“And I think to myself, what a wonderful world….!” crooned Jigneshbhai. Swami joined in, “I see walls of white and pearl organza too, some gold rust bloom for me and you,..” Jigneshbhai completed it. “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…!”
“What a jolly good morning!” Swami said.
“Indeed, it is,” agreed Jigneshbhai.
We were sitting in Swami’s house after he had finished painting it. The effort was worth it. It truly looked good with the new shades on the walls and the windows. The paints and curtains brought a lot of colour into Swami’s life. But that was a week back.
Life has a way to throw surprises at you when you least expect them. Not that I know anyone looking forward to those kinds of surprises, but Swami is least likely to be that anyone. Let us just say that handling surprises is not one of his strengths. Unlike Jigneshbhai who seems always prepared for them. Not just for the ones that life throws at him, but also for the ones that Swami throws at us.
“It is free. My company’s health insurance provides it with the package,” he said. “The health check-up includes 27 tests across 14 different parameters. Why not get it done?” he insisted. When there are 27 tests, at least a couple of them are bound to be a surprise.
“A few of them have turned up to be beyond the prescribed limits,” Swami told us on the phone. Jigneshbhai and I left for his house. On the way, Jigneshbhai said, “Remember how Swami missed school due to some or the other pretext of health?” I recollected many such instances. “Most of the time, nothing generally came out from the tests done later,” he added. “In recent years, Swami is an ideal first customer for any new diagnostic test that comes out in the market. Now, he tracks the values of these tests more than I track the stock market,” Jigneshbhai said.
“My cholesterol has gone up. My triglycerides are also on the higher side,” Swami told us as soon as we reached his home. He was reading out from his latest health check report in front of him. His face had a worried look, his lips locked along with a frowning forehead held in tight fists. We knew that the matter won’t end there. But the surprise that he hadn’t expected was the sugar level. “The sugar level is also not very comfortable. I am on the edge of being prediabetic,” he announced.
Well, if this would have been someone else, Jigneshbhai would have taken it in all seriousness. But with Swami, he saw health related matters with the right perspective.
“That must be a pretty wide edge,” Jigneshbhai said with sardonic smile. I gave him a questioning look. “Prediabetic is on the edge of diabetic. Being on the edge of prediabetic must be a wide edge, isn’t it?” he said and asked. His cool rhetoric was piercing.
Swami slammed his fist on the table. He slapped his report down and said, “What the hell? Do you have any idea how serious this is?” He stood up from his seat and started walking around. “Do you know that cholesterol and triglycerides with high sugar can lead to heart trouble?” Swami revolted on the first sign of provocation from Jigneshbhai. “My ECG was also not perfect it seems,” he added.
Jigneshbhai continued sitting without any problems. He had a smile on his face. “Did the doctor say that?” Jigneshbhai asked, still unperturbed and digging.
“No, I asked him about the ECG. He said currently it’s ok, but we should see again after 6 months,” Swami clarified.
“Ok. So that means you have heart disease, isn’t it?” Jigneshbhai said. “Or are you on that edge too?” he added. His rhetoric was getting sharper. But Swami did not get the sarcasm.
“I am a ripe candidate for heart disease. So, I checked my homocysteine levels also,” he declared.
“What is that?” Both me and Jigneshbhai asked in tandem.
The sudden attention pleased Swami. He had done an unknown test, unlike sugar and cholesterol. It gave him the pleasure of discovering an exotic health measure that both of us hadn’t heard about, and about which he could educate us novices in the big bad world of medical diagnostics that he was a keen student of.
“It is an amino acid associated with blood clots and heart disease,” he clarified. He had the confidence of a doctor.
“That sounds smart. Where did you learn about it?” Jigneshbhai said. Now the rhetoric turned to amusement. Ever since Jigneshbhai had realised a couple of decades back that Swami had learnt the speech in the elocution competition by rote, he checked every smart remark from Swami for its source.
“Lot of information is available online from medical journals,” Swami said.
“I had once seen a board on a physician’s desk. It said, ‘don’t confuse your Google search with my medical degree’,” Jigneshbhai turned to me and said.
Few friendships survive so much sarcasm. But between Jigneshbhai and Swami it was something else. It thrived on it. Swami neglected Jigneshbhai’s sarcasm.
