Blood Letting

I donated blood for the first time this week.

The Rotary Club of Delhi had organized a blood donation camp at my college on Wednesday - a big, invitingly open white tent in the middle of the front lawn. The Rotary Club members then wandered around the college, collaring hapless students and asking them why they weren't out there - in there, rather - donating blood.

I'd been wanting to donate blood for ages, but hadn't cared enough to actually go and find a place to donate. Not that I'm all selfless and generous, mind you - I just felt that it was an adventure that I ought to undertake as a part of turning eighteen. Anyway, I was delighted at the opportunity. So I tried to get my friends to come along with me, but they refused outright, giving reasons ranging from the practical ("Suppose they use infected needles?") to the plain ridiculous ("Tujhe pata nahi hai, blood donate karne se kala ban jata hai!")

Finally, suddenly infected by the Rotarians' zeal, a friend of mine agreed to come along with me. We went to the big white tent. It was like entering a circus. There were people all around - the doctors, the Rotarians in their blue caps and the students from Pathways World School, who were supposed to be helping the Rotarians. Also, of course, students from my college who'd wandered in, wondering what this was all about. We were supposed to register first and then fill out a form that had questions like "Have you ever had Malaria/Typhoid/Jaundice/A-Dozen-Other-Diseases-Whose Names-I-Can't-Remember?" and "Have you taken any medication/vaccination/alcohol in the last forty-eight hours?" and "Have you ever had sex with multiple partners?" (huh?) and "Are you HIV-positive?" (double huh?)

Then we had our haemoglobin levels and our BP checked, and, when we passed those tests, were given one plastic bag each, with tubes coming out of them. After that, we were finally allowed to enter the place where the actual blood letting was happening - a huge room inside the tent, with a couple of dozen beds, on which people were lying with their arms connected via tubes to rapidly filling bags of blood.

A rather nice doctor took my form and made me lie down on a bed. Then she put a cloth thing around my arm and asked me to make a fist. She said it in Hindi (muthi or some word like that) and, me being me, I didn't understand what she said, so I folded my arm at the elbow. So, of course, she thought that I was nervous. She smiled at me very reassuringly and said, "First time?" and I smiled back and said, "Yeah." She was even nicer to me after that.

She put the syringe in - still have a hole by my elbow to prove it - and gave me a sponge ball to squeeze, I suppose so that the blood could get pumped out faster. So I lay there like that for some time, squeezing the little ball regularly and trying not to look at the sun that was shining into my eyes through the white cloth of the tent. It was rather nice and peaceful.

She came by regularly to check on me. When 350 ml had been pumped out, she pulled the syringe out of my hand and put a white gauze thing inside my elbow. I lay there for some more time, again trying not to stare at the sun. And that was that.

She made me get up some time after that and asked me if I was feeling okay. I felt perfectly fine, which, to be honest, was rather disappointing; I'd expected at least something, but no. Apparently, I'm too healthy.

And then, to the best part of the whole experience - the free food! Let's see - we had soft drinks (I had three glasses), orange juice (one packet), baby samosas (three), puffs (one), chips (innumerable), cup cake (one), apples (one), banana (none, I hate them). Plus one free gift, a clock, which I promptly donated to a classmate of mine.

All in all, the actual donating part was the least painless. Standing in line to get my form submitted was, in fact, more of a hassle. And, of course, the only sickly feeling I had at the end was from all the overeating!

Another One

!!! GROSSNESS ALERT!!! MORBIDITY ALERT!!! ETC!!!

4. The Numbers

She worked with numbers for forty years. And then she retired.

But the numbers wouldn’t go away. They stayed before her eyes, burnt forever into her retina. They danced before her, orange-red, and she snatched at them, trying to make them disappear. But they wouldn’t.

Finally, she gouged out her eyes. It didn’t help, though.

(55 words, not counting the title)

***

This story came to me at two in the morning and it's sort of inspired by something from my life. Oh, and the last bit? My mum's idea. I was just going to shoot her outright, but my mum said that that was rather staid (!).

(Previously)

Tagged! 3

*This Post Will Keep Getting Updated*

Well, so I've been tagged by the Smugbug. I'm supposed to write a story in less than fifty-five words. How easy, I thought. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. The last thing I wrote was this and, as you can see from the date, that was a long time ago. The following story just popped into my head and it's not what I thought I would end up writing, so please excuse - well, pretty much everything..

