Obecalp

[NOTE: Some grammar screw-ups which I'm too sleepy to edit. Overlook and keep reading.]

“Alternative medicine is crap,” I spoke with chagrin, “fucking far-eastern wackos use it to feel important.”

I was having an argument with the wifey.  It wasn’t helping the splitting headache.
 

“You don’t know how it is, babe,” I continued with a measured hint of self-pity. “You don’t have a malignant tumour up your skull.”

She welled up tears. Bad fucking actor.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.” I hugged her.

“Why would you say such things, …Kabir” she whispered in my ears before breaking down completely.

Not fucking again.

 

“Do you know what being an agnostic means, Amba? It means lack of faith in anything unscientific.”

“Yes I do,” she replied in a small voice, still hugging on to me.

“But do you know what it implies?” I had gone over this several times since my grave diagnosis last month.

“Yes I do, for god’s sake!” She pulled herself away from me, rapidly losing temper. “Just tell me you want to die as soon as possible, in the maximum amount of pain and suffering...but don’t feed me your agnosticism once more, Satya. I am so done with this.” She looked at me with wide, bewildered, swollen eyes. My obstinacy blinked, but didn’t waver.

“Ok, tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” I spoke, defeated.

“Take the goddamn homeopathy tabs,” she implored. Her eyes glared with seething anger and passion. She really didn't want me to die. Her palm stretched out to reveal a transparent bottle of crystallized homeopathic medicine.

I looked at her with one final look of protest, but her steely gaze did anything but flinch. I sighed and palmed the bottle. She hugged me, shaking with cries of relief. As she heaved a deep sigh of relief, her entire abdominal weight released itself upon my ready torso. I almost fainted with the combined torture of the headache and her entire body-weight on my puny frame.

Fat bitch.  

 

Later, when she was out fetching vegetables, I fed my daily dose of tablets to our middle-aged pomeranian, Hubbard. She lapped it up like the best dog-food.

*

 At the homeopathy clinic next day, I had an argument with the stubborn Dr. Nag.

“How do you explain something as preposterous as a homeopathic intervention? The science just doesn’t add up!” I wasn’t going to die without winning this debate.

“And yet,” he spoke in his cool voice, “it works.”

Dr. Sudipto Nag, wiry and young, peered at me through his frameless glasses with an amused expression.

“One word: placebo.” I held up my middle finger. We shared a three-snigger laugh.

“Why are you so against it, Mr. Sheikh?”

“Because it doesn’t work on those who don’t believe in it?” My tone was increasingly caustic.

“Says a lot about belief in the self, right?” He thought he was on the winning end on the argument.

“Yes, doctor. But this is fucking cancer: you don’t will away this shit!” I banged the table lightly to add weight to my point. He leaned in.

“Point taken, Mr. Sheikh. But what’s the harm in giving it a try, as a last resort? Conventional medicine hasn’t worked on you, and you’ve had the tumour for…?”

“…two years,” I completed his sentence. That’s how well a cancer patient gets to know his doctor. 

“But that’s not counting the first year, when I passed it off for a regular recurrent headache,” I added, knowing it didn’t add to my argument. He knew I knew, so he smiled. But I too had made up my mind.

“See, Dr. Nag: I have been a follower in the tradition of science and rationality ever since I have been thinking for myself. I have utmost conviction in the doctrines of scientific query and the path of reason. Unfortunately, homeopathy doesn't quite qualify as a reasonable area of study for me. So, try as you may, I will not spend my last days guzzling down quack meds, even if it means no placebo. I’d rather believe in myself for my recovery than this oversaturated sweetened water.” I dragged the chair away and stood up to leave. I had one foot in my grave; it was time to put the other down.

The good doctor still persisted, trying to knock his idea of a better sense into me. “Think again, Kabir,” he spoke in a serious tone, “if not for yourself, do it for Amba.” He handed me the tablets. I sighed and took the bottle. It’s unfair: we terminal patients get to play less with emotions of our kin than they get to with ours.

“Fine, I’ll keep them if you say so. But hear me well: not a single piece of this drivel will go down my throat. I’m going to feed all this to Hubbard.” I said my greetings and stormed off furiously. Out of the corner of my eye as I spun around, I caught the scumbag doctor smiling with a look of contentment on his face.

Another one headed for the coffin, he might have been thinking.

Chutiya.

*

Miracles are just slightly rarer coincidences.

By what seemed to be some stroke of extreme good luck - or bad? I don’t know – I survived the fucking cancer. One day the scans showed the tumour progressing at regular pace, the next day it had receded marginally. Amba was overjoyed, in fact a bit too overjoyed, at the prospect of getting to share her life with a loser for another few years. Dr. Nag was even happier, if that was possible: he almost jumped off his seat when he saw the scans.

