My immediate family has just recovered from a bout of sickness. The classic illness – cold, fever, body ache, headache, general weakness etc. This affected both my parents who live close by, the better half as well as the kid apart from me. It took us by surprise because when one of us catches a cold or something, one or two of the others will catch it a week later or so – but not really all without exception and immediately. And no one actually reaches the fever stage. I had even forgotten how it felt to have fever, in fact. The sympathy is of course lovely. But unlike a cold where I sound much worse than I feel, this illness had me feeling as bad as I sounded for the first time and so all the sympathy was well deserved.

Like any other illness, much time is spent in figuring out how we got it in the first place. This time the blame was squarely placed on the able shoulders of my brother and his family who visited us last week. When they arrived, their 8 year old son was ill with fever and no apparent signs of a cold. My brother had all signs of cold, bronchial congestion etc. And soon my sister-in-law too began to feel the effects – but not so much yet.

Before I knew it, on the third day of his arrival, I began showing symptoms of the chills – shivering, aching all over, coughing and by evening high fever. The following day my daughter started her fever and coughing and the day after that my husband. Simultaneously my parents were developing their own symptoms and by the end of that week all of us were down. We lost no time in blaming my brother – “What a gift he has given us,” we surmised. Why would we do this? Blame the person who inadvertently passed on his or her germs to us – like he could help it. I mean we all take the usual precautions – wash hands frequently, sneeze and cough with our mouth closed, don’t go near others and as far as possible not touch anyone. But can one really help it if one’s illness is caught by someone in close vicinity?

Even the person who is deemed responsible feels guilty – like it was his life’s ambition to distribute his illness to as many people as possible. Guilty “how are you” calls are made, “I’m so sorry” kind of lines are thrown about – but what can you be sorry about? For sticking to plan and visiting someone even when you have a cold. I think it is a bit unfair to be blamed for that.

I have of course had an occasion to blame someone justly for this very crime. I was in the 8th month of pregnancy and this colleague walked into my cabin with a heavy cold, sniffing and blowing her nose into a hankie and extended her presumably clean hand to shake my hand. Unthinkingly I shook her hand and experienced the effects the following day. I caught such a bad cold and cough that I sounded like death warmed over. And most importantly, I fully recovered from the cough a month after my baby was born. A full three months of coughing – including when I most needed not to cough – when I had just gotten stitched up following the delivery. Not that this colleague had any way of knowing that my cold would last for 3 months – but she could have kept to herself that day had she thought of the fact that there were a couple heavily pregnant women in office (another colleague – who thankfully didn’t catch the cold) who would be very susceptible to catching infections.

Fair or unfair, we do it all the time. If our kid catches chicken pox from someone in school, they are blamed. If it is cold, fever, cough, then the source is identified and blamed. In fact, when I made an exception this time and visited a doctor, his first advice to me was to identify the source of my cold and avoid it. To which I croaked, “My brother?” He wasn’t very amused. :-) I remember fully blaming this friend of a friend who travelled with our group in train from Mumbai to Delhi when I was going home for a festival from hostel for giving me conjunctivitis. It was a different matter that almost all of Mumbai and Delhi were having an epidemic of the same and I would have caught it sooner or later from someone else. And he didn’t even know at the time that he had it. And I managed to infect my brother who was also home for the holiday and my mom before I came back to hostel in Mumbai.

I do know that it feels terrible to blamed for something which I had no control over. I feel guilty wondering what I could have done differently. How could I have let my child get this from me. Or my neighbour. Or worse – my neighbour’s kids. So this time I didn’t blame my brother very vocally. I really don’t think he is to blame. I also kept to myself for the duration of the illness – well almost.

Then how come my friend-neighbour caught a cold last evening? Was it us? But we have been almost okay for a couple of days now. It must have been the change in weather, must it not?

Maybe. But then maybe….