1. True Love Bypassed

"Him? But he's so ugly!"
"No, he's not!"
”Look at his nose!”
"There’s nothing wrong with his nose!”
“Sweetie, you need someone to make P jealous, not make him laugh. You should pick someone handsome.”
“Yeah, I guess..”
“What about that guy over there?”
“Ugly.”
“Better than your guy. Ask him, go on.”
Sighing, “Okay.”

(55 words, not counting the title.)

2. Puking by the Roadside

The images kept haunting him throughout the drive. Finally, he stopped the car and puked by the roadside. Vehicles roared by. He wondered what those drivers thought of him. He wondered if she would be stiff by now, inside the trunk. He wondered if he would puke when he buried her. He rather thought not.

(55 words, again not counting the title)

3. Decisions

There wasn’t much time left. She had ruled out the blue one, so there were just two choices left. Moisture trickled down her back. The cutter in her hand wavered, first over the red one and then over the green one. Finally, she decided on the red one. Snip went the sweater’s price tag.

(54 words)

Update # 1:

I forgot that I was supposed to pay this forward, so here are the five people whose literary genius I want to - er- stoke? As in, you know, stoke the fire sort of thing?

1. Arnav
2. eM
3. Pradyot
4. Inky
5. SOxy

Some of these people won't do it, since I'm aiming rather high here, but whatever. I want to read stories written by these people, so there.

Update # 2:

To see how this should actually be done, visit this place. This blogger has posted a lot of stories, in different posts, so I can't link to all of them. But his tales are so much better than mine, they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Freedom

It's a quiet day, an overcast day. The sky is grey, a breeze flutters the leaves outside.

It's Independence Day. A day for flying kites.

I watch them flying about in the sky. There are dozens of them - pink, yellow, green, red against the grey sky. The distant ones are mere black spots. They could be birds, except for the way they fly.

There are other watchers. Other people on other rooftops, faces upturned. They're too far away for me to read their expressions. I wonder what's in their minds. Nostalgia? Wonder? Or are their thoughts far away from the kites? Is it just a duty to them, a mere ritual, this watching of kites on Independence Day? Bring out a glass of nimbu pani and sip it slowly, watching the kites, listening to the children's laughter and shouts.

There's a kite stuck on the tree outside my house. There always is, this time of the year. Last year, it was a tricolour kite - green and white and saffron. This time, it's black - with a white stripe and a red tail. It flutters in the wind - a tug-of-war between the breeze and the tree. The poor kite is stuck in between. The breeze will eventually win, though. And then it will carry its prize a few yards, before it gets tired of it. And then the kite will fall to the ground.

I've owned a kite only once in my life. My father made it for us - my brother and me. I must have been about six or seven. I don't remember if it could fly, but it was really pretty. Purple all over, with a purple tail and purple streamers. I remember buying the purple paper, I remember watching my father make it, but I don't remember if it eventually flew.

The vehicles outside all have tricolours. They flutter from the handlebars of two-wheelers; they stick out from the side-mirrors of four-wheelers. All probably bought from the kids at the red lights. I wonder if those kids have kites. Maybe they'll buy some with the money they get selling the tricolour.

Miskeralytis - An Antidote

Tee hee. This happened about half an hour ago.

My mother had sent me out to get some milk from the local Mother Dairy shop. When I reached the place, there were two customers standing there already - two thirty-something men.

The first one was buying icecreams, two each of about three different varieties - for his kids, I assumed. The shopkeeper - a mallu - totalled up everything and the guy paid for it. Just as he was leaving, his phone rang. He picked it up and said, "Aa, Verghesey, enthokke ondu?"

The second guy asked for a couple of litres of toned milk. The shopkeeper asked if he wanted anything else. So the guy went to a red car parked nearby and asked the lady sitting inside, "Vere enthengilum veno? Ice creamo vallom?"

Why do I even bother missing Kerala?

The Middle of Nowhere - II

Continued from here.

Bats. Dozens of them, hanging upside down on the giant tree. Most of them were still, sleeping no doubt, but some of them gave out intermittent shrieks; some shook themselves every few minutes, while others flapped and stretched their wings.

I couldn't understand why I'd never noticed these creatures before, in all the years that I'd been visiting the place. They must have been hanging up there every time I came. And I'd always taken the shrieks for granted and never bothered to look up at the tallest trees, so busy was I with climbing the dead snake vines.

I stood there for a few minutes. My grandfather soon became bored - after all, he had been visiting this place for years - and went outside. I followed him out.

We sat down on the half-wall surrounding the one-roomed temple. It was peaceful. The noon sun was warm, there was a slight wind, and the paddy fields stretched out below us like a green waving carpet. There were a few white birds here and there, paying scant attention to the scarecrows.

