The Chicken Pox

Chapter4 : The Chicken Pox

Contrary to what I thought, it changed me emotionally and physically. 

I mean the Chickenpox.

One might think that the small craters left over my face and torso was what I am referring to.

 No; that was not the issue at all.

It was the second week of the new academic year.

 I went to get new textbooks from the bookstore two miles from my house. Possibly being excited, I decided that I should walk through the unusual ways I never travelled. It actually took more time to get home. I was somewhat tired, thirsty and had a headache. 

There was nothing different at home in the afternoon. I spend time at home. I probably read some pages from my new text books… fascinating as they always were.

We had the usual night time card playing session. I went to bed after feeling sleepy. Somewhere in the middle of the sleep, I woke up and walked to the living room. I remembered my mother holding my hands and putting back to my bed. I had a fever that night.

Next morning everyone was poking fun at me about what I was talking in sleep and sleep walking.

I did not understand what the big joke was, anyway.

I went to school. While standing outside the school, I met some family friends. I remember one of them while sitting on his bike saw the water filled bubbles on my forehead. “Let me poke it for you”, He said.

With his sharp nails, he scratched it off from my forehead with pleasure.

The rest of the day I spent in school.

The chicken pox was on me, covering my body with all the vesicles.

I was annoyed when my father came up with his isolation plan. But more annoyances followed.

I was banned from attending school for four weeks. My father made sure that I was secluded in one of the bedrooms.

 My sister was sent to my uncle’s house till I was cleared of the infection. I was not allowed to use bathroom outside. My food was delivered in separate plates by the maid, who would be my contact to outside. Apparently she had the share of this infection in the past. I could see my mother only through the window, as the bedroom door would be locked from outside. No one would come to my room. I would only wear a white flannel towel, which mysteriously appeared from nowhere by that time.

The bed room was emptied of all the clothes and book etc. by that time. I was not allowed to read as my family thought that it would cause damage to my eye sight.

By that time the weather was hot. The vesicles on my body started to itch as if pocked with thousand tiny needles. I was not sure whether during that time everyone was confusing chicken pox with small pox and I was given all the combinations of medications from Allopathic to Homeopathy and of course, the local remedies. I was given a branch of neem tree, which I did hit the leaves over my vesicles instead of scratching them.

I remember crying for many days.

Against my father’s instructions, I did read. But those were the old newspaper used to wrap the snacks from the shop and some weekly magazines dropped through the window by my good old neighbor friend, who knew that I was just dying to read the serialized detective novel in them.

 I did not have much visitors except my uncles, my father’s brother and my mother’s brother who brought sweets. My uncle brought dissolving orange flavored Vitamin C tablets, which I enjoyed.

I had stayed in that room with only communication channel being the open window.

I was spending time like someone in a prison would do.

I pulled the cotton threads from my cloth, made wet in water, stuck over the carvings of the headboard of my bed. I made faces.

Then the vesicles started drying up after one week. I was quite used to the fishy smell from my body as I was not allowed to take bath till those vesicles crusted. I was allowed to go outside if I needed to have a bowel movement, but by that time, no one would be allowed to step on my way to outside bathroom.

I lost track of the days while being secluded in that room.

Then one day it rained. 
It rained so heavily that while standing next to the wooden window I could feel the cold soothing breeze trying to heal all the pain.

I was happy for the next two days. I did not know what was in store for me.

The local herbal practitioners had instructed that my parents get the bark of the mango tree for me.

They crushed it, to make like a Brillo pad so that it would help to scrub out all the scabs from my body when I took the shower.

There was soap, but I was not allowed to use it, but there are soap-like herbal preparations waiting for me.

I realized that this was the most painful ordeal I had. The splinters from the bark scrubbed my skin with oozing blood and some stayed tangles with my skin, refusing to leave for hours.

Finally the day came…

The door was opened and I could go to the other rooms in my house. My sister was somewhat frightened to come near me. But there was a belief that people who got scared to see the rash were the people who contracted the disease. Anyway, she did not get it, as was rest of my family.

When I started school back again, I was bullied by many children in the school. I was not sure what the reason was. For many days, There was no mirror in my room, which was purposely removed to not to alarm me. My parents knew that if I had seen my face, I would have worried.

I am sure that was true, but what I was bullied for was nothing I could know for many years.

I was called “Road roller”, “Balloon” etc. to depict the obesity I had. I was not aware that I gained so much weight during that isolation, when my parents pushed all the “healthy food” for me. I was just heaping up the calories without any exercise.

I realized that I had to get new clothes, but that was together with the fact that I was also growing up.

I hated the recess when you are the subject of ridicule among the lean friends. Even though my father was a teacher in school did not help it.

The interesting fact about my family is that it was unrealistic for my parents to ever place me on weight reducing diet. 

As a younger child, I always had some sort of malabsorption and failure to thrive regardless of their attempts of feeding me. So seeing I gaining weight was as per my mother-she still believes this unfortunately-was the sign of good health.

The weight I had gained stayed with me for many more years, and its social effects.


Next:   The Bullies and Pedophiles