Vicks

You know, I haven't always been addicted to fennel. At various points in my life I have been addicted to various things from gum to Bournvita. The weirdest addiction, though, has to be Vicks Vapor Rub. Back in Bangalore I was introduced to the stuff when I was suffering from a very bad cold. A.T, my best friend and roomate at the time, told me that I should put it on my forehead and nose to clear up the congestion. One girl, I don't remember at who at this point (Vicks kills brain cells!), told me that she sometimes puts it on her eyelids so that it will induce tears and basically force you to cry the cold out of your system. Hmm, so I was like, "That makes sense," being the health professions high school graduate that I was.
So I did the Vicks thing for about a week and the cold gradually disappeared. I suddenly realized that the Vicks-all-over-my-face was an unbelievable high. The tingling, the pain, the simultaneous sensations of heat and cold, and the eerie feeling that my brain was melting. Wow. That did it for me. Soon I couldn't go to sleep without it. I think more than a physical addiction, it was a psychological one. For a few minutes in the day, I could totally escape from my thoughts. My mind was focussed only on this Vicks-induced heightened sensory overload.
Since I no longer had a cold, I no longer really needed Vicks. I started sneaking out to the Sudhe Gunde marketplace in between classes to get the stuff. I started putting the stuff on only after B.A went to sleep, V.M went to the study room, and A.T went to take a shower. A couple of weeks later, I started going "to sleep" earlier and earlier. At one point, I went to my room directly after dinner. My roomates wondered what was wrong: thwarted love, some sort of illness, problems with school, etc. Of course, it was none of those things, though some people would argue that maybe it was a combination of all of those things. People thought I was weird but I didn't care: Vicksie, as I came to refer to my jar, became my best friend.
All was going well until the night I made a Vicks-muddled blunder. I had come home kind of late from college and missed dinner. So I went straight upstairs. When A.T. didn't hear from me she got worried and came upstairs to look for me. I must have been a sight. There was no light in the room save a lonely zero-watt bulb dangling from the ceiling. I was crouched in my nightgown on my bed inside the mosquito net staring at the little jar of Vicks. I looked like a desi Gollum: "My preciooosssss."
Of course A.T. looked shocked and asked me what I was doing. "Nothing,"said I as I slowly put Vicksie behind me on the bed. "Ninde kayala enna?" "Umm, nothings in my hand." She walked closer, "Show me." I showed her my empty palm. She glared at me with such a look that I actually showed her Vicksie. "You are still using Vicks? Why?!?" I told her that I didn't know but that it made me feel good. She made me give her the jar and I was like, "Nooooooo! Wait! Maybe I'll just finish this jar and it won't be wasted." She ignored me, turned on her heel, said something to the affect of "Podee kazhathay" and walked out of the room.
Alas, I couldn't sleep that night. Later A.T and the others came and did a sort of Vicks intervention. They told me about another girl in the hostel who had been addicted to the Vicks Mentholated Cough Drops. They told me that there was something about Vicks that was not good. B.A. said, "We'd hate for you to have to return to America addicted to Vicks" I mean, seriously, all around me people were doing pot and other sort of bad-kid things and here, this ABCD, of all people, was addicted to Vicks, of all things. How utterly shameful.
I agreed with them that this would be too embarrassing a thing to be addicted to. No longer allowed to buy Vicks (A.T. wouldn't let me out of her sight when we went shopping), I gradually got over the withdrawal symptoms (sleeplessness, restlessness, being distracted) and became Vicksie-free! I, one of the fortunate few, had been saved.
Of course, I needed a new addiction at that point and good old Bournvita heeded my call. But that, my friends, is a whole 'nother entry.