The basket is large and the roses of all colours. The card reads “Best Wishes from all your friends at the club. Get well soon.” It stands on the window sill where I can see it, for days till the matron clucks in annoyance and whisks it away. Soon a neighbor calls with an armful of mixed flowers. They smell delightful but even the best of hospital rooms do not provide containers for flowers and so the neighbor kindly offers to take them home for me. There seems to be an unwritten law that hospitals and flowers go together, a law aided by the ubiquitous flower shop in the lobby. 

Flowers and fruits. There are bags of apples, dozens of oranges and sweet limes making the place smell like an orchard. I try passing some on to visitors – one three year old takes a couple of apples in her tiny hands and rewards me with a biscuity kiss and promptly forgets to take the apples away with her. The sun-dried figs, apricots, and pistachios that a daughter brings from Greece, I hoard. Another visitor has a better idea. “No diet restrictions,” she says, “I’ve just the right thing to cheer you up.” And sure enough, the next day a bottle of delicious mango pickle arrives.

But the moment one reaches home, there is a sea change. The general feeling being that whatever flowers and fruits I may need my family can jolly well provide. It is my moral fibre that needs strengthening now. An Aunt who comes all the way from Madras brings a copy of Vishnu Sahasranamam in three languages, just in case I feign ignorance of one and exhorts me to read it everyday. An acquaintance of my husband hands him a booklet of prayers to the Guru with vivid stories of how reciting them with feeling has helped a host of unfortunate people. He also produces a cassette on which the entire prayers are recorded so that I can get the right intonation without which the entire prayer will be ineffective. He makes my husband play it right then and there. I close my eyes in apparent meditation wishing fervently that the tune is a trifle more cheerful. A Khamboji by M.S. is more suitable to my mood. The next evening, another neighbour brings me a thick blue bound volume of “The Song of God”, this time all in English. “If you are not already familiar with these, isn’t it a bit late in the day for you to begin?” asks my husband mischievously.

My daughter walks in with another book in her hand and I look at it slightly fearfully. I have the Bhagavad Gita, Guru pooja and Vishnu Sahasranamam. What is this going to be – the Mahabharata or Ramayana?  “Here,” she says, “I thought you would like these”, and hands me the book and a small paper bag. “Mind you, no peeking at the back and no unfinished crosswords. You must finish one before you go to the next.” I glare at her, settle myself in bed and open the paper bag. I pop a bulls-eye in my mouth and turn the first page of the crossword book. “Unfinished crossword, indeed!” My white blood corpuscles begin to multiply.