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Cough is like a spork . Like spork combines spoon and fork. Cough combines sneeze and seriousness. It’s almost like a sneeze only looking more serious. Peo ple might laugh when one sneezes, but have you ever seen people laughing at a cough? The answer is a resounding no, that’s because the cough is very good at looking very serious. And it comes handy in quite a few situations.
At first I thought I’d name this article ‘Saved by a Cough’, one might think it was a grammatical mistake, after all, we all want to be saved from a cough, not saved by a cough, but, trust me when I say there is no mistake, and it was as intended, saved by a cough, also I wear I’m as sober as you are, so worry not. And there was always the problem of pharma companies having read the title and not bothering to read the actual article, spamming me asking for the miracle cure, so I settled for the above title. facebooking
For someone like me cough is a great tool. But what exactly do I mean by ‘someone like me’, no I’m not talking about my lineage when I said it, I meant in a behavioral way. I’m a very, very - not that any number of ‘very’s can do the justice here - very shy person, and won’t talk out unless it’s absolutely important, and for a shy person the absolutely important is much beyond anything normal. To illustrate, one time during snorkeling, I jumped from a two storied boat, and as someone who doesn’t know swimming, I jumped with my breathing pipe attached to my face and as expected, upon the impact it got ripped from my face and I was there thrashing and flailing in the azure waters of the ocean near the boat. My love of water made me jump, although a part of me had been warning me, ‘You don’t know swimming, dumbo !’, but who would listen to good advice from the brain, right? Anyway, as I was there thrashing in the water, I was evaluating my options, should I shout ? It seems logical before I die out drowning, but my shyness didn’t let me utter a single cry, besides it forced me to step up to the situation and do something stupid. It made me dive deeper into the ocean and catch my snorkeling pipe before it sank and with a great difficulty I had finally put it on. Although I was saved, coughing all the swallowed water out - a real cough -I got nasty cuts on my legs, thanks to the bottom edges of the boats. If a drowning and possible dying scenario didn’t classify as important, I don’t know what would.
For a person as shy as me, from times immemorial it was the cough that came handy and helped us out in most situations. There are many types of coughs, I’m not talking about the chronic cough, which threatens to pull the lungs out and throw from the mouth. Rather, it's a mere affectation, an adopted cousin of the real cough, who claims to be the twin of the earlier cough. This is a fake cough, which comes in various lengths as the situation demands.
We always get stocked from the same grocery shop, time and again. The shop looks as yellow as it always did. As if it’s painted thus, a dull yellow with greasy smudges covering all the walls, possibly because of the shop boys rubbing their hands on the walls after handling tamarind. The shopkeeper knows my grandfather, my father and mother and my brother and me. Uffff ! So when we go there and if he is still attending someone else, it’s because he wants to attend to us in peace, or so I would like to think. There are others who would budge their way, pushing others until they are face to face with the shopkeeper, get their list packed, and pay the money and leave. But I stand back at a respectful distance from everyone else, almost screening myself from the eyes of shopkeeper, trying to merge in the background, so that he wouldn’t attend to me first which would irk others. I let them shop in peace and when I think people who came before me completed their business, I move ahead to give him my list. But there’s a catch, people who come after me often tend to wedge themselves in that respectful gap I’ve left and try to force their way. This is where I issue a respectful cough, just audible enough to the person who has jumped the line, and if he/she has any decency, they would come back and wait for the turn, although I must admit the success rate here would be less than 25%.
And after all the waiting when I finally come face to face with the shopkeeper, there can be two contextual coughs. If the shopkeeper is still attending some other list and not have looked at me, a cough to announce my presence, just a bit bigger in length. And when, after paying the price sometimes shopkeeper forgets to hand me change, or whenever has not given the full change, I cough, but this time looking not at him, but at currency notes in my hand, making a counting gesture, this always goads him into handing me my change. Magic!
I’m shy even to say ‘Excuse me,’ when my path is blocked by two people who have decided that that is the right place for them to stand and exchange gossip, or by couples in park canoodling and lay there in wonky twists. Here the cough comes in two short bursts, with minimal amplitude, unless of course when I’m in a moving train, as it would require a greater magnitude to cancel out the ambient noise.
When two friends are calling me names and talking about me, not knowing about my presence, it’s a good idea to go away from there. But if I must go there, I’d clear my throat clearly and audibly before any damaging piece of gossips reaches me. Clearing-throat is, after all the little brother of cough.
When someone wrongs me and I hate them so much for that but he happens to be physically well built than me thereby denying me the possibility of going and breaking his leg, I sneeze and cough a lot in his presence, thereby trying to gross him with my saliva and hoping they would be attacked by some airborne disease to which I’m immune to, till he realizes his mistake and apologizes to me. Although I’m not sure how I can cure him if he really happens to apologize to me. I’m still working on this hypothetical situation and update you once I have an answer.
I have this habit of pulling up my left sleeve of my shirt to my shoulders. Why do I do that? I have no frigging idea, and I do it subconsciously, just like I spin a pen with my fingers, And every time I’m in the presence of my teacher/instructor my friends issue a small cough which reminds me to pull my sleeve down. Although to be honest, sometimes I’ve no idea why they are coughing and if their cough is real.
My uncle, it seems, to never get a listening ear at his home, and he vents that out whenever he comes to visit relatives. He talks at great lengths about everything and anything, which is most often trivial poppycock, even going to the length of reading from the Sunday magazine, adding his own face expressions and exclamations to every line, expecting me to nod my approval every time, with clasped arms. It’s the worst punishment. The stories are meant to be read aloud, but magazines aren’t. No one ever reads a magazine aloud and it should be made a criminal offense if anyone attempts it. At these times I let out a big drawn out cough and I clutch at my throat and run for water and that’s my chance of escape, and I go as far from that room as possible, But this works only if the water bottle is not near me or kitchen is far from us. Ah! This would definitely come under life threatening situation, where no cough would work and I would get up and say I need to go to the toilet. But if I’m very unlucky and happen to be sitting in room with attached bathroom, I’d have no choice but to go to the bathroom and wait there patiently, peeping from it time to time, hoping someone to call him, and making my escape path clear.
Speaking of the bathroom, I’m reminded of the situation when a loud cough becomes the de facto savior. Whenever someone coughs in a class or a meeting I invariably tend to assume it’s because he/she needs to pass the gas and using the cough to muffle the decibels if any, and gain some peace of mind. But, bear in your mind ‘With great fart comes great responsibility,’ so here one has the additional responsibility of timing both of them exactly at the same moment. Otherwise that person becomes the cynosure of the crowd and the purpose is lost, exposed and caught red-handedly , or more like red-facedly . It’s as good as calling out, “abracadabra, look at me!”
You think that a lazy, shy student is the only species using cough as best as he/she can? Well, you are wrong. In an Indian high school context, in the tenth-grade biology there comes a lesson about the human reproductive system. Bizarrely enough all the strong and healthy teachers suddenly seem to have caught up indubitably in a chronic cough which leaves them as soon as the chapter is completed. Somehow those high-pitched coughs, and those obscure diagrams which don’t make sense go hand in hand. Suddenly you see a whole lesson filled primarily with teachers’ cough trying to escape the manscape of wry, suppressed, and tight smiles.
A Cough is as important as a sanitary pad for a girl on periods , but sadly enough, both of those are shoved under a mat as if they are a taboo. But I believe every cough has its day.
