Sick to my guts!

Literally.

I met Paruj Acharya, [refined] dickhead-extraordinaire, well known to some of you, on Friday night. Needless to say, I needed to rehydrate the next day. I am a terrible judge of re-hydration establishments. I don't say it is that I can't judge, but there seems to live a perversion in my mind that forbids me from walking away from a business establishment if I have so much as made eye-contact with the vendor. I guess, to my moral self, that is when the first and binding contract is drawn between myself and the vendor.

What this highfalutin gibberish actually translates into is a series of unfortunate purchases, with equally lamentable consequences.

My choice beverage for oral re-hydration the juice of the sweet-lime, better known as Mausami in Kathmandu, something I had grown to like in the recent months.

I have no clue as to what was, for the establishment, its choice of detergent or cleansing-agent for the mugs that changed hands often. My gut feeling is that I got a bug from the juice stall outside the Kantipur Publications office in Tinkune.

Or, it could have been from the momo I had to eat the next evening because I felt so hungry and weak and there was no banana [my alternative to momos these days] in sight. Although, my Kathmandu-machismo forbids me from insinuating a constitution so weak as to fall short on its primary function of digesting street momos.

So, I have been feverishly waiting for the next, you know, run. So much so that I had a dream where I was just as sick, and I was given a whole bagful of dried Amala, Indian gooseberry. Some of you know that Amala would be an excellent herbal remedy for my condition. The mind plays lovely tricks.

But, the real tragedy of the situation is not that the illness seems in some ways induced by a procrastinating psyche, or that it keeps me uncomfortable, gassy and damp in the wrong place, but that I seem to have gained weight.

You see--I was 71 kilos when I returned from Kolkata. Over the next three or four days, I jumped right back to 74 [I blame it on two consecutive nights of Nanglo's momos followed by rice just before bed]. Tonight, after run number 5 [a precise jet mucking the water under-butt], I stepped on the scale, convinced that the day-long punishment would change at least something.

75 kilos. Yup. Now I know a stomach-related ailment is an inefficient way to lose weight. On the other hand, I also did some 25 push-ups, probably for the first time after leaving Santa Rosa.