” She said with obvious relief. She gets a little peeved when I don’t understand her. “And I kiss the boy on lips?” My sleep-laden eyes opened a little wider. Not so soon missy, my motherly possessiveness raised its head.

“Not now, not now.” I sh-shh-ed her.

“Amma, girls don’t kiss girls on lips, girls kiss boys on lips, like how you kiss acha.” Oops!

“Yes, we kiss because we love each other, dear.” I was now fully awake. “After you become big, you love somebody, you marry him, and then you kiss him because you love him.” I explained. That was not the order in which the events worked for me, but we keep re-creating our own realities.

“I love acha,” she said quite simply. She understood love, like how children do, in its all-pervading, indispensable sense. I admired her for it.

And when I worried about the indiscreetness in our marital relationship and what her little gray cells might have gauged, she became quickly bored with the intricacies of love and lips and men and women. She got down from her bed, picked up a book from her book rack, and asked me to read it to her.

And amidst billy goats gruff and trolls, the strangeness of human affairs gave way to the sure familiarity of fantasy.

My New Driver

I sat still with all the strangeness enveloping me like a blanket. I hate changes.

When I got used to the new country, we changed houses. When I finally de-sanitized my new house, we changed helpers. When I got accustomed to the whims of the new helper, we changed drivers. And when I got used to all the swashbuckling of our new driver, we changed again. And here I am, with this brand new stranger on the busy roads of a teeming city, smelling a faintly sickening smell of cigarette smoke and car-freshener, the FM radio blustering out gibberish, and my weird musings took on a sense of panic. I hate changes.

To break the ice, I said to him in my halting vernacular – “bisa ganti CD?” Can you change the CD?

He seemed overjoyed at the sound of my voice. I wondered how many panicky thoughts had raced through his head. He replied in a torrent which I was not even able to begin to comprehend, when he asked more succinctly, ending my misery, “CD?”

“Ya.”

“Nomor satu?”

I played the word in my mind. Nomor satu – number one. Number one what? It struck me all too suddenly that he might have meant which CD to play in our CD changer. Blast the CD changer, making difficult things impossible!

“Ya.” I replied quite predictably.

And then, the Om Shanti Om song – ankhon mei teri – filled our thin air, words flitting like butterflies mocking my verbal scarcity.

One minute into the song, I saw that my new driver was trying to grab my attention.

“Ya, Pak” – I said, again pretty predictably.

Again a torrent of words.

“Saya tidak bisa mengerti” – I can’t understand. I was apologetic. An intruder using their country, using their cars, using their drivers, and failing to understand them.

“Saya suka --,” and he pointed to the CD player. He said he likes the song. I smiled. A bridge is built on unknown waters. He again said a lot of things, a little of which I understood – he liked Hindi songs, he liked Hindi movies, he had this particular song at home, he listened to it every now and then. And then surprisingly, he sang along the beginning two lines. Wow! I almost wanted to clap. I didn’t know the words myself. But then I am very poor in Hindi. My new driver’s accent was much better than mine which my dear husband says sounds very French, also a language that I have no knowledge of.

“Anda tahu Hindi?” Do you know Hindi? I had to ask him.

“Tidak.” “Saya yanyi tapi tidak bisa mengerti.” I sing but cannot understand.

I thought of explaining the words to him, words of imperishable romance, of her breath being the wind that makes the singer’s heart soar like a kite, of moon being a shadow of her beauty, but I stumble on my lingual inadequacy and also something else, an invisible but taut line of cultural, social, and sexual inhibitions. I look out of the window, catch a glimpse of a sliver of a moon, point it out and say “chand.” He repeats, he is seemingly contented.

At least, we have music.

Ketaki

I am Ketaki – the cursed flower, the eternally doomed one, the one who fell from grace. There had been a time when I had adorned the crown of Shiva, my Lord and the Lord of this entire universe. There had been a time when I had hobnobbed with the moon and the ever-gurgling Ganga. There had been a time when my purity, my whiteness, and my subtle yet tantalizing perfume (yes, my mother had told me that I resemble a narcissus in character and not a screw pine!) had a meaning. That was then – this is now. I am not a flower anymore. After being trampled upon by devotees and discarded by priests, after spending eons and eons in oblivion, I now clutch on the faintest ray of hope at salvation – a human life.

To tell my story, it had been a warm summer day when Shiva plucked me out of my verdant abode and tenderly placed me in his matted tresses. Coming to think of it, if he had not been so tender about it, if he had just pushed me into his locks a little more firmly, there would not have been any story to tell (sigh!). But let me get on with my story. It was on this ill-starred day that Brahma got up from his lotus seat, climbed on his swan, and thought of making an inventory of his creations!! After covering the 100 billion or so galaxies and countless stars and planets and our own little nondescript earth, he came to the gates of Vaikunt. There, blissfully unaware of Brahma’s tedious chore, Vishnu was taking a siesta on Adi Shesha’s lustrous coils.

Brahma opened the gates, a trifle jealous at the obvious luxury of Vaikunt and more than a trifle angry at Vishnu’s seeming arrogance. How can a lowly god sleep when the creator is awake and, more importantly, working!!! Vishnu of course had his own ideas on who is higher up the pecking order and stated so quite clearly once the fog of his sleep lifted. Their argument which started with just a few name-calling and magic-bandying soon became so passionate that the other gods and earthly mortals panicked. However, before anything untoward happened, good sense prevailed and they agreed to seek out my Lord and ask him to be the arbitrator of this power dispute.

Shiva, forever magnanimous, set them up with a curious but pretty impossible task. Whoever spots his head or toes first is the winner. He would be the bigger, better god. He would be the higher hen on the pecking order. Both Vishnu and Brahma agreed to the test. They started somewhere around Shiva’s hip and Brahma traversed upwards while Vishnu took a downward route. Oh! The poor fools! Little did they realize that my Lord has neither beginning nor end. He is eternity.

Perhaps a little bored with an unending view of the torso, Brahma tried a little diversion. He poked Shiva on his ribs. A little jab, a little laughter, a sudden jerk of the head, and the damage was done. I fell down from Shiva’s hair and that despicable Gravity did the rest. I floated down…down…down, right into Brahma’s arms.

“Oh, you are Ketaki,” said the conniving phony. “Lie for me once and I will make you as pure as the driven snow.” My vanity led me astray. I consented.

He proclaimed to Shiva and Vishnu that he has seen Shiva’s crown. I was the proof. He said he plucked me from Shiva’s hair. Such a liar! I didn’t utter a word. Such an idiot!

Of course nobody believed. Shiva cursed us both, him to timeless obscurity and me to an eternity of worthlessness.

I have a human birth now. But I am still vain, I am arrogant, I am weak, and I still lie. Salvation still seems to be an eternity away.

(I have shamelessly stolen this whole reincarnation idea from my friend, mentor, guru, Janaki, who will have no other choice but to forgive me!)