Love In The Time Of Dengue

I am greatly indebted to Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the title of this blog. I haven't ready the classic Love In The Time of Cholera though I do own a copy of that. This blog is about a very short phone conversation I had with my kootukari yesterday.

We, me and my kootukari parted ways against my wish long back in mid 2014 and since then it was a life in solitude for me. To be precise, it's my four hundred and  twelfth day of solitude today. I took pretty long time for me to realize the facts and accept my faults. By then, everything had fallen apart beyond any chance. I never gave up and never will. I hope life will give me second chance, sooner or later.

Days and weeks and months went by. My feelings for her still remain the same. I am still optimistic. Currently, a post graduate student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,  I have everything to be happy and cheerful as my well wishers say. To their dismay,  on my second week at Campus, I was admitted at the institute hospital for fever, vomiting and severe headache and later diagnosed with dengue.

This was a real test for me. I have never been subjected to this kind of torture by my own body. My head was giving me a feeling of bursting every now and then. I still don't know how I managed to attend lectures. I was throwing up every single drop that went inside my mouth. The only fuel that ran my body machine was the saline drip given to me daily from the institute hospital. The doctors at the hospital were on shift. However they were informed about my case and did everything needed. So were the staff nurses there. My admire and respect for the medical profession grew manifold this time too.

It's when you go through tough times, you miss your loved ones the most. I miss her every second I live. Since my platelet count was declining day by day, I was feeling weak and sleepless. It was the four hundred and tenth day of my solitude. I Whatsapped her about my condition. She might have thought it as a n act to get attention or sympathy. Nevertheless I badly needed to talk to her. The conversation was short, limited to my sickness. The conversation ended with she asking me to take care of my health. It was quite formal. Still I felt good. At night, she WhatsApped me to ask about my condition. Its not very common to get a text from her as there used t be no conversation between the two of us, unless until I started one.

Next day. My four hundred and eleventh day of solitude. I was greeted by a " Good Morning. Hope you are feeling better now" text from that special person. It was the first time in ages she was sending me a good morning text. All the time her reply to my good morning text was just a morning. I saw my phone's notification light blinking as I came to room after having breakfast. I thought it was my Dad's missed call. Upon looking on the screen, I had three missed calls, two from my Dad as expected and the third from the totally unexpected person - my kootukari. I cannot remember the last time she called me. A couple of months ago. maybe.

I called her back. She didn't pick up. She called me back. I don't know how I felt or rather how to write how I felt then. This conversation was also about the infection - treatment, medicines and all. I lasted for about 10 minutes. It was me who did almost all the talking. She was more of a listener, with a few occasional questions about food and travel to class and mess. It was not romantic. It was not even a friendlier one. Very short and formal. Still,   I felt good. If this condition of mine made her call me, i never want to get cured of this dengue. I believe if love is lost, life is lost. My beloved dengue, please stay with me, for me to be with her the way I used to, for the remaining days of my life.

Rahul Mohan