It was a cool quintessential morning. As usual, I had taken the vacant window seat available in the compartment and had my eyes focused on the greenery outside. The trains’ momentum induced nystagmoid jerks and the cosy climate effectuated a soporific ptosis which I did not resist. After joining medical school, my visits to my ancestral home were few and far between. My final year exams were over and I had a few weeks to my disposal, without worrying when my next semester exams would be. A perpetual parody of misfortunes and missed fortunes often adorned our session exams, which would tally in hundreds by conservative counts and this had been the overbearing theme that characterized my preceding 5 years at med school.
Before settling down to my non-REM stages, I quickly surveyed my surroundings, for I had a premonition that something inconceivable was about to unravel. An elderly septuagenarian was playing Sudoku in the day’s newspaper and across him sat a petite young lady in her 20s. She was well dressed and as was vogue in the premobile era, had in her hand a red top tabloid. She was ogling the pictures of cine stars, which adorned the front and back covers and all that was intervening in between, in such sensationalist magazines.
I had almost switched from N1 to N2 stage of non-REM, when I was badly jolted off my nap by the screams of “Don’t touch me,” “Don’t touch me” repeated at high decibels in the vernacular. I could see the earlier mentioned damsel uttering verbigerations at the top of her voice, with a weird fearful look on her countenance. Her magazine lay trampled on the floor of the compartment and the elderly gentleman across her had a bewildered look. He seemed more annoyed that his Sudoku was interrupted. Just then two beefy-looking, pheromone-spewing youngsters from adjacent cubicle arrived and immediately took matters into their forearms. They became the advocate, judge, and executioner all rolled into one. The more ominous-looking one among them started bashing the elderly gentleman. Just at this moment, the lady puked all over our muscular guy which providentially stopped him in his tracks or else I would have witnessed a homicide.
The lady collapsed soon thereafter. We now have a crew of individuals wondering what exactly was happening—a geriatric man pondering why he was hammered; hunk who was wondering did he ever have to intervene; a damsel in distress who was now lying all switched off; and me, the Sherlock sans the deerstalker hat and pipe, trying to assimilate all the pieces together.
In another few minutes, the lady came around and was bewildered to find the crowd of faces staring at her. It took us some time to slowly explain to her what had transpired. She then made it clear that she had epilepsy and has had a seizure now. Being in her first trimester of pregnancy, the morning sickness made it difficult for her to retain the antiseizure medications, leading to her disease relapse.
;)
A litany of apologies were mentally exchanged. The hunk had a wash, the elderly gentleman reverted to his bookworm mode, and the lady was looking all sheepish and exasperated. It took me another 5 years before I could apprehend that verbigeration of phrases can occur in temporal lobe epilepsy.
As I was cud chewing these events which occurred a quarter century back, I could not but wonder what could have been the outcome if it had happened now. A viral video lewdly titled would have been uploaded damaging the reputation of an elderly gentleman, simultaneously unrevealing a long-hidden personal malady of a lady, detrimentally affecting her employment opportunities in this eternally implacable world.
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