Scribbled between 102 and 103 degrees

I wrote this down in my diary on 25 October in the throes of typhoid. For your reading pleasure/misery:

I am ill and looks like will continue to be ill for some more time. I sleep almost all day and then wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, fully alert and nothing to do. So I gaze at Linc's calm, sleeping face, listening to his little breathing sounds.

After a very long time - I really cant remember when was the last time I slept non-stop for 6 days - I have some quality time to myself :( And I have been thinking ...

I have been thinking of:

a) how illness/disability can wipe you off from the public scene. Not that I am being wiped off. Nah, not yet. It just made me think - of people who have been pushed behind the scene, who have to be 'lugged' in and out of their homes once in so many months for something absolutely unavoidable like a visit to the doctor's. They might be in their teens, but there's no movies for them, no eating out, no flirting, in short, no life.
It is all the more harder on those who have known a 'normal' life until the crippling event happened. Yet, people with real hard cores crawl and limp back to where you can see them once in a while. I had interviewed one such person - Mahesh of Mobility India. He wasn't very bitter about what he had been through, and I remember wondering why not.

b) Sir. His typical reaction on hearing that I was sick would be, "Oh Viju! That's horrible! You must do this ... and you mustn't do this..."
Linc often catches me talking of him in the present tense. For me, he refuses to be relegated to the past. I get a feeling I will miss him throughout my life. Some people just don't have the right to die. At least not him.

c) all the bedtime stories my father told us. He has amazing story-telling powers, complete with sound and visual effects, making the whole thing very dramatic. He dug out stories from - where else - the Mahabharata and Ramayana. He never repeated stories unless we requested for it, but he absolutely refused requests for more than one story at a time.
I wonder what stories today's parents are telling their children. Is it the TV that puts them to sleep? I dont know... how many stories do you think you could tell your children, day after day?