Ill Feelings

I arrived in Bangalore a few days ago with a very busy schedule. I have a short film to edit, a visa to extend, people to meet and so forth, and so forth. Of course, January being by far one of the worst months I’ve experienced ever, it wasn’t going to be that easy. There’s a bug going around here and, of course, I got it.

Frustrating, especially seeing as I normally almost never get sick. It’s about a once in a year thing (and that’s mainly because I don’t live quite as healthy as I should). I remember when I heard about the bug thinking to myself ‘oh, I don’t have to worry about that! I’ve been healthy and I’ve taken good care of myself, lots of juices and vegetables, this bug won’t affect me!’

Obviously spoken too soon.

Yesterday I basically spent a whole day on bed with fever and diarrhea (I did get out of bed for the diarrhea). Today I have to spend a good solid working day (possibly a working day and a half) working on the second edit for my short film. Fortunately, I do feel a bit better today so hopefully it won’t be too much torture. Still, there is no choice. Most people that have had this illness have been floored with it for five days to a week, I don’t have five days or a week.

So it’s once again one of those times where we have to survive on will power and stubbornness. I’ll probably feel the consequences of that afterwards, but if everything goes well I’ll be back on Palolem and even illnesses don’t seem quite as bad on the beach and in the sun (though I have noticed toilets seem to be a little further away, on average.)

There’s only ten days left to January. Somehow I’m going to have to hang on. Hopefully fate/god/chance will have lost interest in me by now and moved on to torture some other unfortunate soul.

All things said and done, however, I’m still relatively up-beat (though not yesterday, to the chagrin of those people taking care of me, bless them) I refuse to be beaten down and even if this turns out to be a terrible year – instead of just a terrible month – I’m going to make sure I come out of it with a smile on my face and laughter in my heart.

Besides, they say it’s the bad times that shape us, teach us and make us who we are. The good times are just the interludes in between where nothing much changes. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is then I’ve definitely been shaped these last twenty days. Into what, I wonder? A triangle or a parallelogram?