The nurse – she has that gentle
kindness in her eyes, that probably comes from watching a lot of near-naked men
with broken bones. Men, whose spirits, and probably one other un-fracture-able part
(the miracle of cartilage), rose at the sight of this gentle, delicate lady.
I pose awkwardly against the
wall, perched on a stool, in just my underwear – one leg straight and the other
bent at the knee, body turned to the left and yet facing the front.
In a moment of carpe-diem rush of blood during a jog
last month, something clicked in my knee and since then it has been sore. I
have come to get an X-ray done of the sulking knee to understand how deeply it
is hurt at my impetuosity. And I have always had a niggling lower back ache, so
I decided to get an X-ray done for that too.
Standing in that awkward way, I
feel like one of those hot models posing for an impossibly steamy photo shoot
in a dingy, sweaty room in Faridabad. I almost pout. And that’s an easy thing
for me given my “extrovert” teeth – my upper teeth sneak out a couple of
millimetres outside my mouth, even when I am shut up as a clam. Well, what can
I say, my teeth love to see the world.
Having “set” me up, the lady hides
behind the door, while the male nurse disappears into a closet, with shouts of
“Sir, Don’t move, don’t breathe in, just stay as you are”, as if I were an
appeasement tied to a stake, offered up to some gigantic ape-god of the jungle.
Hi there, Naomi Watts. We audition for King Kong practically every day in India’s
X-ray labs.
The machine makes a huge whirring
sound, which ends in a big clap. The male nurse and the lady walk in, still
astonished to see me breathing, alive, and not carried away by Kong. They decide
to make another go of it. This time in a beach shoot. They make me lie down on
a bunk, sideways, with about 70% of my tummy touching the bunk. A small piece
of cloth is thrown over my hips, and my single garment of modesty is pulled
down a couple of inches at the back. I pull out my best beach-hot-smoking look –
hot enough to turn grainy sand into flowing glass.
And once again, they scurry to
hide behind doors, shouting, “Sir, Don’t move at all! And don’t breathe in! OK,
Understood? Don’t move! Don’t move”. Dude, if I stay in this position for
another five minutes I may not be able to move again for a few months!
Another whirring and a bigger
clap.
They come back into the room. And
in a complete matter-of-fact manner that piece of cloth is whipped away, I am
told to get back into my clothes and scoot out the room. Not even a smile from
the gentle lady.
I got the results of that X ray
today: lower back – perfectly fine, knee – hmm…a little more cartilage would
have been nice, dignity – shattered.
