‘It couldn’t happen to me.’
‘If I haven’t contracted it thus far, there’s no way it’s coming now.’
‘After 5 shots of vaccine (two in India and 3 in France), the darling virus cannot even hover near me.’
These had been my thoughts about my status with respect to the much-dreaded coronavirus, till he came along, whistling in the spring.
One fine Saturday as I went to bed, tired and satisfied with the day, I felt sluggish and rather feverish. I thought it was just the more-than-usual walking during the day and dismissed the thought.
The next morning greeted me with a strep throat so bad I could hardly gulp my saliva. And then came the fever and body ache. The fever would come and go and give me shivers, no matter how warm I kept myself. It is in this period that I realised what the biggest invention of modern science was – ibuprofene. It came to my rescue when paracetamol would address neither the high temperatures nor the uncomfortable chills that tagged along.
Fever has always been a difficult physical situation for me. Since I was a child, all fever would be accompanied by chills (I don’t even remember how many litres of blood I got sucked out for malaria tests because of this shiver stupidity). In addition, the body ache makes it impossible to undertake even the most mundane of physical work such as toasting a slice of bread or heating food in the microwave. To see my child suffer as a consequence of my illness is the worst I could imagine.
All my friends and neighbours I could rely upon in this time of crisis were travelling (it’s a 2-week vacation for school-going children and therefore, perfect timing and weather to plan a holiday) and I was left with little choice in terms of seeking help. I continued to work from home, being rather sure I had the seasonal flu. I had been hearing of several people around me getting it and recovering in a week or so, that I didn’t doubt myself for an instant.
I know that each person and his anatomy are different. Each of us reacts rather uniquely to the same physical situation. Just like the chills, fever also has another idiosyncrasy for me – binge-eating and pregnancy-period-type craving.
After a long and tiring day, each night as my son closed his eyes and started to snore gently, I would get out of bed, and walk out in zombie mode, looking for anything I could lay my hands upon on the dining table or in the kitchen drawer. As I dug my fist into my favourite bag of chips one night, I realised that I could not smell them at all. It was unusual given their spice level (and Indian spices at that!). That’s when it struck me like a bolt of lightning.
I got myself and my son tested for COVID the next morning. I was diagnosed positive within 2 minutes and his test came out negative. And everything changed (except the cravings). Messages from the state health services started pouring, outlining in great length the self-isolation guidelines to observe, the medications that might be needed and the need to have a second test after so and so days.
Spring is in full swing around me and for me, it suddenly became a distant view from my window. Fever had left me after roughly 2 days and coughing had taken its place. Wet cough at first supported by a nose equipped with a state-of-the-art mucous producing machine. Sense of smell remained absent too, replaced by a much stronger sense of taste and desire to eat – specific things at specific times.
I do not recall when before I would spend so much time in the kitchen, patiently creating specific Indian dishes at the highest spice level my body can tolerate. Chhole-bhature (chickpeas gravy and fried Indian bread), pakodi (Indian vegetable fritters), kadhi and rice (Indian spiced yoghurt curry), spinach and corn sandwich – these are some boxes I checked off during this period. Thanks to Ramadan, traditional Arabic and Moroccan sweets remained accessible too – jalebis (zalebia in Arabic). What a treat!
But thanks to my son who continued to go to an activity centre during his vacations from school, I could walk through the beautiful park from across my apartment, full of colourful flowers and bees hovering above them. As my sense of smell comes back to me a little each day, I cherish the musky, floral smells in the park and remind myself of what lies beyond the isolation period.
As I wait for my isolation to end, I thank god I’m alive and healthy. I have known and heard of so many people whose bodies reacted so unexpectedly and nastily to the coronavirus.
No matter how hard this experience may have been physically (I like to think of it as an experiment of which I was a part), the food (and fond) memories I created in my little French kitchen this period shall be with me forever – that uncontrolled sense of taste that more than made up for the lost sense of smell 😉
Image taken from Google images
Akanksha Jalan 