Ringing Ears, Dull Pain and the Fly



As I was watching the last scene of "Bhramaram", I could feel the fly whizzing past the tree and slowly crawling into my ears. The tiny legs caressed my ear walls as if a mother would scratch her little boy's neck. With not much trouble, the fly eased into the open space of the inner ear and slept immediately. The innocence of the sleeping baby lulled me into a dreamless slumber.

The next morning, on the way to Lakeshore, I moved away from the traffic junction of Vyttila but its buzzing chaos was still in my ears. Only reaching Kumbalam, did I realise that the baby had woken up and was clamoring for milk. I tried to ignore the cries but the wailing slowly picked up tempo. The obstinacy of the baby irritated me but I chose to train my attention elsewhere. Failing to draw my attention, the baby grew tired and went back to sleep.

Turning left on exiting the elevator, the path leads to a narrow corridor ending in a small room. The television on the wall is mute and the images are blurred. The ugly girl sitting behind the small counter taps on the keyboard of the computer while reading a girly magazine. Without looking up, she collected the slip from me and waved me to another corridor behind her.

The labyrinth of corridors unfurled ahead of me. Several doors to my left and right and people entering and exiting them made the corridor all the more narrow. At the end of many twists and turns, I reached a door where the Healer's name was painted in obscenely large fonts. I knocked at the door.

The large desk almost covered the Healer up to his neck. Crouching on a wooden table, the Healer adjusted his ear pieces and looked up. It seemed like the world of sound, accessed through his hearing aids, made him uneasy.

I told him I have ringing in my ears.

The Healer waved me to a wooden stool near him. He did not seem to be interested in my ears even when examining them with some weird looking tools.

I told him I have ringing in my left ear.

He told me I had no apparent problem with my ears but an MRI might reveal more. An audiogram would also help, he said.

The narrow opening of the imaging machine amplified the ringing in my left ear. The clicking noise of the machine, the buzzing of the fly and the metallic covering over my face called to mind the lethargy of a life inside a coffin. Breaking of wax of the candles would be audible, but the wailings of the loved ones, would they be?