Full of Life With Little Pain: My Unfolding Voyage 078

I had crossed thirty and life had become for the first time full: a dear and caring wife, our two kids growing up, parents and two siblings next door, frequent get-together with childhood and school friends and their souses as neighbours, lots of former office colleagues and their families still in touch, lot of current colleagues who became family friends, established recognition as an effective, contributing manager with descent workload and considerable freedom, articles published in journals and business dailies with token honorarium, assignments as visiting faculty in a business school for a small honorarium, invitations to participate in intellectual discussions organised by local information centre of a foreign government, frequent participation in executive development programmes, workshops and seminars of various business schools and academic or professional institutions and of course a descent salary and other benefits from the employer.

There was of course one trouble: a pain on either side of the back at the end of the spinal chord would recur frequently making me unable to walk or even move the body even by a fraction of centimeter. It was amazing that the pain would slowly develop while I would be returning from office in the evening, would respond to hot water bag treatment around the area of the pain for two/ three hours to enable me to watch TV and take dinner and then go to bed, would become severe again some time around 4 AM, requiring heat treatment with hot water bag again for two hours, before I got up around 6 AM. With lot of difficulty I would get up from bed, have my tea, visit the toilet and take my bath by which time the pain would go and I would be ready to go to office. Soon my wife would be expressing doubt if there had been any pain and lot of suffering during the only the 12 to 13 hours I spent at home! Even my colleagues did not have any chance to know that I had suffered excruciating pain and nearly immobilized for a greater part of the period when I was not in the office.

I had observed that the pains developed mostly when the intensity of acid and constipation would increase and/ or when I would have strained the back or legs while lifting or moving heave furniture or something like that. The pain always responded to heat treatment but never responded to strong pain killers. I had consulted many doctors, general physicians to specialists and homeopaths but the problem did not go. I got reconciled with the idea of living with the problem throughout my life. But some thing helped to reduce the incidence of such attacks and the period of suffering each time an attack would occur. The office doctor at the United Bank had prescribed a tablet, meant for arthritis pain. I had taken one or two courses but forgot the name of the medicine after I joined Coal India. The office doctor, at Coal India, Dr. Sarkar, after some experiments prescribed zolandin alka that worked, especially if I could start taking this tablet as soon as the pain started developing. For each attack, about 6 tablets of Zolandin alka over three days would completely cure me, while butazolandin tablets had no effect. Soon after I had left Coal India, zolandin alka was withdrawn and not manufactured any longer. I had to find out another pain killer that was mild and yet worked. That was Dolonex 25 mg. Until I had reached 50, I had to consume 6 x 8 = 48 dolonex tablets a year. Since then consumption of this tablet has progressively reduced to a maximum of 10-12 tablets a year, mostly for milder pains here and there. But my younger son developed a similar problem during his late twenties and found dolonex useful for a three / four years before he virtually discontinued taking this or any other pain killers as incidence of attacks came down. That was the unfolding story of my major association with pain killers of a particular variety.

Notwithstanding the bouts of attack of excruciating and immobilizing pains, life was so pleasant, busy and engaging. While in Coal India, we had two special tourism trips with travel expenses paid for by my employer. Once we had been to Bhubaneswar and Puri in Oriya. Four of us stayed in a hotel, probably named Puri Hotel very near to the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal in to which Sri Krishna Chaityana had disappeared. The hotel was ordinary meant for low budget tourists but was clean, spacious with adequate water, electricity and bath facilities besides a restaurant serving really good food. It would hardly take two minutes straight-line from the beach to the hotel.

Topu would not allow our sons to step inside the water beyond the point where the water level touched their knees and that also for a few minutes. Despite the lessons she had taken as a school girl in the swimming pool of the Ordinance Factory Club in Dum Dum, she was herself most reluctant go beyond the point where water level touched her knees. She did not allow me also to enjoy sea water touch my naval even with the available swimming assistance service in the Puri beach. So, apart from the time it took us to take some pictures of our in the midst of the sea water, most of our time on the beach was spent looking at the waves rushing towards us and cleaning our ankles as we sat on the sloping sands enjoyed strolling over them. Occasionally, however, waves did drench us enough. But I could not repeat the experience of my childhood when my younger brother and I jumped along with the incoming waves while holding our father’s hands. Of course we walked along the roads to visit the Puri temple and many other temples and religious spots there. As we went deep inside the Puri temple to see the idols, Jhupa looked at them and observed ‘Bhunrosilyali’, a children story book character - ugly and scaring jackal that scared kids). We offered flowers in worship to deities.

