Monday, September 29, 2014

Pink-eyed Ponderings

Egad! The pink-eyed monster strikes.
It's all over the city once the filthy pools of accumulated rain water have begun steaming their viral load into the air.
 Patna has been invaded by the pink-eyed infection that's easier to catch than Puja fever. It's when people scamper all over the place looking rabbit eyed, and their noses go twitch because of the itch in the place they can't scratch... their eyeballs!

I don't know what Rajjo my partner in crime was up to, but the fellow came home the other day looking rather watery-eyed, and lo and behold... the next day I rose from my bed twitching like a frenzied zombie in one of those cheap-tack third grade tomato ketchup horror flicks.

They say that this affliction is rather like the common cold. It's going to torment you for four to six days, gum up your eye-lids, make you peer through slit eyes, and generally make you want to join a Jain nunnery -- which means to tear your hair out at the roots with your own bare hands. Honest, these Digamber Jain nuns don't shave their hair at their investiture ceremony, they actually pull it out at the root... gruesome. Buddhists, Catholics and such d have tonsures and they shave off their hair, but the Jains tear it up at the root. That's commitment!


You know, in the good old days Catholic nuns would be as bald as their Buddhist sisters, but nowadays, these nuns and priests only have 'token' tonsures.  Wonder how many of their other vows are also 'token' with a pinch of salt?

Anyhow, back to the pink-eyes. Bathing the eyes in a brine solution helps a lot. But I certainly wouldn't go for what one home remedy expert advocated.. put a few drops of mothers' milk into the eye, and let the good pro-biotic bacteria fight with the bad itchy invaders! Some other wise dame said that a couple of drops of honey would do wonders. Applying sticky honey to an already sticky eye? No thank you. I'll just keep with the brine bath, the chloromycetin ointment and the frightfully expensive eye drops the doctor prescribed!