My first experience with severe physical pain...

The fear of being hunted did not keep us confined to our home for long. Soon we were back in fresh air again.

We caught fish from small brooks and put them in the well. Oh!! It was so much of fun and for once in my life I was not studying anything….

They had a big swing there inside the house and we enjoyed it a lot. But nothing good or bad can last forever. So finally the laughter was wiped off my face. My vacation ended in a tragedy when I fell down from a chair and fractured my leg. The main problem was that the doctor who checked out with my leg did not diagnose it to be fracture but said some nerve or muscle must have strained causing the pain. He gave my mother some ointment to be applied where it hurt me. I had to go through hell when they applied the ointment.

I could not put down my leg and walk because of the shooting pain. I could neither lay on the bed the whole day and so started jumping around on my left leg which was easy as it was strong enough to substitute for other club footed leg which was rarely used for standing on.

After a week they consulted the doctor again and he said that I was just being scared to walk after the fall and they should somehow make me walk again without fussing over me all the time. Saying so he gave more medicines now to be taken orally and for application. There was bluish color appearing on my leg and that had got my mother worried. So now they tried to force me to walk which had me wailing loud enough to get few neighbors rushing in to find out what was going on. The pain was so bad that I was willing to scratch, bite and fully swallow anyone who dared to touch my leg. They gave up the idea of force and decided to fool me. One day my sister told me that if I would walk then she would show me a crow’s nest with a golden stick hidden in it which she had found. I was very much tempted and tried to put weight on my leg which sent shooting pain up to my head and I almost fainted. I felt something cracking in my leg then. After that I became very careful with my leg and would never put it down for any reason nor would I allow anyone to touch it. The next day I went to the garden in front of the house to pick up flowers jumping around on one leg. My mother’s grandfather saw me then and approached me with a big cane. He knew I was scared of him and tried to make me walk properly threatening me with the cane. He had me cornered in the garden and out of fear and anger I started howling loudly. My mother rushed out but waited to see if I would walk. Finally being scared to death I put my leg down and again felt the shooting pain and decided not to try it .. so I picked it back up quickly though not before finding my self in pain and now I was very wild. Wild enough to snatch the cane which was bigger than me and beat the old man but before I could even move my mother rushed and stopped her grandfather. May be she realized this was not going to end in a good way. She decided that something must be really wrong with me and I should be taken to the nearby town for a better diagnosis. I refused to eat anything or even talk to anyone until they promised not to hurt my leg anymore. So the next day they engaged a taxi to take me to Kundapura. Someone had to carry me all the way to the road and so my father’s brother-in-law was called in to carry me. My dad was in Bangalore because he had limited days of leave from the place of work. I was glad with the arrangement because I thought this was going to end my awful experience. Being my normal self I started observing the man who was carrying me and found that he had long hairs sticking out of his ears. That amazed me a lot. I had to know what made him have hairs in his ears when no one else had it. So as soon as I was in taxi I asked my mother

“Mommy, why does that uncle have so many big hairs in his ears?”

“How can I answer that question?”

“Why can’t you answer a simple question like that?”

“God made him like that”

“Why did God make only Him like that?”

“Not only him. There are other people who have hairs in their ears”

“Then why have we not seen them?”

“I have seen them”

“Then please Mommy name them for me”

“My God!! Will you please keep quite, the driver is losing his concentration and we will be in an accident if you go on like this”

“But I want to know why that uncle has hairs in his ears”

“Why do you want to know that now? He has hairs in ears and that is it. Why should you bother about it?”

“What do I do if it is bothering me and I want to know why there are hairs in his ears?”

“Wow!! Look at the river my darling.. can you see the boat?”

“Yes.. I can see the boat and why is that man carrying a stick in his hand?”

“That is to push the boat ahead”

I was silent for some more time watching out the things that were passing by. Soon we came to a monotonous village and suddenly I remembered that I still did not know why uncle had so many big hairs in his ears. So I started to ask my Mommy again. It went on for some time and my mother got a big head ache and she vomited. My aunt said she was getting a headache and was feeling sick too and if I did not shut up they would just turn back and go home. Now that bothered me because I wanted the pain in my leg to go away but that meant I would be ignorant of why hairs were growing out my uncle’s ears. I decided to shut up because both my Mom and Aunt looked annoyed. They never could hear anything repeated more often…

So I was left wondering and worrying as to why uncle had big hairs in his ears. We reached the town Kundapura and there I met a very pleasant doctor named B.M. Agadi. I will always remember him just because he was responsible for putting me out of very severe pain. It is easy to remember good things in life. As easy as remembering the bad things that hurt us.

( PS: The uncle with hair in ear is my Father in Law.)