The Seasonal Cold. It comes at various times of the year. It usually crops up at the most annoying times, just when we are thinking about this great Friday hangout scene. At weddings it gets its due share of curses. But nowhere is its presence more unwelcome than in students premises at exam times. Either it is a dirty trick of our timetable makers that they schedule exams to coincide with the shift in the weather or the cold just thinks it plain amusing to torment us, the puny students. This article is dedicated to all the brave sufferers of this nasty tormentor.
1) The Breeze with the Cold Touch:
It usually starts with a gentle breeze in spring or autumn. The type you find most pleasant at first…yes only at first. It taps you on the ear, says HI! And before you know it you are sneezing like bad. Welcome to the start of your cold bout. Nasal voice and 13-sneezes-in-a-row make you feel like a little kitten, shirking even from the tiniest of contact with cold atmosphere. You call your mom, and apart from the concerned lecture in which you catch glimpses of gargles and joshanda, you at last hear the magic words: Anti-Allergy tablet, pop a few and forget the cold. You are now on a strong dose of steroids and the sneezes are all but gone in a jiffy. An hour or two after you find yourself drowsing, and before you know it, you’re asleep. Good for you ain’t it? Yeah? You think so…? Think again!
2) Stalker in the Night:
Sleep is the favourite part of the lurking monster in your ENT canals, and it always turns out victorious in the battle at Nasal Bridge. All the sneeze causing stuff that your anti-allergy stashed away for those 8 hours has been reproducing at ten times the normal rate in somewhere up your ENT canals…and the army is ready to take you down. You only know of the marching army when it is just rounding the last bend before your nostrils and you desperately find a cloth to wash it off! Ugh! Not to mention the watery (actually, rivery) eyes and the thick saliva forming at your mouth. Desperately hoping to find some hot water to battle this army of flooding nose waters (sorry, couldn’t find a better name) you curse your luck when hostel geyser fails to cooperate. Then you find yourself sitting up at six in the morning sipping boiling hot Qarshi ka johar joshanda thanks to your roomie’s heating rod. Now you gain a few hours respite, albeit you having to carry a cloth with you to stop the flood…sorry nose waters.
And just when you think you have bested the cold, it has yet to pull out its next weapon in its bulging arsenal, the clogged ENT.
3) The Clogged ENT:
You thought you had defeated the flu only with a cup of johar joshanda and your hanky. How naive of you! Now there’s no runny nose, big respite that. But what to do with this Army on Dharna in your ENT canals, neither getting out (no matter how much pressure you apply) nor getting destroyed. Making trumpeting noises at the sink and inviting weird glances from passers-by you desperately take out your phone and call your mom, AGAIN, and this time it’s a vaguely named tablet ( usually of yellow colour). And before you know it the army is on the march again. And you meet it with cupped hanky again. Now you have seen the last of the Nasal Army, or rather you think you have. How naive you gonna get, puny human!
4) The Plague of the Phlegm:
Come nightfall and neither is your hanky there, nor is the army intent on marching soon. But it is movable. Yeeeess (Read it in a creepy tone!). Through the natural process of breathing, the army is going back the way it came, up the nasal passage, down your throat… uuhhh I think that’s enough. I’ll suffice by asking a simple question: How many times you gonna spit? 1,2,5, 10 20? How much? You are losing there, honey.
You wake up and you realise that that your throat is so sore you don’t even want to open your mouth. Don’t even think of swallowing. A hundred spears ready to stab on your throat on a simple act of swallowing. The army has you by the throat. Down comes the heating rod to the rescue. Gargle after gargle followed by tea after tea and you can finally swallow again.
A sigh of relief.
5) The Army's Camp:
And you go to breakfast, *(cough cough)* eat some yummy parathas and the like *(cough cough cough)*. The day was quite busy and your friend’s pizza treat just added to that *(cough cough cough)*. And now you notice it, you are feeling a slight constriction in your chest. Oh no, no, no, no no GOD!!! NOOOO! You feel like screaming your head off!! Scream away honey…scream all you like, that’s not gonna bring the army that’s camped out in your lungs. Gargles, Toot Siah, Joshanda…nothing works!
And then you feel the tap on your shoulder only to turn back and hear your mother’s voice, we are gonna need an antibiotic dear, that frozen yoghurt aint coming back up on its own. And there goes your self-medication down the gutter. Pop away tablets all you want, you still have to pay a visit to the doctor and finally, after three long days you at last see the back of the army….that was a nice week long battle and you have emerged victorious. Congratulations!!
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