Birthdays & wives

I’m shivering. If you add that to the regular discharge of vomit (every 53 seconds), and the absurd level of anxiety (as characterised by my eye balls rolling in and out of place every 1.7 seconds), I’ve become quiet a sight. Of course, while I’m in this state, everyone around me seems to have taken a pretty positive perspective of my plight.

Yesterday I overheard my son, “Come, see a man emit three bodily functions simultaneously by sweating, crying and shivering at the same time. Only Rs 27”. Now it’s one thing to have five seven-year-olds stare at you in an absurdly patronising fashion. It’s another thing though when they constantly request for autographs or, as my son put it, “For just Rs 10, the world’s most frantic personality will sign you a personal autograph”.
By now having mistakenly ploughed through this first paragraph, you the reader must be asking two relevant questions: a) why is he shivering; b) should his son be paying service tax on his brand new enterprise?
People tend to suffer from bouts of panic and anxiety for a variety of reasons. One really shouldn’t generalise. In fact, when you generalise, you tend to accelerate panic. Case in point: Statement — A mosquito can cause malaria which may cause death to a human being. Generalised statement. Raju knows a guy who says he saw a mosquito which obviously means the end of civilisation as we know it. So please don’t generalise. Being at a loss as to cause of the panic, I asked my father who is sometimes known to be quite the wise old bird.
Dad, for once, was at a bit of a loss, “But your wife’s out of town so why would you have any anxiety?”
I make a mental note of the inevitability of the ageing process. Dad, quite clearly, becoming less wise and more bird. I then turned to my friend Kunal, whose passion for food allows him to look up from his plate once every three hours, albeit for just seven seconds.
“Eh, your wife’s in Hyderabad?” Kunal began but the rest got drowned out under a torrent of raita, mutton biryani and a flurry of shammi kababs all jostling for position at one and the same time.
So this morning I took the extreme steps (all right, all right, it was quiet a few steps plus a long drive and then once again quite a few steps) to go consult a professional psychologist.
Initially I’ve avoided them, just like I’ve avoided the illness pneumonia. It’s the extra “P” that has often put me off. Seems to me like a real cry for attention adding an extra, senseless, unbelonging “P” to a perfectly well balanced and settled word like syciatrist. And this guy with his unnecessary extra “P” is to give you advise on mental health seems absolutely Pnonsensical to me.
Anyhow, this morning, unable to bear more humiliation from my cold-blooded, visionary son and his friend, I finally mustered up the courage to meet such a professional, or should I say Pprofessional.
Now psychiatrists are doctors, or so I thought, being classically conditioned in the ways of the medical community. Upon entering the clinic, I immediately removed my shirt and lay face down on the couch. My 72-year-old mental health expert was not one to the frazzled. She let her 55 odd years of psychiatric evaluations lead her forward. She screamed. She screamed and then attacked me with her folder which, I must add, had much more body to it than the folders of my youth. After the police had been called and the psychiatrist decided not to press charges, we sat down to have a healthy chat. Thanks to the incident I was sweating even more than normal. Dr Sharma had one look at me and then amazingly deduced, “This really shouldn’t be happening if your wife’s out of town”.
Just when I was thinking of dealing with this maturely, by removing my pants to spite the good doctor, she spotted a grey hair falling leisurely to the floor. “When’s your birthday?” “Tomorrow”. And that’s when the penny dropped. The sweating, the perspiration , the frenzy, the shivers et al had to do with the upcoming birthday. So, do me a favour, and please don’t tell anyone it’s my birthday. And now for the coup de grace — my wife’s returning home tomorrow on my… er… birthday. Oh! Phell!