Gone are those days when the sun rays broke in through the windows to greet a Good Morning! at dawn. The horizon is misted in a sleepy fog’s cover. The dew on the leaf blades lazily drip as though falling off from the bed in sleep as you’re curled up in the warmth of the comforter elsewhere.
The winter has set in. And the transition has been slow and beautiful. But how much nature loves symmetry! If there’s a beauty in the picture, you can bet your bottom dollar that there is a beasty lurking somewhere in the frame. So transition to winter is not all that beautiful after all. Not in the least when your nose is clogged like the unattended drainage pipe and leaks your insides out. What can be worse? Maybe common cold + “forgotted ha’dkerchief”
Oh yeah, the change in season is when the all notorious germs in the town have a carnival of a time! And when they go on a rampage, the first ones to go down are the ones who are the regulars at the Pani Puri stalls. The ‘pani’ that goes in through the kisser tricks down the sneezer.
Water is one of the main causes for diseases during the season change. Most of the absenteeism in the schools and colleges can be blamed on the water-borne diseases at this time of the year. And given the quality and purity of water supplied by the water board, it is like the government has framed laws to protect the pathogens from human exploitation.
So it is high time we buckle up to do something about it ourselves for our sake. Though we have been reading about drinking boiled water, eating less junk and stuff like that since fifth grade, we don’t want to do it because it’s not cool. Well, here’s the thing — given a choice between some roadside junk and a runny stomach, what would you choose to avoid for one season? Think of what is easier to explain if your girlfriend/boyfriend asks where you’d vanished all those days?
Headaches and heat strokes are also prevalent at this time of the year. When the pollen in the air finds it’s haven in your nose, it starts off as a simple flu and before you realize, you are in the bed with the thermometer shooting up like the fountains in Vegas. So before it all hits the cacophonic crescendo, you would perhaps want to consider your mum’s word of sticking with home-made food and have a low-profile lifestyle on the ‘junk front.’
Well, it may seem like an old wives’ tale retold, but the moral of the story that never loses its essence is – Prevention is better than cure. But then, at the end of the day, you get to choose between the beauty and the beast.