Importance of the mundane
Old sayings abound of how the ordinary and the mundane are ignored for the more exotic until that day when suddenly they disappear from your life. And that’s when you stop, look around and then get into acute agony over the loss. Recently I have had two such incidents which brought this fact home to me. The first was sudden loss of hearing in my right ear soon after my flight took off from Bangalore. I was travelling on work and alone and having my hearing reduced by half and me trying to lip read and second guessing people feels funny now but then it was quite an ordeal. In Delhi I waited for a couple of days hoping the blockage would go off on its own. It didn’t and then a visit to an ENT specialist gave the scary news of fluid buildup inside my ear drums which if medicines didn’t help might need surgery also. Suddenly something which till now I had laughed off as a stupid irritant grew to worrying proportions. As the medicines continued for the next two weeks I suffered f