With Puri at the centre, we took trips to Bhubaneswar, a city of small temples all around and a huge temple. Also, visited the new Capital city of Oriya and the Nandan Park, some kind of an open, miniature zoo that the children liked as much. we did. We also took trips to Udaygiri, Khandagiri and the Sun Temple at Konarak: the children liked the big statues of lions there.

It was an enjoyable trip. The children liked the overnight journey by train. At this time, both the sons were studying in the kid schools. But two years before this trip, we four had a trip to Delhi. At that time, Chupa was not yet in a position to walk on the roads and Jhupa was yet to start going to school. We stayed first few days in a hotel, then moved to an affectionate cousin’s apartment and for a couple of days enjoyed the company and care of Khokada - my cousin, Gouri Boudi- his wife, Baro Mashima, my mother’s elder sister. Then we moved to the apartment of another of my cousin Murali (the fourth son of my other maternal aunt) who lived there alone. Topu had to cook food for us there. We took a trip to Agra and Vrindavan. At Agra we spend quite a few hours at the Taj Mahal. Chupa had to be carried in the lap most of the time. Separately, we took trips to visit the various tourist spots in both old Delhi and New Delhi. This was my second visit to Delhi and I was somewhat familiar with these cities – at that time with very little traffic and population in New Delhi city.

Equally interesting were the small trips that only two of us took when the son’s were still small and we had to keep them under the care of my mother while we were away from home. One such trip was by bus to Bankura, Bishnupur, Nabadwip (including the ISCON temple) and Kamahati in Midnapore. This was arranged by my former United Bank of India colleague, Suhas Talukdar: conducted tourist tour business was one of his businesses at that time. He also arranged another trip to Digha sea beach when our sons also accompanied us. We had lot of fresh fried pomfret (perciform sea fishes belonging to the family Bramidae) one evening in a hired cottage in Digha.

Once we had a long, widing trip: four of us as also my parents. We went to Durgapur by train one morning to visit my cousin's home where my aunt (father's younger sister) also lived. The next day, we went by bus to Burnpur to vist my father's cousin and also to my wife's maternal uncle, a doctor, in Assansol before returning to Durgapur. The next day we went to Purulia by bus, spent a night before leaving for Jamshedpur, where my father's another sister lived. Finally, we went by train and bus to Birmitrapur, off Rourkela where my elder brother Mejda worked. My parents stayed back there, while we four returned back to Kolkata on the sisth evening.

There were however worries too and some turned to be funny or brought great relief soon. Topu’s mother was worried that Chupa, her second grandson was not showing teeth in time. The pediatrics assured Topu that there was still time and hope. I told her not to worry, if Chupa did not develop teeth, she might be one of the wonder child with potential to earn lots of money. Chupa would ultimately get all the thirty-two.

Jhupa took some time to learn pedaling and riding the tri-cycle they brothers received jointly as a gift from the grand mother weeks after our pulling and pushing the cycle with both sons enjoying the. Even after Jhupa started cycling on his own, Chupa was still lazy enough to prefer a ride on the back. By the time Chupa learned to cycle, they became more interested in exploring Topu’s bicycle. And it was the chain that attracted them the most. One day, the bicycle from the stand with both the sons tumbling down and chupa’s toe stuck between the chain and the teeth of the wheel around which the chain moves. Chupa was crying allowed. I somehow managed to take the toe out to find a deep bite with blood coming out. I washed the wound with Dettol, let it dry for a while and then applied homeopathic liquid Arnica. Since the children had been already on various protective shots program for immunization, the wound healed within a day or two, though for quite a while Chupa kept crying, " Oh what a great damage Dada (elder brother, Jhupa) has inflicted on me. I shall not be able to walk again.”

The children get saved from accidents some how. Another evening when, the two sons were on their rounds of exploring various corners of the house, we heard the sound of a heavy weight falling on the floor. We rushed to the spot to find the children dumb-struck and apparently unhurt. They had pulled some curtain strings that led to the electric steel iron fall from a high shelve: it seemed that the electric iron managed to dash against the corner of two walls to miss hitting the children before landing on the floor. An external examination and observation for a while showed that they were normal.