Monday, January 9, 2023

Mathangi's writing challenge, December 2022

 Last December's writing challenge

Five minutes of breathing in and breathing out: Everything that comes to mind.

Breathe In, Breathe Out
I want him to keep breathing. My favourite uncle, my late father’s first cousin, is in hospital for the past few days, with breathing issues. He’s over ninety. Only God knows how many breaths he has left, or any of us has left, for that matter. But I want him to keep breathing, to be there for me to visit and talk to, to share books with, to have his appreciation for my attempts at poetry and prose. Erudite, affectionate, compassionate, one of the most loving people I have ever had the good fortune to know. My pre-emptive grief is totally self-centred, I know, but that is what it is. Please get well, Uncle.
Daddy couldn’t get a bed in the hospital, and so we made sure he could breathe at home, with a nebulizer and oxygen cylinder. (He had had full time attendants for some months now, ever since my mother had fractured her hip). My mother had had a stroke, and was back home from the hospital with a tube through her nostril, immobile, silent, but holding tight with her good right hand, her eyes trying to follow me when I left the room. In her final few days, though, her stertorous, rasping breath was distressing to hear. I wasn’t at home, though, when she breathed her last: I was in the car, on a potholed lane not far from home, coming home after meeting a dear friend, when my sister called and told me that she was no more.
Daddy, in his final days, used to drink buttermilk and orange juice from small, single serve cartons, un-chilled, with a straw. His attendant was reluctant to leave his side, but I insisted that she go and have her dinner. Daddy asked for juice, and then for buttermilk, which I gave him. The woman came back to her post. I was changing for the night when she knocked at my bedroom door, in tears, telling me that he had left us. I still wonder, more than twelve years later, if he had needed that final sustenance for his last few breaths, or for the transition to another world, or was he merely completing his quota of earthly nutrition?
When my older son and his family came to stay in Delhi for most of 2018, one of the first things they had to do was purchase several air purifiers, given the horrific levels of air pollution that year. One was permanently kept at our house, for when our older granddaughter stayed over. Last winter, on the younger son’s insistence, I got the air purifier serviced and had the filter replaced. After two nights of use, it indicated that the filter needed cleaning. I tried washing it, but it didn’t work. I gave up. Winter is here again, and our son is trying his best to get his recalcitrant parents to get the air purifier serviced and use it. Will inertia win, or will common sense prevail?

5th December 2022

500 word piece telling us the news of the world in the tone of a favorite author.
The News of the World- 6th December, 2022
The news of the world today remains a farrago of disasters, demises, disappointments, with a smattering of honorificabilitudinitatibus.
Let me commence with the exemplary achievement of an intrepid six year old boy of Indian origin, Om Madan Garg. He became the youngest Singaporean to reach Everest Base Camp, after trekking for 65 km, over a period of ten days, accompanied by his progenitors.
According to the Secret Service in Washington, Chinese hackers have successfully appropriated millions of dollars of Covid relief funds. In the meantime, China has further eased its extremely stringent anti-virus controls, in the wake of increasing public protests, subsequent to a conflagration in late November, in which at least ten people shed their mortal coil.
The Oxford Dictionary chose, through an online poll, ‘goblin mode’ as word of the year. It is defined as ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations’. This term was first seen on Twitter in 2009, and gained popularity in 2022 as people around the globe emerged uncertainly from pandemic lockdowns.
Russia has renewed its air strikes against Ukraine, plunging parts of the country into freezing darkness. Kyiv claims that its air defences have limited the damage. The G7 countries have capped the price of Russian seaborne crude oil in order to punish Russia for the invasion of and continuing conflict with Ukraine.
Snollygosters are celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which marks the beginning of the end of the secular India that we once knew. More sensitive souls are resorting to lalochezia to express their emotions, although they are fully aware of it not making an iota of difference to anybody at all. One wag on social media claims that the ‘disputed structure’ committed suicide, much in the same way that ‘No One Killed Jessica’, as no one was ever found guilty of the demolition, despite vast quanta of evidence of the destruction.
Our erstwhile colonizers are celebrating their victory over our neighbouring country, the one that many of our populace love to hate, in the first test match of the series, that was played in Rawalpindi. Ben Stokes and his men beat their opponents by 74 runs on the fifth day of a high scoring series opener.
The sporting world lost an iconic coach with the demise of the 91 year old Nick Bollettieri. He had coached many legends in the world of tennis, including Venus and Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, and Maria Sharapova. He was known for his acerbic manner and no-nonsense training methods.
Exit polls indicate that the ruling party is making a clean sweep in the Gujarat assembly polls, while they may be in a close contest with the Congress party in the Himachal Pradesh elections. Let’s see if there are any revelations when the actual outcome is revealed. Perhaps a great deal of perspicacity is not mandatory for an accurate prediction.


