Last night at Mascot Beach Hotel, Kannur, Kerala

I'm feeling sad that I will be leaving this hotel, Burnaserry, Kannur, the State of Kerala. And its wonderful inhabitants. Keralans are ex-Kommunist Kool, I've been told. That's what's make them, as a rule, quite honest compared with some of their counterparts on the Indian Subcontinent.

It's only really been yesterday and today that I've really started feeling anything like a little bit 'normal' since arriving in India. I'm still whacked from the pneumonia and the A5 brown bag of pills - which I have to remember to take at various intervals - what a crashing bore. Can't wait to see the back of them and pneumonia.

I've had five Ayurvedic treatments in the last three days. The first one was reflexology in the treatment room here at the hotel. More on that some other time. It was good. Just that it deserves a little post all of its own perhaps.

The last four were taken at Liya Wellness Centre which used to be part of Mascot Beach Resort hotel. About four months ago, I've been told, Liya Wellness branched off and moved to a place right on Payyambalam Beach - with their own guest house above the Wellness Centre. I highly recommend it. Get there before it becomes really established, as its cheap as chapattis.

Today, I had a full body massage, and a consultation with the very switched-on, young Ayurvedic Doctor there. Eyes twinkling and burning bright behind his spectacles. Fast-talking, encyclopaedic knowledge. Sharp as a wotsisname. I told him about the pneumonia and asked if he could prescribe me something to strengthen my lungs.

Then I happened to show him the spider veins on my lower right leg. Told him about how I couldn't put my weight on that leg when walking. That during the full body massage the muscles felt very tight. The repeated cramps which have woken me during the last couple of nights. The vague hobbling about has only occurred since being in Kannur - maybe only the last 6 days or so.

I am now the owner of something called Burger's Leg, a.k.a. smoker's leg. Talk about falling apart. I've not had a cigarette since the first evening of that hellish 38-hour train journey from Mumbai to Ernakulum, Kochi. 24 February. Not that long ago. Why do the symptoms of smoker's leg have to happen now? As I asked, in this blog, when I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis back in Ernakulum: Why now? Why India?

Still, I'm not too bothered. As long as I don't get critically ill with a viral lung infection that decides to mutate into ovoid chains, pairs and an almighty viral techno rave collective - I am really not bothered.

Burger's Leg? Ha. They can cut my lower leg off and make a McMo Big Mac for all I flippin'-burger I care at the mo'. With the One and Only Fries.

[Musical cue: 'One and Only' by Chesney Hawkes.]

As Jon Kabat-Zinn thankfully says in his guided Body Scan meditation:

If you can breathe, there is more right with you than wrong with you.

Mm, i'm lovin' it, Jon. No. I mean it. Jon Kabat-Zinn rocks. Those words have helped me no end.

Don't worry. Smoking for 30 years has taken its toll. Even I can't live in denial of that anymore. I found myself voicing my conviction to the Ayurvedic Doctor that I sense I am not the kind of person to get cancer. He replied, saying that cancer is just one type of illness, and people who never smoke can get cancer ... 

Strangely, I realised shortly after leaving his consultation room that he didn't prescribe anything for my lungs. I had said to him that I was a baulking at the amount of medication I was taking. But I mentioned that I thought the infection was clearing, so that in this instance, I was taking the drugs. All of them. He just said that pneumonia can kill.

Yes, I know, Doc. Mum died at the age of 42 with bronchopneumonia. She entered a psychiatric hospital - St Bernard's, West Ealing, in 1981 - for manic depression. That was the label then. Fancy for those days. And mum came out dead with a form of pneumonia. Male staff nurse on duty that night had one of those yellow complexions, and a dark, sadistic look about him. I had always thought him evil. More, much more on that a later date.

I ain't going down that road. I'm a survivor, me. This pneumonia lergy will have gone by the time I reach Kuala Lumpur on 21 March. I'll knock its feckin' round-to-ovoid viral block off, I will.

Also, if there are any family members reading this. Make sure you don't get me Sectioned. I never have been. Never will be. This is one occasion when I will use the word NEVER. My medical team think me sensible, and have a far healthier perspective than some of my family do. Thought I'd make that clear, fellas.

Back to Baby Beach, the Malabar Coast, and the now oily Arabian Sea ...

... Darn it. Only three more lousy and cockroachy days in India. 

How time flies when you having fun.

I'm Mo ... Fly Me, from Mangalore to Mumbai. Tomorrow.

xxx