Something from my archives ; Hazy Pain

“Why spent millions or even billions to seek life in outer space when we could use that amount to find cures for thousands of diseases which could save life’s of many on earth”.
Suddenly such a big question sprang into my mind, when I suddenly started to have a mild pain on my right leg.A big question indeed and worth debating, if I’m the member of the US senate. That small pain eventually turned into a nightmare two days later. For me big questions start cropping up during this unpleasant time, maybe that’s the only time I stop thinking about chasing the deadline, the next paycheck, the next big break.
We only start thinking about our health, when there’s pain, be it minor or major, from a fall or a knock, from a sprain or a strain, or even from a whip of a cane. The pain which I presume was from my hip joint slowly started sending pricking pain up my spine each time I moved and turned simple pleasures such as of rolling around on my “dreamland” into a self inflicted torture ritual.
Doctors say that pain is the alarm from the body indicating something is not right. It eventually be given due attention commonly with a pain killer, mostly unwillingly at times with visit to the “medicine man”. Which makes you think, if pain is the alarm for our body, then all living organism should have its own alarm? Leaves on plants turn yellow if they’re “sick”, birds stop singing and other animals groan and hide away when they’re not too well disappear from their busy routine.
What about our “Big Mama”, the life source of trillions of life forms? Will she fall sick? Will she recover if she’s sick? And how will she recover? Again big questions, but a timely one.
Timely because I just realized that how fragile our life is. How dependent we are on our “Big Mama”, like a new born nursing under the mother’s care.
The recent haze has thought us a lesson, a simple lesson, a lesson that needs serious attention. Which is never, ever take “Big Mama” for granted. All of sudden everybody was talking about her.
Suddenly the air quality index updates took prime spot even nudging the stock market index of its pinnacle. Never has the wind direction been so closely followed, the city skyline been so cherished and rain been so welcomed. Is this her alarm? Is this her way of telling us that she’s not well, she’s sick or getting sicker by the day? Maybe it is. She’s sending a message to all mankind, that she’s needs attention.
One fine Sunday morning, as abrupt as it started, the pain on my right hip, just disappeared.
Maybe the “gamat” ointment treatment from Langkawi prescribed by my mom really worked. The magical cures from the seas seemed to have swept away my painful ordeal. But as usual as the eastern sunrise, man always has a short memory. The big question on finding cures for mankind, which popped up when I started having my pain seemed to have been swept away too. Lost in the deep ocean, in the seabed of lost worries along with many other “big questions” and maybe with luck, return to my shores of my thoughts, in more pleasant manner someday. Coincidently the same happened to the haze. Just disappeared on fine morning; finally the blue sky was visible, groups of clouds everywhere and never has the morning’s sun rays been so welcomed with wide smiles.
All the talk about the haze, the weather, the winds, the fires and also about “Big Mama” just faded away together with brisk sales of masks. As the “dust” settles down, as the blame war cools down and the pharmacist’s monthly sales up, the haze remains in memory at least for now, buried among in the newspaper archives till the next one happens.