Day 3
A 500 word travelogue of any place/ space of choice that MUST employ all five senses.
Om Swasthiastu
Bali had been on my spouse's Bucket list for several years. This lazy traveller let him plan our weeklong itinerary, merely overhearing the words Kuta, Seminyak, Ubud and Nusa Dua, as he spoke to the travel agent.
On this trip, we discovered that Vietjet had a special class of air travel: sardine class. Never again, we swore to ourselves. We rushed to catch the connecting flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Denpasar. The view from the plane, as we approached Bali, was magical: a coastline of green and brown, with a deep grey sea. The Denpasar arrival hall was exquisite, with statues that seemed to be carved out of ice, and beautiful pillars which looked like woven cane. We obtained our visas, and then discovered that our luggage was arriving three hours later, on the next flight, and so we bought chocolates and Pringles and bottled water from duty-free, our first nourishment in Bali, and sat and waited. Luggage acquired, we stepped out and were received by the travel company’s agent. Our villa was about half an hour away. It was lovely, with a private swimming pool, surrounded by frangipani trees, bearing pink and yellow flowers, such a gentle fragrance. I luxuriated in that silken water.
A glass bottomed boat ride to Turtle Island. Corals and shoals of fish. Wading through sandy, stony water. Holding turtles: large and cool to touch. A visit to a temple on the shore, with a gentle young guide. The sea and the rocks and the ancient stone. There were many temples across the city, ancient looking stone, with fascinating gateways: the inner side smooth, the outer side carved and chunky at the base, open at the top. Offerings outside every home and shop for both the good spirits (at a higher level) and the bad spirits (on the ground). The acknowledgement of both good and evil in the black and white checked cloth wrapped around many statues. The huge Hindu mythological statuary at a few roundabouts. The strangeness of no one being allowed to enter the temples, except the priests, on most days. The coffee plantation where we tried all kinds of coffee, and delicious lemongrass tea, but didn’t dare try the world’s most expensive Luwak coffee, wherein the coffee cherries are fed to civets, the beans emerge in their poop, after which they are cleaned and processed further. The beans smelled good enough, but no thank you.
We saw silver craftsmen at work, and wood carvers, and artists painting beautiful canvases.
We saw a delightful, colourful dance drama in a temple hall surrounded by emerald green rice fields, with a troupe of musicians playing various traditional instruments, in pleasing harmony and rhythms. We went back to Ubud, to a long street full of more kinds of wood carvings than you can imagine, to buy a traditional Barong mask, an exquisite, somewhat scary looking good spirit, which the spouse had set his heart on. A little bit of Bali now lives with us!
May be an image of temple, monument and outdoors


