Falling down and breaking my bones is an art that I have been practicing over the years with no dedication but with supreme success. All thanks to the way I walk- sloppy frog jumps, drunken duck walk, mad mouse hops, and so on. Add to it my eyeballs which can shuttle back and forth, up and down at the speed of light. This should tell how the art form comes so naturally to me. Every time I fall down, my poor bones would beg for an extra week of rest but my mind is too ambitious to let them stay in bed. I would give discourses on how my will power wins over physical fatigue and illness, but the truth is staying indoors for more than a day is dead boring.
Something different happened this time confining me to bed for about a month. It was a breezy Friday evening and I was walking down the usual road in my usual way to catch a bus for dinner with a friend. Stepping over a small stone, I twisted my ankle and sensed a sharp pain but it was nothing compared to the torture of my hunger pangs. Note the point, I did not fall down. I hopped into the bus discarding the pain and started dreaming the sumptuous dinner I was about to have. As I delved into the crispy roasted chicken legs, a slight discomfort knocked my foot and then a chicken egg-like structure developed on my foot. This was followed by an unwilling yet necessary visit to a nearby hospital. The doctor confirmed the pain to be from a fractured bone and my mom whom I had called by then confirmed that I am the most reckless kid ever. So there was a constant downpour of advice on one side and plain bashing from the other for the next few hours.
I had to keep my leg straight with constrained movement. The doctor’s advice sounded like the starting line of a Physics problem. My calf bone had to be at an angle of 20 degrees from the bed and my foot perpendicular to the calf bone. I began my sedentary journey at home and for most days, there was incessant rainfall and gloomy weather outside. My worrisome granny kept shooting me with questions as to how exactly I broke my leg. She was not even close to accepting the reason I gave. I guess, it sounded too silly to her. ‘Did you ride a hefty bike and fall down?’, ‘ Did you jump down the stairs in five steps ?’, ‘ Did you pick up a fight with someone ?’ were some of her thousand queries. God, I was furious in no time but that did not stop her. She would pity me for a while and again start the full-fledged inquiry. It still goes on.
One thing that pleased me beyond all expectations during the crummy period was the food. The aroma from the kitchen would dance through the air, tickle my senses and rub out the wobbliness from medicines. What could be better than some piping hot food on a rainy day? There was no denial when it came to food and by then my mom had understood the secret to keep my mouth shut from ranting. I had more ice creams than I had the entire year. The bliss of good food kept my neurons from firing in random directions but the day came.
My mind no longer wanted to agree with my leg. The battle had begun.
Suddenly, I wanted to walk, run, jump and play somersaults all at once. The tension kept building up my toes and my leg was no longer obedient to what was good. Once my mom leaves for office and my granny gets busy cleaning the garden, I would creep out of my bed in silence and spring to the nearby window. Cautiously, I would wander the room always at close vicinity to the bed with one foot always up. Oh, what relief! The blood rushing down the legs felt like little fairies caressing the wounded with feathers-delightful. It was bad, I realized soon. Pain oozed up and down my feet every night I did the secret hopping. Nights were becoming nightmares with extreme pain.
From then on, I had to entertain myself without hopping and started watching action-packed movies religiously. That was the best part that helped me have the most vivid dreams- I did all that I couldn’t do in reality. I was walking up the hills, being chased by animals and shooting down the zombies. The dreams were powerful, exuberant and projected me as a quirky ninja warrior. During one Jurassic park dream, I woke startled thinking a dinosaur had caught my leg but then it was my mom who was patiently adjusting the posture of my foot.
I am marching (slightly crippled) towards the day when I will be able to jump and play gleefully again. As usual, I promise to be more careful from now on but does that even work?
Square One 