Soon, a figure came into view, leading a cow. My grandfather sat up and said, "Look, that is my brother." I squinted at the figure, but couldn't see much. "He'll cross the fields and come here to let the cow graze. We'll go down and meet him."

We clambered down. The figure was still only half-way across the fields. Appooppan went and stood under the shade of a coconut tree while I investigated a low-walled well. There was a tulsi plant growing nearby and I idly plucked a few leaves and ate them - they are supposed to be good for the body. The water in the well was dark and unwholesome-looking. I remembered that there was some story attached to this well. Perhaps somebody had jumped in and died and now haunted the well. The waters didn't appear deep enough for drowning, but, looking up at the jungle brooding above me, I felt that I could well believe that a ghost might choose to hang around.

Appooppan, meanwhile, had gone to welcome the figure. I followed him and Appooppan asked the other man, "Recognize her?" It wasn't a very hard question, since I am the only female born in my father's family in two generations. The man scrutinized me carefully and said, "How can I not? After all, she is family."

He smiled kindly at me and went to tie the cow around a tree, in an area where there was plenty of grass. Then he made small talk with us. He discussed the weather and the crops and how long it had been since he had seen me.

While I was listening, I couldn't help but wonder why I had no memories of him. Perhaps he was only a cousin. He was a short and scrawny man, with pleasant eyes almost hidden by folds of skin. Unlike my grandfather, who doesn't look his age, this man looked as if he had been baked by the sun all his life and had dried out as a result.

Soon, their talk turned to local matters and I was left to my own thoughts. I looked out at the fields and thought of how different the place was from Delhi, how much more peaceful. The only sounds were the voices of the two men, the harsh crying of crows and that beautiful sound that coconut trees make when they are swaying in the wind. In that moment, I couldn't, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to leave this place.

Only for a moment, though.

The Metro

The Delhi Metro ROCKS!!

I came back from college on the Metro yesterday. Delhi University to Central Secretariat in eighteen minutes - I thought I'd stepped into another dimension.

And it's not just the speed - it's everything; the cleanliness, the simple decor, the lack of crowds, the punctuality, not to mention the airconditioning that makes the station seem like heaven after the heat outside. It's almost like a plane ride, only even better, if that's possible.

The Delhi University station is the first on the line and you can get a seat if you're quick enough. Otherwise, there are some stations where the people get off in huge waves, like Kashmere Gate and Connaught Place (though the computerised Metro lady calls it Rajiv Chowk, for some reason) and you can get a seat.

You pay your money, you get a token that you use to get to the platform, you wait for the Metro - there's one every five minutes and there are signboards telling you how long till the next one - you get on board, you sit there watching your fellow passengers' faces - not much of a view outside, since it's underground - you reach your station, you use your token to get back outside. That's it, done.

In spite of the fact that I'd never ridden the Metro before, I was amazed at how familiar everything seemed, thanks to the countless movies I've seen that feature at least one scene in a Metro; the most recent of them being one of the earlier scenes in The Lost World, which I watched again on TV recently.

One of the most fascinating things about the stations are the rails themselves. In India, we're used to dirty, stinky, litter-strewn rails at the platforms. These Metro rails are so clean, I'd willingly bet that they're swept every hour. In fact, they're so clean that they look rather inviting. I've always wondered what it would be like to be directly in front of a speeding train, though I've never felt the slightest desire to actually find out, thanks to the stink and the dirt of the Indian Railways. But these rails look.. tempting. Even if I did jump, I doubt I'd be in any serious danger, though, because the Metro comes in so slowly at the stations.

Since it was my first time, my friends gave me a guided tour. I kept jumping about like a little kid, exclaiming in an awe-struck voice about every little thing. We speculated on what would happen if we took a ticket for a nearer station and rode the Metro till the last station. Do the authorities fine the offenders or make them ride back to the station they took the ticket for? Do they have some kind of computerized system keeping track of each of the tokens? Maybe they have different coloured tokens for each of the stations.

In fact, I wondered about it so much that I dreamt about it last night. In the dream, I took a ticket for Rajiv Chowk and the clerk gave me a blood red marble instead of the blue token for Central Secretariat. Unfortunately, I already had a bag of red marbles on me and this marble got lost among them. I kept trying each of the marbles to find out which of them would let me get out of the station. Finally, I tried the last marble and that didn't work either. So, well, it was a nightmare rather than a dream.

If you're a Delhiite who hasn't already tried the Metro, please do, because it's a wonderful experience.