Day 4
A 500 word fiction piece (which must be complete and coherent and must begin and end within 500 words) ordered around a grocery list.
Riya wakes up automatically at 5 a.m. every morning, even when on holiday. Her body is used to getting up on time to fill up the drinking/cooking water vessels and run the motor to fill the overhead tank when the water supply comes on, for just half an hour every morning. They moved to an apartment complex with all conveniences a few years ago, and she no longer needs to fill anything, but she still wakes up at five.
Today, though, she and her husband are at their daughter’s place, in a Virginia suburb. She seems to be over her jetlag, and is awake at her usual time. They are visiting Priya for the first time since she married Daniel. This is their first weekend here, and Daniel has promised to drive them to Patel Brothers, in Fairfax, a good hour’s drive from their home. Ramesh is quite sure that he does not want to drive in America, on the wrong side of the road. Being a passenger here is disorienting enough. Priya is eight months pregnant. They will be here for a while, to welcome their first grandchild, and to take care of their daughter. Riya quietly makes herself a cup of tea, and sits on the patio, waiting for the sun to rise. Priya has told them that you can get everything desi at Patel Brothers, no need to bring stuff from India, but Riya has got some good quality heeng and edible gum granules with her. She remembers her late mother making a strong heeng solution and applying it on Baby Priya’s belly button, and then gently warming her abdomen with a folded cloth heated on a clean pan. It worked wonders for colic. The edible gum was for the traditional laddoos made for post-partum, lactating mothers. She sips her tea, and pads softly into the study to pick up paper and pen. She needs to make an exhaustive list, especially of lactation enhancers. She has heard of so many young women these days having problems with breast feeding. Ghee, atta, almonds, sultanas, dried figs, fenugreek seeds, mustard oil, which is great for massaging babies. Daniel might not like his baby to smell of mustard oil. In which case she will cook with it, maybe make some pickles. Dals. Fleased husk: Priya is getting constipated, nothing is as safe as Isabgol. Jaggery powder, for the panjeeri laddoos. Basmati rice. Although Riya likes soups, salads, pasta and baked casseroles, she and Ramesh are now craving desi khana. What else does she need? Good desi achaar. Chooran. Aniseed, cardamom.
The door opens. An agitated Daniel rushes in, hair tousled, glasses crooked:
Priya’s in labour. Her water’s burst. It’s too soon. I’m calling the hospital.
Riya throws down her pen and notepad, enters her bedroom and shakes Ramesh awake.
Then she goes to her daughter. Priya is both distraught and excited.
Thank goodness I’d packed my hospital bag last week, she laughs.
Your panjeeri laddoos, sighs Riya, hugging her daughter.

Day5
Today, we play around with nonsense verse.
A 500 word piece with perfectly formed sentences that make no sense. Like a garbled dream.
Bina Gupta : Thank you for the second Thurber quotation, which sent me down this nonsensical path.
People who do not understand pigeons―and pigeons can be understood only when you understand that there is nothing to understand about them―should not go around describing pigeons or the effect of pigeons. -- James Thurber
Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. ― James Thurber
Peter and his Pals
A literate pigeon called Peter
Was quite an inveterate reader
He ate and he read, he read and he ate
All day long, till it was quite late.
He read from potato chip packing
Of which the dustbins never were lacking
Newspapers and books in warm cozy nooks
Were always his for the asking.
Librarians loved him: he cooed at them
With warm guttural mutterings he wooed them
Until one sad day, the above words came his way
And our peaceful Peter wasn’t seen again.
His pigeonly pride was shredded to pieces
He summoned all his nephews and nieces
To a family conclave, over James Thurber’s grave
All of whom concurred, save
One absurd bird, who spoke the truth
But no one was listening to this youth:
Thurber is long dead and gone now
What is the point of this silly powwow?
There are better things to do
For me and for you
Why waste our time on this useless gutturgoo?
Ranted Peter’s avid supporters
You foolish feathered traitor
Our Peter is right, wise and erudite,
You are no more than a winged potater.
The peaceful pigeon withdrew from the gang
And stayed alone, far away from his clan.
He would rather be lonely, than be with them only
To listen to nonsensical plans.
We must desecrate this grave, cried Peter
Though dead, Thurber is a cheater
And a liar. We will give him an 'effect'
That will cure the defect
In his thinking, that miserable liar.
It’s time we claimed our rightful place
On Planet Earth, we are powerful birds
With no dearth of wing power and poop power.
We shall rule, mark my words.
And so, starting from the Green Lawn Cemetery,
Columbus, Ohio, a global movement started
Led by Peter, who had his plans all sorted
A pigeonesque dream, following a stream
Of thought both mala fide and malign.
We are the pooper troopers,
Cried their leader, the erstwhile avid reader
And the pigeons agreed that this was their creed
To feed and to poop, to poop and to feed.
And so the late lamented James
Who as a humorist had many a claim to fame,
was now relegated
To the pigeon hall of shame.
He’s the reason why they don’t spare us:
Our homes, our cars, and even us
If they can, they will poop
All over your stoop
Your porch, your yard
Your birthday card.
The world is their pooping arena
Which is why it is not any cleaner.



