This is my writing prompt for today:
Hypnosis, Leeches, Magnetic Therapy
Ancient Greek and Egyptian texts dating back two thousand years have recorded the use of leeches to treat everything from headaches to ear infections to hemorrhoids. More recently, magnetic therapy has been marketed in the form of magnetic jewelry, belts, and blankets to help alleviate pain, depression, and even boost energy. Write a short story in which a character makes the decision to seek out an unusual or unorthodox form of treatment. Is it an unexpected choice or does it seem to align with personality, circumstances, and setting? What has led your character to this unconventional option and how do loved ones react to this decision?
This of course reminded me of our Punjabi brother, Gurbinder Gill, affectionately called Gogi or Gogo. Growing up, I heard so many tales about this particular lad living around the corner that you would think he was a school topper on his path to be a doctor or an engineer. Instead, he was a medicine: a pain reliever for kids. No kid around that Guru Teg Bahadur Park grew up with their parents complaining that their kids slept too much. That award and distinction was uncontestedly hobbled up by Gogi.
Now, I would argue that he didn’t sleep as much as he was perceived to. His marketing was all wrong. He got much footage just because of the sheer peculiarity of his style. The nub of the whole deal was that when he had to sleep, he would sleep. That’s it.
It all started when he was three summers old. Gogi, totally oblivious to the small-town stardom lurking around him, happened to be standing in a fielder position near boundary line while playing cricket. Because of intrusion by such things as probability, things tend to get a bit slow and the ball doesn’t call for one’s services too often. Even when it does, one might just as well give up, because it is going for its rendezvous with the boundary anyway. So, one might feel weary — it is a very reasonable thing to happen — a wave of sleepiness can catch you without notice. This is where Gogi and rest of the universe departed in their mannerisms. He would not wait to get back home and climb between the sheets for his dream time but instead he just hunched on his knees, lowered his behind till it touched the soil, and the head followed. He then let go. Not going into details about the initial panic and hooplah, but it very soon dawned on the crowd that he was just asleep.
That was the beginning. We would hear about him — his mom once left him playing with toys one morning and when she returned after putting the clothes out to dry, caught a bolt from the blue on finding him missing. She rushed outdoors because little Gogi had a very refined palate at that age for chunks of lime relished fresh by scraping them off the wall. Park boundary wall’s patron was missing. She rushed back in calling out for him, but she just heard faint echoes of her own voice. The silence, as they say, was loud to stupify her. She shooted back outside and asked the neighbors if they had seen her little one. People got into action; each narrating when was the last time they had seen little Gogi. People didn’t even think of calling the police; it was generally agreed that it should be the absolute last resort and the act would imply that they had indeed given up all hope of finding him. Informing the police was sort of a closure for grieving families.
Kids were sent on roofs to find him; uncles roamed the perimeter of the Guru Teg Bahadur park with the scooters; aunties prayed for him to get back and his mom even promised her God that she would make a donation of one hundred and fifty rupees when he comes back. A few hours passed and it was time for maids to visit the households. The crowd dispersed, because cleanliness is godliness — and each aunt took pride in taking their job of cleaning seriously — they would complain when the maid didn’t show up, they would follow them around the household to point any corners they’d miss, and they wore the shiniest armor the day they would bend down and pick up the garbage bag and throw it out the window. Themselves.
Kaalo visited Gogi’s house as well. When she was told about missing Gogi since morning, she expressed her disbelief and told them that she had just seen him last evening sleeping in the sofa. She then went in backyard and got broom and started to sweep. “I have to be at Mrs. Kamlakar’s by 11:30 — she is such a bitch. She’s made my life a living hell. Last week … ” she went about talking and sweeping. It was one off day when she sat down and sweeped the broom under the bed. It hit a huge lump — and hold behold, it was a sleeping Gogi.
We, the kids, thought that it was rather heroic of him to not care about the reaction of elders after each incident. Parents held a very different view of this ascetic character though: they were ruddy upset at being devoided of one question to bamboozle their kids from a list of 367 Millennium Prize problems (parents’ version), viz., Is this the time to sleep? It was an utter violation of one of their Fundamental Rights. This, they collectively wanted to patch up.
And hence began the “treatment” from a tender age of 6. An uncle said that this was a sign that he was not getting a very healthy sleep and that should be rectified. So he was given turmeric milk before bedtime, had passion flower candles lit in his room, and lavender oils applied on his pillowcase. After a week of this therapy, his mom observed that he was being chaperoned back from school by the rickshaw-puller tied to the bottom of seat. Upon being asked why — he said that was the only way he could be assured that Gogi wouldn’t fall off.
The other set of well-wishers believed that he needs to be put on his toes instead and hence he was exposed to the evils of tea and coffee early in the morning, made to do a fifty jumping jacks, and dunked in cold water before packing him off to school. This seemed to help for a while until it was found that he had slept in his music class in middle of playing piano with his finger stuck on gaaaaaaaaaaaa…..
A set of more spiritual therapies were started each with a more upsetting outcome: he was made to sleep on a newspaper in night that resulted in him sleeping as soon as he got on a bus, a book stall, or pretty much seeing any person reading a newspaper — or even someone eating a samosa or bhelpuri. He saw his diet change more often than his clothes; though they hadn’t come up with fussy words for them yet. He stayed unreservedly unfettered and continued to sleep wherever and whenever.
Time, as per its own unfettered-ness, went by. Yet, his anecdotes didn’t abate — he had that unyielding superpower of surprising people better than the last time; and those are the kind of things that get talked about the most. Which is why we all talk about politics too; the political parties continue to stupefy us with their incompetence and scandals unrelentingly. No one ever believes that one would do a thing like that just to win or steal even more money until they heard that it happened for sure. And then someone will create an even bigger scandal.
People suggested that his parents look for a viable bride because Gogi apparently was living a very easy life. I still have to talk to my dad about this.
From Gogi’s perspective, he took all this time to develop some other characteristics; the ones that were superseded and sometimes even undermined by this. No one would talk about his academic pursuits, his interest in hockey, etc. Because of his “condition,” he was advised to aim for jobs that said “flexible working hours.” This, he agreed, was what he had to get. So, he enrolled in an engineering college where he did little other than sleep in classes, labs, and hostel. At the end of it, he secured a job that he himself couldn’t believe was so easy but everyone else who knew little about the job was impressed by. For the first time ever in his life, people were talking about something else than his sleep.
Soon he realized that not everything people say in advertisements was true. In fact, there were departments in each company just for the purpose of playing with the words so that they can deceive the audience without breaking the law. In his case, the “flexible hours” just meant that the company could make him work extra hours without paying anything extra, that the unlimited time off actually meant that your boss could agree to one day off in 6 months. His dreams shattered but he continued to hang on to his job because people, who had harped on about his sleep since his tender years, recognized him for something else.
One day, he had enough of this. He wanted to quit. So, he beelined to his dad and told him that he wanted to leave the job. His dad laughed, he called in Mr. Misra for his advice and he too laughed. They agreed that his blood was still hot and not suitable to make mature decisions, and so should lay low till his blood cooled down to “norm.” He waited; but he didn’t feel any difference in his blood. He went back to give a pitch. Repeat.
He realized the nub of thing was that people didn’t take him seriously because of his sleeping “problem,” and more importantly, he had not done anything about it till date was because he himself really didn’t see it as a problem. Years had passed; valuable years.
That was the day he stopped sleeping on newspaper, drinking turmeric milk, rubbing balms, and in general, jettisoned every treatment meted out to him out the window. He slept peacefully, whenever, wherever.