Allergy

The  red skin spots have matured to turn senior citizens. The mischievous anti-bodies responsible for their outbreak were now more calculated in their approach.They appeared entirely impervious to our assaults.

A mere congress was  grass in the lakeside  and harbored  enemies. Or a papaya pollen that came floating on the street air.

Despair was glossed over. A witch doctor might help. A doctor who could shake the ghosts out of women. At the village there was one near the railway line.He would send forth tiny brown pellets down your throat like bullets across the vast expanse of your stomach. He would look down his eyes on your epidermis and determine the bullets . He would speak nothing and  could say nothing. When he was not sending down bullets of brown stuff down your throat he was shaking women off their ghosts.

We waited outside iron cages. There were women squatting in the cages waiting for their turn. They had daughters who had carried ghosts in their bodies. A sprig of neem leaves was waved to keep the ghost at bay. Ghosts are scared of  the witch doctor’s words. The daughters then shook like trees in the windstorm.

Luckily we carried no ghosts in her. The red spots were not  result of any ghostly actions.