Cyrus Broacha

Swine flu is not funny. Let me clarify. Swine may be funny, flu rarely is. Unless, of course, you are using flu in a different context, such as, "Akhilesh flew Biman away and that’s why we’ve not heard from him for the past 72 hours".

Now let’s move onto my own sad experience. Last Tuesday was, as most of you know, declared World Swine Flu Day. At least, in most parts of Lower Parel I’m told, the really lower parts. On that particular Tuesday morning, unbeknownst to me, as swine flu was going its merry way, I woke up and coughed. Coughed, my friends would be an overstatement. I woke up and made a small gurgly sound, like the sort a frog does when he wakes up, and finds the misses has all on her own polished off last night’s spider on the sly. In fact, it wasn’t even a gurgle. It was a little sputter, a small preamble to a cough. A small opening sound that potentially, under the right guidance with the help of a panel of experts and in fullness of time, could, I repeat could, have reached the hallowed position of "La cough", as the French would put it. Although I have it on very good authority that in the history of the world, no Frenchman has really coughed in public. Let me rephrase — there is up till now no recorded evidence of a cough in France.

Even as I concluded my little sputter, I found a white shroud placed over me, and simultaneously I heard a sound of the Great American Bison charging. But then it dawned on me that there was, up till now, in the history of the world, no recorded evidence of a Great American Bison saying, "Okay, kids, get out of the room now. Your father has the swine flu".

I soon felt two powerful hands throttling my neck in a vice-like grip. Initially I was misled into thinking that the world’s hot bodybuilder, present holder of the Mr Olympia Title, Jay Cutler, was killing me for damaging his poster in the gym. However, worse sense prevailed and I could tell from the power in the fingers that it was, indeed, my wife trying to kill me, in the interest of preventive medication and society in general.

Suddenly, the killing stopped and I was thrust against a wall. It was the beginning of my very own Guantanamo, and just like in my nightmares, America was my wife. After covering me in a shroud that made me look like Joan of Arc, the wife handed me gloves which she passed to me using a spatula. Then shoes and socks followed. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was to occupy only three-square-feet till they figured out my status. My status, I begged my wife, was that it wasn’t even a cough. It wasn’t even a junior cough. It was more like a cough’s cousin, second cousin, many times removed.

To prove my point further, I began to sing Nessun Dorma. Sadly, just like the Bharatiya Janata Party, my wife doesn’t respond to anything Italian. Besides, she now had her mask on and me in a shroud. Never in the history of the world has a shroud managed to have an audible conversation with a mask. This is the primary reason why the viewer is left bewildered after many an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

By now the wife had stopped communicating with words. She was using a more basic form of communication, the spatula. Questions flooded my head. Would I ever leave Guantanamo? Would I ever see my loved ones again? Will one of my loved ones stop hitting me with a spatula?

My fellow citizens, for two days I was confined to three tiles in my bedroom, and the tiles were not even placed together. A week later, though I still haven’t really coughed even once, restrictions remain, with concessions. My shroud has been replaced by a mask. Will somebody please, please inform America... er... my wife that the swine really hasn’t got the flu.

Cyrus Broacha

Augest.23 : My Dear Fellow Citizens,