my frend BAG

July 5

Last evening I had a chance to talk to one of my college batch mate whom I hve always considered one of the best fellows in my batch albeit his academic life. He could recognize my voice as easily as I could his voice, which reminded me of the rapport we shared sumtime back in the good old days in the hostel rooms of our alma mater.

It is always very heartening talking to him coz he s always happy but the last conversation just left me aghast. He is suffering from a kind of epilepsy, which his doctor says is because of a tapeworm in his brain. I was wondering if Bag ever had a brain but he was damn serious. And he had been in trauma for the past six months with 4 severe attacks. It was literally difficult to hold my ground when I imagined our very own Bag lying on ground vibrating, his teeth tight, limbs clenched, tongue twisted and mouth frothing. But of course I remained calm, or I might have accrued to his agony. He has been instructed not to drive and swim for all of his life, on a heavy dose of drugs to wipe the dead larvae of the tapeworm off his head. He has lost his privacy for someone must accompany him for ablutions too, can’t go to work and his life virtually is certainly out of normalcy. He is no longer a normal man.

I was sad but to my astonishment I gauged a sense of excitement in his voice while he was explaining all the fundas of his version of epilepsy. He was very quick to tell me the formulas of his doses, the name of the medicines, the doctor, hospital and what not associated with his ailment. He, as always, had added his own flavor of humor in what I thought was the end of all happiness! At the end of that chat which we had to cut short because of his very time bound routine, I was thinking about the disease, my friend’s predicament but I had a strange kind of a smile!

As I later explained it to my flat-mate and Bag’s friend, I couldn’t hide my mixed feelings and he also knowing what Bag is, was carrying the same strange kind of smile composed of horror of the disease and love for Bag’s naive sense of humor!