April 2009: Why I Missed my Farewell...

Aaah, a post that has been a long time coming. As mentioned in the title, it's been almost a year! For an entire year, I have repented, cried, regretted that day, and blamed everyone i possibly could for what happened. Hopefully writing about it will put my mind at peace...

I don't remember the exact dates, except that SPREE, the college's intra-college sports fest, had been held a few days earlier(10th to 13th). The football team had lost in the semis, and everything was behind us. The next big event was the Farewell, one of the last opportunities to save a few memories with not only friends and buddies, but the entire batch.

A couple of days after the semi finals, I noticed a weird stiffness in my right leg. I tried to shake it off and put my mind to more important affairs, such as selecting a suit for the big occasion. My dad had presented me a beautiful Park Avenue double-breasted blazer, and I was looking forward to don it over a deep blue shirt and tie. (Those among you who scoff at the idea of a guy thinking about such matters, I can only turn my nose up to you, huff, puff, and say, go get a metropolitan life.)

Two more days later, my right leg began hurting, rather, my socks seemed too tight all of a sudden. It turned out that my calf had swollen quite a lot. It wasn't pleasant, I tell you. Soon, I was limping, and I had my mom put a bowl of hot soup on my leg to soothen the muscles underneath and reduce the pain. Next morning, under the insistence of my mom, I took a trip to the dreaded Medical Center in the campus.

Now I don't want to trash the medical center here, however, the doctor examined my leg, and told me that due to my injury (which I had incurred during the semis), an infection had taken over my legm and the only way to remove it was via surgery.

I was shifted to the SMRC, where they placed me under anesthesia, and finally cleared the infection. i will not make a big deal about the actual surgery, but it was the first time I had ever been drugged, and for a while, apparently I jerked about, unable to come out of it's influence, quite scaring my poor mum.

When I woke up, I had a crater in my right leg, around two inches long and an inch wide, and an inch deep. Now I'm sure many people have suffered much worse than me, but the ability to see bone through my wound quite shocked me.

Long story short, I was transferred back to the campus medical center in a couple of days, and was asked to take complete rest (with the medicines, of course) for a few days. And guess what - I missed my farewell.

I still remember that day - me fighting with the doctor that I didn't feel much pain, that I would be fine, and that I would head right back if I felt any discomfort at all. But he was adamant - the nincompoop was probably under the assumption that I would be posing for photographs with the hole in my leg as the centerpiece. I was already a day scholar, and missed my friends a lot - and then this fool would not let me get the one chance to meet all my batchmates at once for one last time.

To this day, I still cringe when I think about the hole - and the next one month, when i had to get the thing cleaned every single morning, the searing white pain, and the hobbling around after that. I even had to give an exam in the condition. When I confide in someone about this, they give me a sympathetic look, and assure me that I'll grow out of it. To which I always reply, When your life is as screwed up as mine, when you'd give anything to be normal and not considered a member of an alien species (I am the only non-hosteler in campus),when you miss the hostel life as much as I do, only then will you understand the ordeal that I am going through.

Well, maybe compared to a lot of other people, maybe my life isn't THAT screwed up, but to me, it seems so, and anyone who wishes to know the whole story, will have to wait - I only have the courage to talk about ONE bad experience at a time.