Feed the cold, starve the fever

Common-cold has never been uncommon. It existed in the times of Tenali Rama. We know that he had the audacity to ask Goddess Kali on what her predicament would be, should she catch a cold. With two hands servicing her 100 runny noses, it would have been quite a spectacle. It amused the Goddess and she bestowed Tenali Rama the sobriquet of vikata-kavi. More importantly, the Goddess was aware of common-cold and its inconvenience to see the inherent though irreverent humour.
Animals don't seem to break into a paroxysm of coughing or a bout of relentless sneezing. It is here that a human being feels singularly victimized. He can take succor from the fact that his condition is not so desperate as the Gods as Tenali Rama rightly pointed out. Lord Dattatreya with three faces, Brahma with four, Shiva with five, Kartikeya with six faces and the Virat purusha with thousand heads (sahasra-sheersha purusha!) surely have a far greater problem than us.

There is a spring in your steps; you sing like a lark (- to borrow Wodehouse's phrase) and feel on top of the world with a rainbow across your shoulders. The Gods conspire and the reverie is short-lived. Common-cold strikes you like a kick in the solar plexus and renders you completely incapacitated. The throat initially feels funny and scratchy; next a slight irritation which soon develops into an acute pain. The nose is clogged, the cheeks are puffed, the eyes smart, the ears are blocked, the voice is hoarse, the tongue feels tasteless, the head throbs, even the teeth fillings hurt! Shivers, fever and body-ache take over and in just one day, you are reduced to a pale shadow of your usual self - curled up like a foetus in bed! Even the mighty have nose of clay, leave alone their feet.

Managing a cold is not easy. If you take medicine, it will take seven days to recover. If you don't, it will take a week! There are more home remedies than even the varieties of virus causing the ailment! "Be sure to steam" is a popular theory these days to tackle a cold.
We always fight an element with its opposite- fire with water, the mouse with the cat and the serpent with the mongoose. It is here that steaming runs into rough waters. Common-cold is referred as "jala-dosham"- (don't confuse it with a special type of dosa!) It is an ailment caused due to water or a dosha which results in water- a watery nose at least. Steaming relies on vaporized water to fight water. That's where I have a problem. "Like cures like" in some controlled cases all right- like removing a thorn with a thorn, in homeopathy and as a principle in allopathic vaccination. I am unsure whether this can be liberally extended to common-cold management or whether it would simply aggravate the crisis.

"Feed the cold, starve the fever" is another adage which leads to confusing interpretation. One system of philosophy interprets this maha-vakya as follows: The moment you feel the nose sniffles and get your handkerchief out, be sure to call for a banquet and indulge in a gluttonous, eating binge! If you are lucky, the cold will vanish. However, if the cold develops into a fever, from the 100 mile-per-hour eating over-drive, the foodie has to instantly screech to a halt and now starve himself!
A second group uses this proverb as a Biblical call for social service- clothe the poor, help the needy, feed the cold- those who are starving and shivering in the cold, feed them! Blessed are these benefactors- they will keep fever away!
The third system of philosophy has yet another viewpoint- if you have a cold, eat well to starve- i.e. to keep the fever out. To put it plainly, the cold will not snowball into a fever if you eat well. We still don't have answers for cases where we have a fever but no cold, or both cold and fever!
We wish these proverbs could be simpler and direct so that they could actually be useful- just let us know whether it is ok to eat in simple English!

"High temperature can be reduced with a bath"- is another advice freely available especially in the US. We are tempted to ask whether the water should be hot or cold. Either way, it seems dangerous. When you are running a fever of 102, the body feels like a furnace anyway. It seems preposterous to add more heat to it with warm water. As far as cold water is concerned, the very thought is forbidding and sends shivers even when we are perfectly fine! This conundrum is yet to be cracked and informed readers can enlighten us.

Apples, oranges, amla, honey, tulsi, salt-water, green-tea- they all make tall claims to cure the common cold. Till then, we can use our hands to wipe the mucus off our nose and generously smear it on the street-lamp pole or the elevator button to ensnare the next unwary victim! The virus always has the last laugh!

P.S: I was on my way back from the railway station last week.  As I crossed the road, a brute of a human being spat from a speeding bus and the contents landed right on my shirt. The revulsion was so acute, the reaction so extreme, that I removed my shirt in full public view and threw it away (a la Saurav Ganguly at Lords). Thankfully, I still had my vest on when I boarded the Volvo. I shivered in the cold of the Volvo AC all the way back home and also endured the stares from  fellow passengers. And sure enough, I was down with a common cold.
The only saving grace is that he did not spit on my trousers! You never know- my reaction could have been most uncommon!

P.S: On the subject of Gods with multiple heads, we just don't have an example of an Indian God with two heads. Janus is the only Roman God with two heads-looking to the past and the future. But "Janus faced" is a derogatory term for a deceitful person.
The closest that we can get to a two faced Lord is Ardhanaareeshwara- Shiva and Parvati sharing half a face each and a more recent example: Aadi-anta-prabhu- Ganpati and Hanuman sharing half a face each.
Even Gods want to be multi-faceted, but not two-faced!