Yesterday was Sunday. When I woke up I found my mother making tea and my father with his nose burrowed in the newspaper. I wished my mother good morning and told my dad he needs to take me to a doctor. In reply my father moved from the editorial to the cartoon section and asked, “Why?”
I think my father is the coolest person on earth. But he also has one quirk. Sometimes without any intimation he shifts from The Cool Mode to The Homer Simpson Mode. In reply to my father’s why I wanted to say because there is a new doctor in town about whom all my friends say she is super hot. I think I must check her out. Speaking this would have made Homer Simpson strangle me like Bart Simpson. So instead of the wisecrack I said the truth. I said, “Because I am sick”.
My father took me to a more-than-a-clinic-but-not-yet-a-hospital type of place. The place had nameplates of four doctors on the door and I think they had enough degrees among themselves to cover all the alphabets of English language. Along with the nameplates there was a mention of when the medical representatives can meet the doctors and several posters about which I am sure were put up by medical representatives. The most interesting poster had a man standing behind bars with the caption ‘Doctor is not God. Beating the doctor is a criminal offence’. Not very confidence inspiring in the abilities of the doctors I must say.
Among the four doctors, the least educated one diagnosed me. He was so poorly educated that he had only four alphabets in his degree. And even among those four alphabets one was repeated. He was just an MBBS.
When the doctor called me in, my father stood up and entered the doctor’s room. That’s my father in the Homer Simpson mode. He doesn’t appreciate the concept of physician-patient privilege. Physician-patient privilege aka client confidently means the doctor can ask me how many times you masturbate during a day and in reply I can say, “Look doc, I am a young man. I don’t have a girlfriend but I have super fast unlimited broadband connection. You do the maths.” The doctor will never reveal this to anybody (There is some grey area. This concept might not work if the doctor decides to become a standup comedian). The doctor can tweet ‘Just met the weirdest/craziest patient of my life’ but my name will appear only in his DMs.
The doctor did the check up and said you will have to change your lifestyle. My mind immediately went into red alert and started broadcasting at full volume the following message throughout my body ‘Do not listen to the doctor. Your browsing history is the proof that you are 100% straight. Stay that way. I repeat do not listen to the doctor’. I said okay to the doctor and collected the prescription.
After the doctor me and my dad visited the chemist. The chemist had a look at my prescription and said, “Damn it. You should have consulted the MD.” WTF man. How serious I am that I need an MD. When did the druggists changed their profession from selling medicines to scaring the shit out of their customers.
After collecting the medicines me and my father walked towards his bike. I said to my father there is one more thing we need to do. He asked what and gave me a look which I immediately decoded as ‘You donkey. You didn’t say yes when your mother said can you bring some vegetables’.
I said I want to buy India Today. My father took me to the nearest magazine vendor and I told the guy sitting at the counter to give me a copy of English India Today. In response the guy smiled and gave me a magazine which had a half nude model on the cover with the caption “Porn@home’. “WTF man” I asked myself. When did give me English India Today became a code for Debonair. I smiled back at the guy on the bookstore counter and said, “You know ... I think I will read Business India this week’.
Yes. That’s my life. It’s full of surprises. Surprises which deeply embarrass me in front of my family.
