Mask-uarade

Normally I dont have a habit of people in the street staring at me. Today they ogled.

It all started with my dad getting us a mask each yesterday (supposedly to combat swine flu) and gave it to me with a great deal of enthusiasm (sigh! I remember the times when he used to get me the latest acrobatic battery operated figure when he returned home from work)..."Here you go son! wear it from tomorrow. You travel in crowded buses, this will come handy specially now." I tried to shot back with a drama-imagined ailment of breathlessness, but alas, my lone protest was quelled by a furious female figure, in short F3, in our household. So anyways. here I was, in the morning, quite reluctantly putting in my mask in my bag. When I got up on the bus, it was crowded and I smartly put my bag on the dirty bus floor, opened it's chain and pulled out my armour against all those swarming alleged H1N1s and wore it stylishly. And then it began. boys and girls of all ages, unclejis and auntyjis all began to look at me as I had come from mars and was suddenly facing a bout of breathlessness due to over exposure to oxygen. I imagined some people even maintaining a polite distance from me, lest they contract the deadly disease that they thought I had been diagonised with. Dumbasses, why would a patient who's down with swine flu be travelling in a public chartered bus in the midst of a 50 odd crowd!

Soon stares turned into suspicious glances and mothers began to show their protectiveness streak to their children. And within minutes, most of the passengers took out their handkerchiefs and leaped for their noses and mouths. Soon a time came when the mask became a little moist and I opened it to draw in some air. A disarray followed. Everbody pulled in,hard, their nostrils and squinted their eyes in panic. I was too kind to wear it back. When I got down from the bus, it was more of a relief for me than them. Sights of a couple of other people, wearing the mask,in the bus stop helped be pull myself back.

I believe, in this country where lack of awareness and a sense of strange self confidence prevails among the semi urbans and the indifferent elites, a step taken by an individual can go a long way in making others emulate you and follow your footsteps. A mask, specially during these days, can come really handy. Go to your nearest chemist and ask for a protection...mask, I mean:)