It seems like this year the cold will not be leaving my side for the winter as well. It’s been with me since the end of summer and the stuttering start of monsoon. We were on and off after that, and now as the winter is all set to make its regular appearance, I am sneezing all over the place while breathing through my mouth.

“Chicken soup. When we were down with cold back in Singapore”, Mr. J tells me, “we would have chicken soup. It works very good”.

“Hmmm”. I agree, albeit mildly enough.

“What is there to be written about cold?” some might think. It’s something everybody has experienced. Everybody knows it can be the worst feeling in the world. You forget what it had ever been like to have air pass through your nose, to have been able to smell. There are chances of headache and even fever (and the backache, and all the very bad feeling fever brings).

It is probably the most known malady in our planet: everybody has gone through it, it never is much of a big deal, it is common, so common in fact that it got that word attached to it.

Every year the common cold comes back to me, my mother worries the most about it (of course). Every year she is apprehensive of my fight against the sickness and frets and gets irritated by it. I have a feeling it’s not only because I can look slightly miserable with it, but also because this is one virus she can win over with an arsenal of herbs, honey, turmeric and boiling water.

It’s a nuisance to her schedule but she takes the utmost care in preparing home remedies. Every year she tells me to wear my jacket, to not get into rain, to not walk without slippers. I slip occasionally but I take enough care. And yet every year the cold comes back knocking.

My friend tells me it’s good to have the cold twice a year. “It cleans you out, two times an year is a must”, he says wiping his nose, his half face showing confident pride from behind the handkerchief. Some suggest spice, some forbid it. The liquor store man suggests rum, the dairy man suggests honey, a friend suggests a combination. Some debate guavas.

It’s been like this for time immemorial that the cold is discussed every year, with the seasons and the changing of them. A friend tells me it makes him homesick, another tells me it makes him hate the city’s dust like never before. I remember ama taking care of it when I would be at my maternal grandparent’s house during childhood winters.

And I see slight variations of those same recipes and convictions when my mother is preparing against it. So many conversations have been made around it over the years. And yet one might think what is there to write about common cold? Apparently, for now, four hundred and ninety two words.

Chiya-Pasaley loves tea and writes about conversations that originate along the hours spent on drinking many cups of it. Besides that he is curious about many things and especially the rural-urban divide, and the coming of modernization to Nepal. He writes on the mundane and the very fantastic, and everything in between.

http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2011/10/29/common-cold/