As I boarded my delayed Air India flight on Sunday evening, I was the perfect spectacle of a body that was breaking down. I'd written off the fatigue and exhaustion I'd been feeling the week before as symptomatic of dysmenorrhoea, when in fact I had probably been fighting a viral all along. By Saturday evening, I was beginning to see the wisdom in being horizontal. By Sunday afternoon, being any other way didn't seem to be a choice, even.

Except, I had to board my flight back to Delhi. I couldn't afford to reschedule. I tottered my way over the aerobridge, my back feeling like a thousand bulldozers had made their way across it, while the fever kept resurfacing like a stubborn bhakt troll. I was already in tears by the time I stepped onto the flight. My nose was running, my chest felt congested, and my skin felt like burning charcoal. I must have looked helpless when I asked the stewardess for a napkin. She asked if I was okay. I told her I was battling a fever and losing. She asked if I'd like a cookie and some medicine. I told her I'd eaten and had also taken a Crocin, maybe it would kick in eventually? Then I walked all the way to the end of the aircraft and took my window seat on the last row. I continued to cry because I didn't know how else to wrestle with the mind-numbing pain that was coursing through my veins, inflecting the muscles of my wrist, then suddenly my calves, then my chest. I was a mess.