Day 6
A 500 word piece chronicling a climate change event as both a material, empirical one but also a metaphorical one.
Non-fiction.
The entire piece must be written in second-person.
From Under the Stars to the Great Indoors
When you moved back to Delhi from London at the age of eight, and lived in your aunt’s house for several months until your father was allotted his own accommodation, one of the things you found most fascinating were the sleeping arrangements for all the family. There was a huge open grassy ground, surrounded by houses on three sides, divided from its twin by a central road. The entire neighbourhood slept outdoors all summer. Newlywed couples were issued the enclosed aangan, for privacy. Charpais stood on their sides in the verandahs, and were laid out before dinner time. Bedrolls were stored on a huge trunk in the storeroom, and neatly unrolled, and covered with sheets, pillows distributed, and a pot of drinking water was placed on a stool. Your father was allotted a first floor house with a high-walled terrace, with an open barsati to protect your charpais and bedding from the elements, so you continued to sleep outdoors for much of the year.
Summer also meant dust storms. The strong, dusty wind, known as ‘loo’ meant a pre-emptive closing of doors and windows, and you or your sister had to sweep the verandahs, which became slippery with dust. You also had to lug buckets of water upstairs to the terrace, (before a tap was installed there) and throw mugs full of water all across the terrace floor to cool it down. The summer heat was intense: this process made it bearable. The loo has not been seen or felt for decades now. Those were the years of childhood, of teenage angst, of a room shared with your sibling, in which you only slept during the harsh northern winter.
Getting married and moving to a tropical country was your first introduction to domestic air conditioners. Getting out of the plane had you perspiring buckets until you reached the arrival hall. Air conditioners were de riguer except when it rained steadily for days, bringing a modicum of coolness. Getting attuned to marriage and motherhood was not without its share of storms, either. Many thunderous looks and angry tears, until both parties recognized the futility of attempted mindreading.
You return to another city in north India, dry and dusty in summer, freezing in winter. You invest in desert coolers, which are brilliant except when it’s very humid. Filling them with water, making sure the pumps were working, all a part of your Lucknow summers. You have a tiny front lawn, and a backyard with trees, but have, somehow, lost your sleeping outdoors mojo. Your spouse’s company blesses you with one air conditioner, which you use as sparingly as possible, because you still have to pay the electricity bills.
You move to Kochi, where humidity and air conditioners rule. You move north, then south, then to sticky Kolkata where you get an air conditioner for your kitchen. Now just the two of you live in an apartment with five air conditioners. God save the planet.

