Here, There & Elsewhere. Cold peril

This column begins in the week before Thanksgiving. Bins and I are preparing to spend the weekend in the gracious home of my cousins in Baltimore. When I say, “gracious home” I really mean it: Six generously proportioned bedrooms with en suite bathrooms; airy spaces for socialising, dining and cooking; rare and interesting art objects from around the world; wonderful views from all sides and in the basement an excellent gym plus a home-theatre. Complete with functioning popcorn machine!!

We are expecting to meet my sister while we’re there and on Sunday, we return with her in her car, to where she now lives, in Hartford. And as if all this were not enough, my cousin has also, most generously bought our air tickets! So Bins and I are feeling cherished to the max. Too bad then that somewhere along the way — was it on the Orange Cab Airport Shuttle from Newport? Or at Providence’s TF Green Airport? Or perhaps inside the aircraft, along with the free peanuts and coffee? — somewhere along the way, I pick up an unwelcome guest. A cold virus.

Some people are able to shake off a cold. Not me. From the first sneeze onwards, I begin to think of funeral homes. Bins knows this only too well. “Oh-oh-oh,” he says, as I WA-SHOO a couple of times in quick succession. I have never mastered the genteel k’choo-k’choo sneezes of nicely brought up girls. “This is not a good sign.” I try to put a brave face on it. “It's an allergy,” I say. “It will pass. Let’s not panic.”

But we get to my cousin’s by late afternoon, and the narrow corridor of time during which I can take evasive action has passed. By evening, my forehead is hot and my throat feels like it’s been embedded with broken glass. Like the boundary walls of black-money estates in India.

Every time I swallow, I wince and writhe. The torture is increased by the fact that my cousins have laid out a splendid feast. Bins courageously offers to eat for both of us and does a great job.

I perform all the time-worn rituals: gargling with Betadine every hour; vitamin C; antihistamine, DayQuill by day, NyQuill at night; Ibuprofen. Everything works for a short while but when the four-hour period of effective protection passes, it’s business as usual: fever, sore throat, chills.

I spend most of the weekend in the luxurious guest bedroom upstairs. I cannot sleep. At night I thrash about, hallucinating. In my dreams I attend an art show where all the paintings are in invisible colours, in transparent frames. The critics want to know what I think. Every time I say I can’t see anything I wake up and realise it’s a dream. Then Bins wakes up and wants to know what I said. Then he turns into one of the critics in my dream. And on it goes.

By Sunday, we are on our way back to Hartford with my sister. The cold is so firmly embedded I can no longer remember what it’s like to breathe through my nose. When we arrive, I crawl downstairs to the basement. The bed is warm and soft. I finally manage to sleep, dreaming of eternity.

Manjula Padmanabhanauthor and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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