A stone thrown away at the right time is better than gold given in the wrong time !

Yippeee!!!!

Yippeee reason 1 : I am back home from my month-long sojourn at the hospital. Yippeee reason 2 : I finally bought my pair of LSS jeans. Yippeee reason 3 : I am blogging again ( after aeons!) .

Life lands you in the most unpredictable places and predicaments when you expect them the least. No one knows it better than me now. So while I was busy shopping like crazy for the pujas, I had severe bouts of pain, forcing me to take refuge in the most dreaded and cheerless place - the hospital. I was diagnosed with a solitary calculus (stone) in my gall bladder with acute pancreatitis.

Need I mention how upset I was with the stone, for jeopardising my plans, with the pujas just round the corner? I remembered how stones of various forms and shapes (real and metaphorical ), had been upsetting me since bygone days. But thankfully those were external ones . This time it had dared to cross the Rubicon and penetrate inside my body !

When I was five, I was hit by a stone at the temple which was the first attack from a stone. It had caused profuse bleeding, pain and had left me with a long time companion - scar. My whole family was almost up in arms against the miscreant. ( Yet curiously enough, my aversion and awe towards the stone-thrower has , in recent years, shifted from the perpetrator of the action to the object itself ! )

Then at the age of fifteen , my friend Menal, who lived at a stone's throw distance from my house, hit me the second stone. This time figuratively. She lured my best pal, Rohit into her confidence . He slowly moved away from me. In the event I lost two things : Rohit , and his ever- so - happenning help of Julius Caesar' s notes . You see , how Menal killed two birds with one stone !

By the time I was twenty I was hit by the 'Rolling Stones', whose band was founded by Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Most of their albums became my treasure trove. I also became a fan of Buddy Holly whose 1957 song 'Early in the morning' contained the lyrics, " Well you know a rolling stone, don't gather no moss, and you crossed your bridge and it's time to cross". It was only after Holly's death that Rolling Stones got it's name.

The next ominous stone that gave me jitters during my graduation years, was a biblical expression, ' Like one who binds a stone in a sling , so is he who gives honour to a fool' . I had a hard time to figure out which of the two was referred to the fool - the stone or the sling !

All these years I have been plagued by stones. Never did I fathom that I would carry one within me, literally ! My forsaken sweethearts may have commented at some point of time that I had a heart of stone . This is not true. But now I won't mind them saying , "The stone from the heart slipped into the bladder !"

Retracing my steps to that doomed, cheerless place , Let me assure my small band of readers that the worst is over. I finally underwent a lapchole (Laparoscopy Cholecystectomy ), after the pancreas was brought to normal functioning. The gall bladder is now a thing of the past . They even removed the organ along with the blighted stone. I don't host it in my body anymore! And for the first - never -imagined- time , I feel a strange pride to show my sympathisers the stone, which I intend to preserve for some more time.

My present fears are somewhat different. Some extremely nosey and detracting so - called - well wishers of mine have cautioned me that now that I no longer have the gall bladder, I might , in future, weigh 21 stones !!!