deebawali blues and snips

my life has become twice as eventful and three times as adventurous.
in a rare spirit of decadence, i decided to go the whole hog and doll up for diwali.
i smeared kajal (my mother disdainfully calls this look the begum mehrunissa look), wore very dangly ear rings and chose tinkly bangles.
a bangle splintered and broke and in my usual quick, bright way i noticed after about ten minutes, that my hand hurt.
i looked at my hand, and froze to see big trickles of blood.
a gaping gash looked back at me.

i announced very slowly to the husband that i needed his urgent attentions which at that moment were focussed entirely on syriana.
the husband immediately went into a total flutter and sped around the house rummaging corners, flinging out drawers, as he mumbled incoherently," bandages, cotton... hospital...".
we realised that the house sadly lacked anything which could be labelled band-aid, let alone medical facilities.
another look at the gash confirmed that we really needed to get to a hospital.
so we bundled onto storm and sped through whizzing rockets and lakshmi bombs that were released indiscriminately in the middle of the road.
the husband yelled at the revellers and made many menacing gestures at them... i think the husband suffers from a form of delusion which leads him to believe that his wife is some sort of precious, national treasure... well what the heck? happy for me!
as i sat quietly, nursing my hand, a slow creeping thought began to crawl into my head... is this going to need stitches?
eeps.
i mean serious eeps.
dont stitches hurt to high heaven?
a very genial doctor took one look at my hand and announced the verdict.
"we will have to put in some stitches".
my heart clanked down to my kidneys.
"is it going to hurt"?, i asked stupidly, but plaintively, bleating like a sacrificial goat.
"just a little bit, dont you worry", said the doc very reassuringly and then added quietly," how is your tolerance to pain"?
i turned pale and gulped," i guess i will find out today", i squeaked.
but before he could stitch the wound the doc sent me to another doc for a second opinion.
the nurse (who i am sure is called rosemarie) briskly took me down a flight of stairs... we couldn't find the doc... so i held my hand, like britney holds her chihuahua, and followed the nurse around the hospital with slow rising panic.
when we found the doc, he looked like a gruff, religious grizzly, he took a quick look and said," just put in steristrips, no need for stitching, it is too close to the vein".
i blinked and smiled for the first time that evening," no stitches"?, i repeated.
"thank you so much, i could give you a hug, i was so worried", i gushed.
the doc was unmoved, "no need for stitches, but we could staple it".
(er what?)
"i hope you are joking sir"?
"no, no not joking, we can staple it... but we will just use the strips, just stick it".

i fled before the grizzly could change his mind.
so i got away with some sticky, plaster-tape-thing that closes wounds!
i spent the rest of the day pulling my sleeve over the bandaged arm, dodging the usual questions of "what happened"?
the doc told me later that i had gotten away with a very easy deal... the cut was just snips away from a vein... any closer and i would have been in some serious trouble.
this has earned me a lot of extra tlc from the husband, who now waits on me, while i loll regally on the couch.
life is good and happy diwali (like they say it here... yappi deebawali).