Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Capsaicin Cream

When I was little, I used to play amongst the chili plants. My grandmother was an inveterate horticulturist who grew everything ranging from custard-apple to tea roses to sweet pea and orchids, and she dearly loved being self-reliant in the matter of spices and other things (though they were never in enough profusion to please her).

So there I was, helping dearest grandma to pluck chilis, the small little red ones known locally as 'chili padi'. That evening, I felt a most awesome sensation, as if of a thousand red ants slowly working their jaws through the skin on my back. I had inadvertently got the sap or juice of the plant onto my skin. Water did not quench the burn; profuse sweating (incidental and certainly not by choice) did not help. Grandpa recommended milk, which would have helped, but I demurred.

Finally, I chose to endure and survive. It was a close thing. Exhaustion led to sleep, and on waking, I was mostly OK. There was a little side-effect: my migraines for the day stopped, flabbergasted by a superior show of pain. My grandmother, in her usual cup-is-half-full-of-something-else-anyway mode, said, "Lucky not in your eyes." Yes, indeed.

Flash forward another thirty-odd years (or thirty very odd years, if you must), and here I am, with the same chemical substance on my back, deliberately smeared on. It costs $20 a tube, unlike the five cents I would have paid for the chilis at the local market. Why? To combat middle-aged back pain (or the back pains of middle age). I feel the pain bring clarity and an age of enlightenment. Argh. Ah. Aaaaaaaaah. Why didn't I start this earlier?

Pain is sometimes very good.

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