When I told Sid I was considering homeopathy as a line of treatment for my illness, that's exactly what he said. "You do realise homeopathy for the most part is just sugar pills dipped in alcohol right?" Now Sid is someone I have never met in flesh and blood (maybe that's why it's so easy to trust him) but he does make sense to me, in a very convulated way. His remark took me back to a childhood spent sucking those sweet little pills anytime I fancied. They were meant to clear my sinuses back then but I thought they could clear the dark clouds as well. Little wonder my Dad had to keep replenishing them so often!

But this time the condition is a little more serious than a blocked nose and definitely more chronic. So I did wonder quite a bit about those sugar pills. I decided Sid was the joker that day and went homeopath hunting anyway. (In our hazy little parallel universe on any given day, Sid is either the joker or philosopher. No in-betweens or anything else for that matter.)

At first, the visit to the homeopath seemed as comforting as those days spent at the bent old doctor's clinic at Parsi Colony. This was easy, I thought, he says I can and will be cured. I just need to follow instructions and be patient. Now give me those tiny sweet pills and I can be off, trying to beat the Saturday evening traffic at Bandra (yeah right!) before settling down for a quiet drink at home. I was in for a surprise. And the only thing that bore a faint resemblance to my original plan when I left the clinic two hours later, was the evergreen Bandra traffic!

What happened in those 2 hours you ask? Well, after sweet, comforting, young doctor briefly checked my medical history and asked me a few questions, another sweet young man disappeared with my credit card and came back without any tiny pills! He just pointed to a door behind him and said, "The doctor will see you now."
The doctor! So who was that guy thumbing through 33 years worth of blood reports, X-rays, ultrasounds and what have yous??? "Oh that was doctor so and so. Now doctor she and she will speak to you." (I found out later that even she is not going to be my doctor. My actual doctor shall be revealed to me only after a month of me very precarously trying to place little white pills under my tongue twice a day for a whole month. Placebo is a word I understand more than just how to spell!)

So anyway the second doc was inside this tiny cubicle (there is no way I am calling it a room, even if this is Bombay with the tiny spaces and skyrocketting real estate prices) with a huge split A/C set to 24 degrees celsius. She sat facing a computer and started firing off this volley of questions. What was the most stressful period of your life? Which was the happiest day of your life? The saddest? What are you most sensitive to? Do you have any regrets? Does your family know about your illness? What does this disease mean to you?

Hello? Haven't we heard of breaking the ice first? I felt as violated as anyone would with Jack the Ripper on a first date! In such a situation, there was only one thing I could do really... behave like Chandler from Friends. And so to every piercing personal and profound question, pat came a sarcastic and smart ass reply! I'm not really sure what the petite doctor (named after a dent in the cheeks when one smiles) kept typing away with answers like mine, but I'm pretty sure a lot of red flags will pop up on screen each time someone accesses my file!

They gave me the pills anyway and after a week of popping them into my mouth and waiting for them to melt under my tongue, I'm beginning to wonder whether Sid was right!