The fracture story continues.......

One look at my leg and he ( Dr. Agadi) exclaimed “Oh God! What have you done to this poor girl? This definitely looks like a multiple major fracture to me. Lets get an X-ray done fast.”

That scared me a lot. I did not know what an x-ray was and what it would do to me. So I began to wail.

“Why are you crying?” asked the doctor.

“I am scared of x-rays”

“It is just a photograph of your bones baby. Nothing else. Don’t worry. I know you are in pain and I will take care not to touch your legs at all”.

Now this was something interesting. I just wanted to have a look at the bones in my leg. I was very curious now. My curiosity made me quite and I could hear loudly the sigh of relief ringing around me.

So we entered a dark room. All the people accompanying me were made to stand outside. I felt important jumping in on my one good leg, leaving them behind worried and ashamed. Yeah, they were ashamed because the doctor had not minced words. He had torrents of advice showered on them.

It was all over before I knew what was going on. Then we had to wait for some time and I dozed off and fell asleep. The doctor got the report very soon and it was clear that the bone of my leg had not only been fractured but because of my effort in putting weight on it, it had got protruded outwards with chips on the sides.

This is how it looked in the x-ray.

The doctor was aghast that they had tried to make me walk on my leg. He felt very sorry for me and told my mother that he was not able to handle the case. They will have to consult an orthopedic specialist in a bigger town called Mangalore. He also added that they have been very cruel to me and the pain with such a fracture left uncared for could be quite bad. He also added that they should somehow make it up to me now by being very nice until the cast is put because they were responsible for what has happened to me in many ways. He was very smart and efficient doctor but he also made a mistake there by telling all these in front of me. He spoke in Kannada. He must have either thought that I did not know the language or he was trying to extract some revenge on the people who were cruel to a small girl who looked quite innocent to him. It is still not clear to me.

Now my mommy and aunt were in tears and were fussing over me a lot. They gave me some apples, chocolates and ice-cream.

We got back into the taxi to drive back home. I was very silent. They thought I must have got scared. The truth - I was planning how to take advantage of the situation I was in. The doctor’s words of “be nice to that poor girl now” kept ringing in my mind.

After some time they must have got worried as to why I was not talking and made a mistake of asking me

“Do you want something Fari?”

“Yes! I want to know why uncle has such big hairs in his ears”.

The driver burst out so loud that he lost control of the car and narrowly escaped the lorry which was coming towards us. There were lots of shouts from my Mother and aunt. Then they got angry with the driver and asked him whether he was planning of killing us all.

All he did was laugh and keep quite for sometime and then start laughing all over again shaking like a jelly to the irritation of my mother and aunt.

“Please tell me mommy. Why does he have such big hairs in his ears?”

My mother and aunt looked at each other as if to search for some answer. My aunt thought of an answer “Let us ask your uncle when we get back to Byndoor”.

“OK”

My mother squealed “What are you saying there stupid woman? You don’t want her to walk in there and immediately start pestering us to ask him why he has hairs in his ears when all will be standing there to hear the report”.

“Please find some answer or I will go crazy now”

“Who can answer such questions?”

They kept arguing between themselves and I wondered how stupid both of them were. If they had asked me something similar I would have found some answer by now. Anyway the driver came to their rescue

“Baby. Listen, I will tell you why he has hairs in his ears”.

“How do you know that?”

“I was there when it happened”

“Ok, see I knew something had happened. Was God involved in it?”

“In a way yes. His mother wanted him to use tooth pick after eating meat and keep his teeth clean and safe. He agreed with that and did it but he also played pranks on her. He would always hide them and make her search for it when she was busy doing some work. One day she got very angry. Very very angry. She cursed him that may God grow toothpicks in his ears. And there big hairs sprouted from his ears. After that whenever he asked his mother where the toothpicks were she would tell him to find it in his ears. That is it”

“You mean he uses them like toothpicks?”

“You have not seen that yet? He does and it is something you should watch. He just plucks a hair from his ear and clean his teeth”.

I did not believe him but was happy to have an answer. I don’t know why my mother and aunt did not hug and give him a big kiss for finding an answer for them. We came back home and everyone told everyone that THEY knew something was wrong with me and everyone blamed everyone for not listening to THEM. My sister was in tears because she was made to hurt me by lying to me about the crows nest and I got a string of apologies from her.

After a few days I was taken to Mangalore.

I was tired and drowsy for most part of the trip and slept a lot. It was 7 hours journey. I was given a lot of favorite food to eat for past three days. I was forgiven for most of things I did around the house and for some reason being naughty became boring …I became a quite girl waiting for the Mangalore trip to happen so that the pain in leg could finally be rid of but I was also very scared inside. No one knew the turmoil going on in me..

My first experience with severe physical pain...