Day 7
500 words of a memory palace for 2022. Pick any place, any memories/ objects/ people.
Aide-memoire aka memory palace
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Spot 1: The shoe cupboard just inside my front door, in which rest my pinky-purple sneakers, tells me to go out and about, with all the energy and enthusiasm I can muster.
Spot 2 is for placidly, and silence: The leafy green belt at the back of our complex, where I walk in blessed silence, apart from being howled at by the occasional territorial beagle.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Spot 3 is the large common garden, where I am often accosted by a person with whom I have very little in common, but she is like a warm, friendly puppy, so I occasionally, willingly, do engage in conversation with her.
Hydrate. Even though it’s winter, and it’s cold, living beings need to drink plenty of water
Spot 4: The copper jug on the dining table.
Spot 5: The twenty water bottles on the kitchen counter.
Spot 6. The front balcony with the plants and the water bowl for the birds. Today, three little sparrows drank from the water bowl, unbullied by the parading pigeons. Such joy.
Do not drink tea or coffee before a long car drive, in your own best interests, as you are definitely psychologically weak bladdered, if not physiologically so.
Spot 6. The semi-circular little console table near the front door, with the car key in the drawer.
Woollen garments can spread themselves like wildfire across a medium sized apartment. They need to be tamed and put in their place immediately.
Spots 6. 7, 8: One bedroom closet for my pullovers, cardigans, and jackets. One hanging space in the steel almirah in the store room for shawls, scarves, stoles, caps and gloves. The spouse’s sole wardrobe.
Do not sit for long stretches of time, sitting is the new smoking.
Spot 9: The dark brown leather couch which pulls you in and holds you in its thrall, bought over sixteen years ago, when you, your knees, and your entire musculo-skeletal system were much younger. You may ask, gentle reader, why don’t we get rid of it? For two reasons: that we do have youngsters visit us occasionally, and that it holds many memories.
A sexagenarian and a septuagenarian need regular meals, but actually can’t eat a great deal at a time. The septuagenarian will consume any given leftover only once. Do not buy more than you can cook/consume over a reasonable period of time.
Spot 10. Our long suffering refrigerator, which always seems to be overflowing. We remain on adversarial terms, despite my good intentions.
Get rid of stuff. Be ruthless. Paper especially multiplies exponentially. Like woollen garments, papers also require ceaseless vigilance
Spot 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17…ad nauseum
All drawers in the house need cleaning and sorting. So many drawers, so little time.

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Monday, December 26, 2022

One hundred years

 Today is very special for me as it marks my father's 100th birthday.

This photograph is about thirty years old, taken on the occasion of Holi, at my aunt's home in Allahabad. My brother was visiting from England, and he accompanied my parents to Allahabad, and to my home in Lucknow.
My father looked like this for much of his life: serene, good humoured, with a smile hovering around his lips. Even when he was old and infirm, Daddy was always stoic. He shed a few tears on learning of my brother's sudden demise, but subsequently kept his grief to himself. He shared joyful memories of my brother with my sister-in-law and my nephews, for the memorial service
.
From him, I think, I have learned to find joy and contentment in the everyday, to appreciate whatever life has to offer. He was always appreciative of good food, and relished, most expressively, my mother's cooking. He would, enthusiastically, share the hottest of green chillies with me, leaving me with watering eyes and a burning mouth! He loved listening to good music, especially his beloved Saigal, whom he inflicted upon his unwilling children, until Saigal's immortal songs became part of our very being. He had a fondness for the performing arts, and was an enthusiastic theatre goer. I remember hearing about my parents, (when we lived in London), having had to book their tickets for the My Fair Lady musical, some ten months in advance. He subsequently also loved the Stagedoor performance of Pygmalion in Delhi several decades later. An abiding memory is of an M.S.Subbalakshmi concert at the Ashoka Hotel, transformative by its sheer beauty. He would take me and my sister to Sapru House to watch children's films.
Books, of course. A few cherished reference books: an atlas, dictionary, encyclopaedia, plus some of the Readers Digest condensed books. Mostly library books. Daddy chortling away while reading Wodehouse. Much later, while staying with us (when living independently was no longer possible for my parents), he would happily watch old Utpal Dutt movies time and time again, chuckling away at the same comedies. Golmaal and Naram Garam were his great favourites. He had a wicked sense of humour. He also, in his later years, became very fond of Google Baba, which became the arbiter of any factual disagreements we may have had. He had always been staunchly independent, and was always willing to try to learn/do something new.
As I plan to make the first carrot halwa of the season, I remember our family halwa making venture, with Daddy grating many kilos of carrots with a hand-powered rotary grater.
He was always appreciative of my efforts in looking after him, and would say, "Tum ko badi mushakkat karni padti hai."
I am inundated with memories, far too many to share here.
I remain eternally grateful for having Dayal Saran Seth as my father.
I am sharing here several blog posts which feature him:
May be an image of 1 person

