The Physical

A week ago, Tess Legaspi from the Graduate Office mailed me saying my registration for the second term was in disarray since I hadn't yet taken a "physical" and so my health records were incomplete. After a few trips to the health centre and realising that I needed to show my Hepatitis-B immunisation record, take a Tuberculosis test and a physical to prove that I am in sound health, I proceeded first to obtain a fax of the hurriedly brewed up certificate of the two Hepatitis-B shots I was administered two years ago. The TB test would, it seems, take a couple of days for the "reading" so I would need to make two trips. And then, the physical. It is a sorry plight that medical care in the United States is such a costly affair. The health insurance racket and dubious government-sponsored medical facility schemes have ensured that a routine check-up ends up being such a mental torment. In my case, I was referred to a community health clinic and assured that owing to my graduate student status, I would not be charged much (if anything at all). Unfortunately, the clinic waitlisted me till January 6 and Caltech needed to know if their charge was not a health-hazard to himself or to society in a matter of days. A fine thing, linking course registration and health records -- but it did have the desired effect. The second clinic I was referred to was the Bill Moore Community Health Clinic (BMCHC) on 1460, N Lake Ave in Pasadena.

Now, as a normally xenophobic person I have never ventured two blocks beyond where I live. The BMCHC though was four miles away distanced by many strata of American society as I discovered. Since the physical was going to take a while, I decided I should walk at least one way and have myself picked up by Tejaswi on the way back. And so, I embarked on the great Pasadena walk. The Central Library was somewhere along the way and so I determined it would be worth my while to pick up a couple of videos on hold while at it.

Immediately around the nucleus of Caltech is a rather upmarket community. The lawns are regularly manicured and redundantly sprayed upon by precious water from the Colorado river (which, a newly made acquaintance at the cafeteria the other day tells me, is guaranteed to the Los Angeles county on account of an antiquated contractual agreement made in 1922. Furthermore, the share is not percentual but absolute. So, if the Colorado itself were to run nearly dry, the county could still stake claims to its regular share while the remaining water (if any) would be distributed to the native farmers) that usually baptises the sidewalk with its innocent wayfarers too. There is a Border's, a Trader Joe's, a Souplantation, a Macy's, a Wild Oats, several old age homes with delinquent dotards jettisoned off as the unavoidable excreta of a progressive society, a newly opened Natural Living centre, transparent gyms with several treadmills for the oversized to shed their lipids merely by open exhibition -- in short, a pensioner's paradise. On Colorado Ave., the perpendicular aorta of Pasadena, are a stream of homeless destitutes with a dreamy look in their eyes; wraiths banished from the City and hovering around its tall, forbidding ramparts of steel, rubber and asphalt. Cruel appellations have stuck to them -- hobos, bums, tramps -- but they continue to survive in the periphery content with the refuse thrown their way neatly stocked up in crumpled plastic bags and sachets.

The central library in Pasadena itself is a beautiful artifice replete with an ornate facade of the customary Parthenonian stairs, Grecian pillars and water-spouting gargoyles (it was dark, so a stretch of imagination should be tolerated), located further up north perhaps in what would be the heart of the town and symbolically the intellectual via medium between the opulent and the oppressed. From Walnut St where the library was situated as one goes further up north on Lake, one begins to notice immediately how suddenly all pretences have dropped. We begin to enter the commonplace, the hunting grounds for the plebeian. The street lights are dimmed and the shops are more esoteric. A crowded bridal shop teeming with white outfits jaded by the umpteen walks down the aisle they have made. Dozens of hair saloons with each catering to a separate ethnic clientele of Hispanic Americans or African Americans. Oriental nailcare parlours smelling of varnish and resin. A seedy looking psychic joint with signs in blue and pink neon: "We do crystal balls, palms and tarot cards" and a sinister house straight out of Hansel and Gretel with a chocolate-thatched roof and a gangly chimney.

It being a community health clinic, has visits necessarily subsidised and corroborate with the household income. After handing in my form I was charged $40 which was the maximum they could charge for a visit. I guess it was because I wore the Notre Dame shirt. After an hour's wait during which time I made facial acquaintance with a pallid African woman anxiously guarding every inch of skin with cloth and attended upon by her well-dressed husband (?) and three Hispanic-American ladies, attempted to read a paper, wondered at the plethora of playthings, overheard an excited voice on the telly canvassing Disney's bland assortment of family movies unleashed on the typical family of six-year olds that would lap up any cloyed confectionary bearing the mouse insignia -- "soon coming to a theatre near you", I finally got my turn to play sick. Following the desultory checks of height, weight, blood pressure, eyesight and urine (for which, I had to daub some benzalkyl chloride on the skin to avoid infection), I was then ushered into the next level. A wizened woman with a frail voice began questioning me and at the same time knocking my elbows and kneecaps about. Upon noticing the poonal, she asked me its significance and falsely conjectured that I was Sikh. No, Hindu. In point of fact, Brahmin. In point of fact, Iyer. In point of fact, Vadamal (or is it Vathimal?). A pity you have no such colourful religious taxonomy.

The physical was concluded and the State of California saw it fit to grant me a clean bill of health. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't take drugs, don't take medications. A veritable credit to humanity, that's me. Tejaswi couldn't be reached on the phone and so, just to drive my point further (a Cutie Doll for spotting the pun), I ran half the way back and trudged through the rest. In all, eight miles covered in four hours with searing insights into Pasadena culture, healthcare in the United States and Disney endoctrination. Couldn't have asked for more.

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