“The homocysteine levels are also on the higher side,” Swami continued.
“Everything seems to be on the higher side, like bull markets,” Jigneshbhai continued with what had now become an opposition party’s rant. Do whatever you want, we are going to make fun of it. Take it if you can. “It’s a miracle that he is alive,” Jigneshbhai looked at me and continued in his sarcastic tone. To my relief though, he stopped without going further. Even opposition parties know where to stop, lest they look clumsy over a joke.
If you don’t know how it feels getting caught in the storm between two friends, ask me. I often find myself caught between, like they say, the proverbial rock and a hard place. I sensed that this was one of those occasions. I pulled out all my reserves of diplomacy and turned my attention elsewhere.
In a fit of anger, Swami got up from his chair. He declared, “If you guys are so uninterested in my health, I am going to stop coming for these coffee meets. That way, I will eat less sugar and can use this time to do some exercise. At least, it will help my high counts.”
There were a few seconds of silence that followed. But if you thought, they were because Jigneshbhai was thinking of saying sorry, you are wrong. Jigneshbhai broke the silence. He smirked, “We often reach the wrong conclusion based on the wrong data.”
I took shelter from the ensuing problematic situation in the coffee that arrived. The silence that followed, as they say, was deafening. I tried to reason with Swami on his high counts. “It’s ok Swami, we all care for your health,” I said. But it fell on deaf ears. “Why don’t you tell Jigneshbhai to be serious, at least when it comes to my health?” he said. I told Jigneshbhai to stop being sarcastic and be serious. “For once, can you stop being sarcastic when it comes to his health? You know how touchy he is on the subject,” I tried to reason. “Where am I being sarcastic? I was checking for data and evidence. Once the real evidence is there, I will be serious,” he said.
“Don’t worry, let things be,” he added with a wink in his eye.
I found myself caught in the classic catch-22 situation. Between a rock and a hard place, they call it – right? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Silence seemed like the best option.
The shrill bark from Deja broke the deafening silence.
I saw the wealthy old man and Deja sitting near the table next to us. They had been listening for a while. Deja’s spiritual powers of yore might have sensed the situation. He started speaking, or barking I should say, in a musical tune. Swami rushed to get a pen and paper and started jotting. Deja was speaking to him without a doubt. Swami showed us this poem that Deja recited.
“Living with humans has taken a toll, the street dogs have been on a roll
They keep teasing me on my health, tell me it’s because of my owner’s wealth
It was easier as a spiritual guru to stay healthier, doing my yoga and eating fruits and nothing tastier
Yesterday I got tired running behind a cat, and I decided then and there, this was that
I am not joining you humans here at the cafe in the future, unless you join me in yoga and order black coffee without sugar”
Deja the spiritual dog turned out to be smarter and wiser than both Jigneshbhai and Swami.
“Iced black coffee without sugar,” Jigneshbhai, Swami and I said in tandem. Cheers to cool heads and better health, and to Deja, I thought. Deja’s poem had resolved a problematic situation by asking us to order a healthy coffee. And some yoga, but that was for later. For now, we were back on track. We had our black coffee without sugar. Jigneshbhai and Swami got back on talking terms. Both with themselves and with me respectively. I heaved a sigh of relief.
One day later I got a call from Swami that his homocysteine levels were ok. “The doctor said they are not that high after all. We can check them once a year,” he said. “A morning walk and healthy food should take care of my cholesterol and triglycerides.”
I congratulated him. “Good news. That’s wonderful. But what about your sugar levels?” I asked. Swami went silent. But I persisted. “Any problem?” I asked.
After a brief pause, Swami said, “Well..err… No problem as such with the sugar levels. I asked the doctor about it.”
“What did he say?”
“Hmm..Well, I asked him if I was on the edge of being prediabetic?”
“So, what did he say?”
“What do I tell you? He didn’t say anything. He laughed at me.”
“Laughed at you? Why?”
“Well, he said there is nothing like being on the edge of being prediabetic.” Swami said and broke into a big laugh. I wondered whether that meant only Deja will have his black coffee without sugar next time. But that’s a thought for another day. For now, Swami and his high counts were on the backburner. Or so I thought.
***
This is a chapter extract from The Good, The Bad and The Silly.