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Friday, October 28, 2022

Unparenting!

Reema Ahmed's book, Unparenting bears the tagline "Sharing Awkward Truths With Curious Kids." It is much, much more than that. It is a deeply philosophical book which has you question many of your own beliefs and practices, and seriously makes you think, not just about parenting, but about your own relationship with the world. It is also gently humorous in places. It can also punch you in the gut.              


 I read this book a few weeks ago, and have, since then, been wondering how to write about it without merely quoting Reema's words!

Reading (and practicing) Unparenting  is likely to provide an antidote to Philip Larkin's immortal 'This Be the Verse':

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.


    I quote."in its rush to propagate our species, to achieve fulfilment and immortality, to feel whole and happy, we have forgotten something crucial to the survival of the very thing we need--the clarity to want to reproduce not because we feel we need children, but because we want them....very few parents think deeply about what a child really needs beyond the basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter...Does that tiny, beautiful, incredible, individual life exist because you want it to exist, because you're ready and prepared to welcome and nurture it with presence and joy? Or does it exist because you think it is something that must be done or simply because there was a condom 'accident'?....We need to probe deeper into our own patterns of need and neglect as parents that create these 'bad' children who never really grow up...Children are born powerless, innocent and harmless. If they destroy themselves and others, if they fall prey to violence and abuse, then surely, their circumstances are a reflection of the society they live in...children are routinely subjected to fear, punishment, deprivation and neglect. and no one intervenes. Why?"

The author describes real life cases of parenting gone wrong, cases that will break your heart. She speaks of body safety and abuse awareness, in terms which help safeguard rather than frighten the child. She speaks of the child's discovery of its own body, and its curiosity about self and other relevant bodies. The author guides parents to answer their child's questions pertaining to sex with sensitivity, and age appropriate information. The chapter headings speak for themselves, dealing with puberty, sex and reproduction, bullying, relationships, love and dating, single parents and dating, separation and divorce, loss and grief, emotions and mental health. She gives examples from her own life as a divorced single mother with a now teenage son. She writes of the support she has received from her natal family, as well as the difficulty of balancing the emotional needs of her child vis-a-vis the generational differences with her parents. She speaks of the need for support and friendships which sustain. 

I find myself unable to do justice to this beautifully written, intensely honest book. I think  that the best I can say about it is, Read It!  It will transform you. 

Unparenting is published by Penguin Random House India.
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Thursday, September 29, 2022

Book Review: Hyderabad: The Second Book of the Partition Trilogy

 Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is an author whose books speak about the human condition in immensely informative and enriching ways, and one whose works I value greatly.

I was greatly affected by her first book in this Trilogy, Lahore. Her interweaving of the lives of ordinary people, with the lives of the leaders and politicians of the time, was masterful. The character of Sardar Patel stood out for me, as I realised I knew so little about this stalwart, as well as the support he received from his daughter, Manibehn. Even the Mountbattens' dog found a mention, as did their daughter, Pamela. Somehow, though, the horrors of that painful time in our country's history converged, in my mind, with our present state of  simmering communal tension, inducing intense despair, which kept me from writing about that brilliant book.



