What?! Another post within the span of a month! Yes, seems like my mind finally has thoughts again. Not an exaggeration. It was pretty much blank for the previous many months. Okay, there did occur dreams occasionally, mostly about eating good variety of food (especially those that I had cut out of my diet :P) and maybe about going out of the house and roaming about in the city. But nothing much apart from those.
So I guess the mind being active again is an extremely good sign. I think we tend to underestimate the amount of energy used by our brains. We think it is all the muscles and stuff that eat up the food, but really, the brain needs much more. I could feel the stress involved in concentrating on anything beyond a cursory level. For example, reading anything for any amount of time was doable, but writing even small reply-mails seemed quite taxing.
Anyway, I thought I will make a small list of a few things I noticed over my stay back at home in Hyderabad, back in India, for the last 6 months.
@ Contrary to popular belief, a 'long-term' patient is not fond of entertaining questions about his/her health. Yes, it is true that the enquirers are only showing their concern and wishing them a speedy recovery, but the patient grows quite tired of repeating the same responses again and again to different people :P. Worsening matters, classifying recovery is such a subjective thing that often the patient has no clue about it either and hence is hesitant to reveal his/her ignorance :P.
# The body and mind are quite adaptive. They adjust to a routine even if the routine is outright outrageous. After a length of time, anything can feel normal. Only when the changes roll back, does one recognise the adaptation that had occurred .
& Moving beyond self, let me now rant about others. Actually, in a way, it is still about me ;). I know that we Indians are not supposed to arrive on time. That it is a requirement to come at least 30 mins later than what you say, and fashionable to arrive at least a couple of hours late. I know all this pretty well. But still am unable to readjust! Despite my best efforts, I still end up getting ready on time and end up waiting to be picked up. That wait is never delicious. Or in the other cases, despite arriving at the venue quite late, or rather what I think is quite late, I still find myself the first one there. The other 6-8 people arrive even later!
% English seems to much more in vogue during public intercourse than before. Or perhaps it is the same and I just didn't notice it earlier? Especially when people are talking to some staff person (like a sales person, waiter et al.), they tend to use English. Yeah, I know in Hyderabad, there is always the uncertainty over whether the other person is a Telugu or a Hindi/Urdu speaker. But that doesn't seem to be the reason behind this English explosion. People are just becoming 'posher' :P. However, strangely, I find myself addressing any staff-member in Hindi or Telugu rather than English. But does that result in me getting a lower quality of service, given that I use the vernacular? That's a question up for debate ;).
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