Monday, February 13, 2017

Diagnosed of!

Our elder son had come to visit us from Mumbai this weekend. He is doing his undergrad from Xaviers College Mumbai. Our younger son, who is still a minor at 10, studying in grade five, misses his brother a lot, but is always in a denial mode. So, is the elder one, who snatches occasions to tease him full throttle, though it is loaded with love and affection. The age difference was eight years and eight days.

Whenever together, though they would be glued to each other as inseparables, they kept fighting with each other at the drop of a hat. The fight between the two would be hilarious, though sometimes this brotherly fight would get little irritating when the younger one would start shedding tears in gallon. His tears were not because of any violence but for failure to match the elder's absurd comments, which made no sense to anyone, except to the younger one. His defence to the losing verbal duel would be to hit the elder robotically and transform his smile/laugh into whine. The wet eyes gave him an excuse to vent out violently. The greatest of all was the 'never giving back' policy of the elder. He never reacted physically and to defend himself from attacks would transform himself into the foetus posture. However, the intensity of his tirades would keep increasing with increase in the intensity of physical attack on him by the younger.

I was at my wits end when the elder one made a very absurd comment. Out of the blue I heard him say, 'You know, I was diagnosed of Madhav when you were born'. This statement, as usual, made no sense to me. 'Madhav' is the nickname of the younger son and 'Udhav' for the elder one. I questioned him the meaning. He, flat faced, said, 'As a person is diagnosed of some disease, I was diagnosed of Madhav when he was born'. It took sometime for the meaning to sink into me. But Madhav was quick to pick, as always, and retorted, 'And, I was diagnosed of Udhav the day I was born. At least you lived without any diagnosis for eight years, but I am suffering from the day I was born'. His wittiness was unexpected. And the expression was an example of great ingenuity. I laughed till I had spasm in my stomach.

Immediately, I started thinking of all the people I am diagnosed of, from the day I have come across them. I dare not name them here :)….. All of you are welcome to count your own diagnosed of lot.