Hyderabad deals with a history that I knew very little about. It is an immensely readable account of the difficulties in getting the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, to join the newly independent Indian nation. It is a fascinating, and yet again, painful time in our history, with communal riots breaking out, 'death trains' crossing the borders between India and Pakistan, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, and Jinnah's attempts to woo the Nizam, who was an extremely strange character in his own right. Dirty, smelly, a heavy smoker, yet astute enough to run rings around his legal adviser, Walter Monckton, the Indian government as well as the Governor General, Louis Mountbatten, the Nizam comes across as an extremely intriguing character, totally convinced of his own, and his kingdom's, invincibility. And yet, his daughter-in-law, the Princess Niloufer, speaks highly of his kindness to her. Her lady in waiting, Uzma, gets caught up in the political intrigues of the time, as do Jaabili, and Daniyal Khan, who runs a printing press.The narrative is richly textured, and one learns about many of the social systems prevalent in Hyderabad at the time, many of which were patently unfair, if not actually cruel. There are many characters and many adventures, all interwoven skillfully, to create a richly woven masterpiece.                                                                                                                      


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Friday, September 2, 2022

Tech travails

 The universe seems to be truly conspiring to get me to blog! This morning's adventure is a case in point.

Not wanting to bore you, gentle readers, with medical details, let me tell you that for several years now, the spouse has been on blood thinners, and also has to keep the thinness of his blood within certain parameters. This has involved regular visits to the local pathology lab, scoldings and much nagging when there is too huge an interval between tests. In India, though, testing itself has never been a problem: you give the blood sample in the morning, and by late afternoon or early evening you get the report online, well in time for the next dose of blood thinner, which we have learned to tweak as required. (During the lockdown, the technician would come home in protective gear and take the sample).

The problem arises when we travel abroad, and especially in the USA, where our visits are of a longer duration. Most places you can't get a blood test without a prescription, and if you do manage to get a doctor to phone in a requisition for you, you don't get the results in time for you to know how much of the thinner to take that evening. It becomes especially stressful if the patient has symptoms of extra thin blood like bleeding from the ear or nose.

And so, before we visited the son and his family in the USA this summer, I was determined not to travel without a Coaguchek, a device very similar to the home blood sugar monitors, but vastly more expensive, and rather more complicated. Nonetheless, your testing remains in your domain. The spouse had tried my cousin's machine when we visited him last October. It seemed sensible to acquire one. And so, a few weeks before we were due to travel, I bought the device from the dealer, and he came over in the evening to give the spouse a live demonstration of the same. This included setting the date and time, and the code chip for the box of strips. Although there was a fairly exhaustive booklet accompanying the device, I made simple procedural notes on a sheet of paper, which I kept in the machine's pouch. The young man was incredibly helpful, and said that we could call him any time we had a problem.

We had adventures with the device. The next time we tried to use it, it showed an error. We phoned. The dealer told us that it was a delicate darling, would not function in severe summer heat. And so tests were conducted in our bedroom, with the air conditioning on. The blood drop had to be of the right size, the device demanded a fat drop of blood. You had to remove your finger at the precise moment that it beeped. There were various error codes. Each time the spouse tests, it is a joint venture: I stand by with my instruction sheet, issuing instructions. We seemed to be getting reasonably competent, or so we thought.

This morning, after much prodding over the past few days, we proceeded to test. But, the device showed Error No. 3, which meant that the strip had expired. I checked the box: the strips were expiring next August. We tried another strip,and another one from a new box, which bore the same expiry date. (The second box is a monument to my stupidity, will spare you that story). We urgently phoned the dealer. He said that it was possible that the device's date settings had changed, hence the error. We looked. The time, day, month, all were correct. The year had mysteriously changed itself to 2023. The dealer had said that he could help us correct it on a video call. The spouse pottered off to his study. Charged by my new gung-ho spirit, I took out the instruction manual, and successfully changed the date. Summoned the spouse. The test was conducted successfully. I messaged the kind dealer, and we went about our day. Our life and its strange challenges!


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