It’s definitely four days a week when I make it home between 7.30 and 8-ish, and then begins the next marathon—this race is so yawningly boring to get into, and at this point, I positively cannot afford to doze off, especially after caffeinating myself. Quite akin to feeling hungover, over after glugging down, a double dose of super strong coffee in a straight line, and then believing a short 10-minute break would bring about a surge of energy. You’ve caffeinated yourself as for being on your toes, wide awake and thoroughly alert to run around. Yes, it is by 10.15 when dinner is done with, the remaining dishes from the serving bowls, transferred into small containers, stacked in the fridge, and the kitchen’s counter-top readied with the jars of sugar, chai patti, tea cups and the saucepan for making the morning cuppa. That is when I finally find my way into my jammies, feet finally eased into snuggly slippers, making a mad dash to my bed with the many neck-easing pillows—an indulgence that has stayed, guilt-free, with me for decades now. Yes, my hand cradling the remote, ready to continue with one of the Netflix series I was watching with an engrossment, that usually makes me quite forget, that tomorrow was not a holiday but another work day. I am rather capable, despite eyes smarting with sleep, of binging three or four episodes in one go. The point, I am trying to make, after this characteristic convoluting, is that fortunately so, this is the time which is my very own, even if I have to grab it, something like, no matter how, boarding the last bus to make it on time to meet the love of your life.
However, nearly a week ago I stumbled on “Apple Cider Vinegar”, a series so morbid, that after having taking it in, have yet to tap the remote back to life. That was two long nights back—a record, re-eally! Now, why on earth did I watch this series when it was rather gut-sickening, you ask?! Well, it was based on a true-life story and it became highly-addictive since one couldn’t fathom the extent of lies a human can be capable of, and how the only thing that seems to be mattering more and more, is one’s Instagrammable existence. Or should one say, Instagrammable Omniscience, Omnipresence. This nauseating series is about a young Australian woman, not more than 25, who has Instagrammably declared herself suffering from terminal brain cancer, and how with her razor-sharp mind (brain?!) superably manages to monetize her fatal ailment. The question: how do you beat-unto-death something which is “terminal”, which is “fatal”?!
Flog a dead horse to life for it to gallop against the wind, in the race course, with, so many, betting on which horse shall make it, to the finishing line first. Well Belle Gibson, did just that! Declared malignant brain cancer, managed to have a perfectly healthy baby boy, while the clock, ticking overhead indicating how she was heading to the finishing line; life was closing in on her. Or that, the prognosis the doctors had concluded. Now, which team of doctors had deduced that she had reached a dead-end?! And supposedly she was undergoing chemotherapy—and no one, her partner included, had an inkling at which hospital her radiation was being conducted?! Now whyever, would why anyone want to stand on a hillock, screaming till the veins in your neck go blue in the face of having untreatable cancer, when in an actuality you are hale and hearty with not a touch of a cold?! Pathologically lying, the only way to carve out a beyond-reproach identity for oneself, where sympathetic clucking comes one’s way all day, and is, music to the ears?! Would never know, but what one does know, is that this malevolent woman, with near-scarce funds, with fluttering lashes, managed to engage a small gamlet-eyed team of techies for setting up an App which was virtually very captivating, resonating how, “The Whole Pantry” (the name of her App) would, with the wave of a wand, and a little self-determination, thrown in for quicker results, hurl cancer so far away that even 24/7 sniffer dogs would perish trying to locate the possible remnants of the disease. “The Whole Pantry” was stuffed with simple, easy enough for those who couldn’t boil an egg—if their life depended on it—recipes to banish the “C” word from the dictionary. The dishes, the meal-plans were dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free. Yes, stuff yourself like a turkey with salads, smoothies made of all possible greens, freshly squeezed juices, and presto, you’re cancer-free for life; besides, because of this culinary guide acquire a translucent complexion, lustrous hair, and 20/20 vision that would make an Ophthalmologist down his shutters, till he could come up with a career-alternative such as opening a rent-a-bike shop to oxygenate the lungs, another trick to keep cancer out. This Miss Gibson, was unstoppable—monetizing millions with her App sales, book deals, merging into partnerships with companies to promote her products and brands, leveraging her health claims to attract cancer patients or those fearful of it or just people at large, in drones, in herds…Yeap, eat all the speciality dishes of a rabbit and cancer wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole. That is, cancer of all types—blood, brain, bone, breast etc. and etc., and at whatever stage. Sort of like: One Size Fits All! Yeap, Naturopathy a panacea to all cancer ailments. Her “followers” couldn’t get enough of her endless fodder. In the process, but of course, she acquired a huge, swanky beach house in Brisbane, not to speak of a bottomless bank account. Over the last two years I’ve bumped into a couple of Naturopaths myself, who swear by this all-raw diet for killing cancer. (That is, if nibbling on celery and palak all day long, doesn’t kill you first!) And, yes, they pledge by Apple Cider Vinegar to be chugged first thing in the morning. A non-brainer title of the series is Apple Cider Vinegar! Over the past couple of years, cancer seems to be growing; I, myself, know so many people who have, what I call, ABCD. Is it, what ails them, cancer, or is it just a name we tack onto a person for want of knowing what the bedevil it is that racks the body?! Again, in this series you encounter the saddest of sights in mainstream medical treatment—bald heads, concealed by over-the-top wigs which make the scalp itchy, and possibly infected with red blotches since worn more than should. Chalk-white faces, the protrusion of eyes, increasingly pronounced since the canopy of lashes is missing. Unable to hold the food down, so nauseous for the most, vomiting in the little bedside buckets. The offshoot of chemotherapy. “Now the cancer is gone, now it is back”—the Oncologists dryly proclaim. You needn’t squint your eyes to look back, less than a decade ago, when a Michigan-based Oncologist had started medicating hundreds and hundreds of people, duping them to believe that they were suffering from cancer.
With each passing year, the cure for cancer is becoming a middle-aged man’s receding hairline. And then we are all charged up in finding life on new planets. A passport to Mars, Moon, soon to be a reality…
