Of horrific weekends and migraine attacks…

The past couple of weekends have been weekends from hell, the details of which I will not go into right here, suffice to say I have my own personalised version of resident evil right at home.

So it came to pass that on Sunday evening the little men with horns and tails were having a right bang up within my cranium. It started rather innocously with a slight ache behind the right eye as it always does and within the hour I was head buried into the pillows wishing I could garotte anyone who dared speak in volumes greater than a whisper. Unfortunately the spouse and child are made of stern stuff and do not believe in following decibel levels as laid down by me. Obviously I need to change my intimidating strategies. I need to be taken seriously. I need my commands to be followed unquestioningly. I thunder, “Keep in down guys, my head is splitting.” The child comes right upto my ear and lets out a high pitched scream that would have been a right contender for glass shattering abilities after Darryl Hannah patented it in Splash. The spouse changes the channel to a filmi song one which has the kind of loud beats that the men in pointy horns just love and start synchronising their drilling too. They spread operations from behind right eye and get down to serious work in mid cranium now with road drills that seem to be making pulp of the entire right half of the brain. Within half an hour my jaw, my teeth, my ear have all risen in revolt, and handed in their papers. I loll listlessly on the bed in agony. “I think I have a brain tumour, ” I gasp to the spouse, ready to dictate my dying will and last testament. He casts a surly gaze at my agonised face, and changes the channel without a word. “Take a Disprin.”  “I already took two. The headache is just getting worse,” I reply in dramatic manner that would have won me an Oscar is anyone would have got a camera rolling while I said it.

I drag myself inch by inch to the next room. I put the lights out, close the door, and lie with my head sandwiched between two pillows to muffle out the sound and light that set the drills on overdrive. I should atleast drink to enjoy the pleasure of being drunk rather than suffer these phantom hangovers, I think. I wonder if I should go in for a brain scan. I wonder if they will find a blob the size of an orange somewhere within the flabby grey folds. I revel in doomsday projections with the kind of sadism that would have served me better had I been in the movie making business. I picture myself in a hospital robe, smiling wanly at the child before being wheeled in to have my skull cut up, it occurs to me that the child has skipped his evening milk, thanks to my headache, so I crawl across the room, which has suddenly become the consistency of treacle like air molecules, and yell at the spouse to get the child his milk. I get a grunt in response. I crawl back into the bed, and position pillows appropriately. Then, take one pillow off because I cannot hear the spouse yelling at the child to down his milk, a task on normal days, which must have at least fifty repetitions of “Drink your milk” at volumes enough for the cows at Aarey Milk Colony across the highway to start lactating in fear. I swam through the treacley molecule air that suddenly forms when I have migraine attacks and motion becomes difficult, and poked my head into the other room, the child and the spouse were contently watching a movie, the storyline of which revolves around a character named John Rambo and contains gratuitious acts of violence. I threw the kind of yelling screaming tantrum that had John Rambo forgotten and the milk downed in two shakes of an AK 47.

I prepared to crawl back under the pillows when I realised that the head was normal. I was not seeing double, the men with horns and a tail had tucked their tails between their legs and vamoosed. The head was back in my sole possession. The moment they return the next time round, I know just what to do. I’m patenting that tantrum. I’m open to giving guest lectures, and doing appearances on shows. I think I might just make my fortune yet.