On top of everything, I suddenly felt better and livelier. No longer would the bouts of sudden and sharp stinging pain bombard upon my forehead. My body grew stronger and more energetic as the malignant growth in my skull receded out of existence. I slept and ate better with each passing day and took more interest in life’s simple pursuits. Walking Hubbard and making sweet love to Amba would keep me occupied when I was not working. Within a few months, I was completely treated; as healthy a man as I was two years ago.

It was only a few weeks later that I asked myself: what exactly had cured me? I had religiously fed each and every one of my tablets to Hubbard, and barring a nominal weight gain, even she hadn’t showed any physical betterment. Then how had I defeated cancer without any medication?

I cornered Amba and Dr. Nag the next day. When I had phoned Dr. Nag earlier, he had tried to put forward the appointment for some odd reason, citing lack of time. I decided to take him by surprise. The entire car journey to his clinic was a weird one. Amba was behaving very strangely at the thought of seeing Dr. Nag once again.

“What is up?” I inquired.

“Nothing,” she started unconvincingly, “I just don’t want to visit that place again.”

“Why?”

“It…reminds me of your illness.” I looked at her. She sounded serious about it. I had never known her to make such random-ass associations between things and places before; this was entirely new.

“What the fuck?” I asked her, surprised.

“Oh, forget it Kabir! Let’s just go home.” She implored.

I screeched the car to a halt, dangerously close to the sidewalk.

“Okay, you need to tell me now. What the fuck is the matter?” I was too exasperated to put it off for later.

“No, I told you...there’s nothing!”

Listen to yourself, Amba. You’re not fooling anyone!

 

“Okay then…” I spoke with finality, looking away from her. I revved up the engine and drove as fast as I could to the clinic.

The doctor did a better job at explaining things. I asked him how I got better on my own and he smiled in the same sneaky fashion as he had before.

“You want to know for sure?” he paced the breadth of the room behind his desk, his smile still unwavering.

“Know what, exactly?” I was confused beyond words.

“Let’s start from the start: you walked in through these very doors a year ago with a curious problem: a persistent headache that had been troubling you for a year. You had tried every medication, every scientific treatment in the book, every remedy prescribed to you by every doctor you’d consulted. And then, you came to me…”

I sat down. I had no idea what was about to be said. He kept pacing up and down, barely noticing me anymore. He was in the thick of his fifteen minutes of fame, his climactic exposition. Amba stood transfixed behind me, listening to every word as if it were the gospel.

“I told you to get the MRI done, which is the standard procedure in such cases of chronic headache, but…” His voice trailed off.

“But what, doctor?”

“But the scans revealed nothing at all!” he held up triumphantly his hands in the air. It didn’t register on me; I was numb.

“What?!”

“Yes! You were and have always been absolutely cancer-free. I had a sit-down with Amba and we talked at length about your peculiar condition. Why were the headaches hounding you? Why had it been so for so long and despite having tried everything, why had you not recovered? Because, as I understood, your condition was psychosomatic.” His grin was the widest now, pride oozing out from between the rims of his lips. I sat in my seat, stunned into open-mouthed stillness.  

“Your wife further supplemented me with insight about your character. She told me that you are an incorrigible agnostic; someone who will never forego his faith in himself for anything but the backing of scientific proof. I decided to exploit your self-belief to test a new medical theory I had devised a few years back. I like to call it ‘the Obecalp Effect’.”

“The what effect?!”

“Obecalp,” he repeated coolly. “Opposite for-“

“Placebo,” I offered, starting to understand.

“I, along with your concerned wife, gave you a regular dosage of reverse psychology and a few harmless homeopathic medicines. We made you strengthen your own willpower and determination by constantly pushing you away from your natural predisposition. We bugged you day in and day out to take your meds on time, fully knowing that you would silently revolt and build up your own natural defences. We forged the scans and feigned cancer growth to further push you into a corner.”

It all made sense. The fucker had used my own sense of strong self-will and a lack of belief in quackery as a means to cure me of my psychosomatic condition. And my darling wife had played along for so long.

I got up from my chair and wheeled around. My wife stood behind me, mirroring the smile on Dr. Nag’s face. She held the leash to Hubbard’s collar, my faithful bitch who had lapped up all those sugar tablets for so many weeks. Amba’s eyes actually drew tears and she spread her arms in anticipation of a hug. I could sense the doctor beaming in approval, his experiment successful for mass proliferation.
 

I slapped the fat bitch across her face, snatched Hubbard’s leash from her pudgy fingers and walked the fuck away.

Bad fucking actor.

THE END