Monday, March 18, 2019
Bombay
D-Day For Dad! Dental Implant Work Begins
Namaste from Bombay!
It was a very different sort of day--removed from routine. But fulfilling, all the same.
I was awake at 6.30 am and had only enough time to check Twitter and draft a blog post before it was time to have my breakfast--muesli with coffee--and off I went. I was headed to Dad's to pick him up for his dental appointment. It was D-Day for Dad! He was getting dental implant work started today and although I did not say so, I was far more nervous for him than he seemed to be.
Off With Dad to Get Implants:
I was at Dad's place by 9.30 am as his appointment was at 10.00. We hailed a rickshaw and got there on time. The dentist, Dr. Kher, seemed all set and rarin' to go. I was seated outside for an hour as I pottered around with my phone and leafed through a few Femina magazines lying around. Needless to say, I was also praying that all would go well for Dad.
When he emerged at 11.15, he looked very shaky on his feet. Dr. Kher explained to me the after-care and Dad sat down outside for about ten minutes while printed instructions were given to us. About ten minutes later, he seemed well enough to leave. We took another rickshaw and were home about 15 minutes later.
At Dad's gate, I stopped to pick up a family pack of butterscotch ice-cream for him as well as a carton of litchi juice. For today, he has to have a cold liquid diet only--yogurt, lassi, milk, juice, ice-cream. By the time we got home, he was in really bad pain and immediately asked me for a glass of cold milk and a pain-killer--which I administered to him. I made sure he was comfortable on his bed with an extra pillow placed behind his head to keep his neck at a height. He could barely speak as his mouth was still Novocained. Funnily enough, he had a heaviness and numbness in his mouth but he could still feel pain which was mounting steadily.
Funnily enough also, in the midst of his pain, he was able to tell me that his TV was not working and he was not able to get his cable channels. He wanted me to call the company to get someone to fix it right away. I tried to get the company on the phone but they refused to pick up. Since it was only around the corner, I told Dad I would go there myself--and that was what I did. I gave them a piece of my mind for being so unprofessional as not to pick up their phone. They were deeply apologetic and said they would send a technician right away to get it done.
Long story short, the guy came in about twenty minutes and about an hour later, Dad's TV was up and running again, much to his relief. He really cannot do without his news telecasts in the evening, those endless raging debates and, of course, his sports programs and relays! When that was done only, did he feel free to sleep.
By then it was after 12 noon and I realized I would never be able to make the lunch appointment to which I was invited at the Rippon Club at Kala Ghoda by the Editor of Parsiana magazine, Jehangir Patel. My friend Firdaus ("Dr. G") was also invited and I had been looking forward to seeing him again...but, as it turned out, I had also made plans to meet my friend Nafisa after lunch for a walk in Ballard Estate--and she texted me to let me know that her back was out and she was not up to a walk. So that worked out well. I cancelled my lunch plans and stayed put in Bandra.
By 12.45pm, I made sure Rohit got Russel's lunch organized and with Dad asleep and Russel ready to nod off for his nap too, I left Dad's place and got home. I was starving by then...so a little lunch hit the spot: dal with drum sticks (vegetable), meatball curry and cabbage--all delicious, even if the meatball curry was a repeat of what I'd been sent last week. I watch the beginning of The Great British Bake-Off for Comic Relief (which was fun) After lunch, I stepped into the bathroom for a shower and feeling nice and fresh, it took a nap.
More Computer Woes--But Rolling With the Punches!
When I awoke, I called Himanshu to find out where he stood with my computer and I finally received the very sobering news that none of my deleted files could be retrieved. Oh well. I had by this time reconciled myself to the will of the Lord and if He did not want me to get them back, then so be it. It gave me cause to reflect on what had happened and to realize that one should always back up and one should never ever trash something until and unless one is absolutely 100% sure that there is some kind of back up. I was purely foolish and I would pay the price for my idiocy by having to do some work (the Fulbright work of the last 6 months all over again)--that was all. I had my notes and I have, by the grace of God, been blessed by a good memory--so at my leisure and perhaps even when I get back home to Connecticut, I will slowly start the transcribing process again--one interviewee at a time. Most of my other material (including my CV and my book manuscript) were safe as I had emailed them at some point or the other. In the final analysis, I think I would be able to retrieve about 60% of my work (with many hours of labor spent trying to decipher the garbled 'numbers only' files that have come up. About 20% of it needed to be junked anyway and if I lost 20% well, it was fine. I have another computer at home with a lot of my Documents still on it and I was pretty sure I would be able to recover much of it from there. So there you go...as Llew told me, so wisely, nothing in life is ever as horrific as it seems and when you look at the bigger picture, we human beings have the capacity to cope with any calamity.
A Leisurely Evening:
In the evening, I had a pot of tea with nuts and left for Himanshu's office to pick up my PC. He gave me the new external hard drive he had bought me for Rs 6,500 (less than the Rs 8,000 I was being asked for last week by a dealer) and told me that he would let me know what his labor costs were in due course. He also showed me what to do to transfer the files from my Downloads to my Documents and how to sift through what is in my external hard drive so that I can remove whatever I do not need.
I took my computer and went straight to Dad's place and was happy to see that Dad looked so much better. He said that the pain had gone completely (for which he praised the Lord). He was actually seated in the living room after having slept for most of the afternoon asleep, he said. Once I got there (after picking up some lassi packs and a smoothie for him from the dairy), I saw to it that he had a smoothie and that Russel had a lassi.
At 6.45pm, I left for the 7.00 pm Mass--it happened to be the month's mind mass for my friend Hermione whose death I found out about after she was buried. I condoled with her siblings and then returned home for my own dinner--a repeat of the afternoon's fare. I did not watch any TV as I simply could not wait to begin the salvaging and retrieval of my material and after I ensured that the most important items were safely saved again in my Documents, I began saving other things--mostly from my NYU email.
It was after midnight when I went to sleep after having a bowl of cereal as my retrieval work had made me hungry again!
Until tomorrow...
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