G Sampath: The terrorism of pain

I finally know what terrorism feels like. As in, I know it, viscerally, in my body, in my blood, bones and brain — I know exactly what it means, what it feels like, what it can do.

For the past week, I've been getting this sharp, shooting pain in my right ear — it feels like someone just poked a hot iron needle deep into my ear. It lasts for a second or two and is gone. But when it lasts, well, it's just one or two seconds, you can make complete suicide plans in those two seconds. You clutch your face, and are willing to do anything to make it go away, and make it not come back again, ever.

But it comes back, again, and again. And the worst part is that you never know when it is going to strike again. It could be while you are quietly reading; or while you're looking out of a window, or typing an article about pain. It is sudden, devastating, and so crippling in its impact that it makes you incapable of concentrating on anything at all. All you can think of is when it's going to come back next.

You live in continuous anticipation of it, living your fear every minute, unable to make plans, unable to read a page even, for you don't want to be taken by surprise. But you are. It is precisely when you begin to relax, thinking perhaps that the painkiller is working, that it strikes you, like a piece of lightning made of molten steel.

This is the closest I've come to being terrorized. If I ever became a terrorist, I would know exactly the effect to aim for. I was reacting to the pain in exactly the same way the state reacts to terror - by shutting down. If the cops go crazy with so-called security measures, put up mindless barricades all over, search anything and everything for bombs, or pick up youth at random from a certain community, I have my own ways of shutting down.

I haven't gone to work in five days; I haven't had a proper bath because I am terrified that the water going into the ear will trigger the pain; I don't drink anything that's too hot or too cold; I eat only the blandest food — food that's neither sweet, nor spicy, nor possessed of any discernible taste. I wear a woollen cap all the time, to protect the ear from the rare gust of accidental breeze blowing through my window, which, if it passes into my ear, can turn into a knife and rip my eardrum apart.

I can't even watch TV. In fact, I am astonished to discover that TV watching requires some amount of concentration. But even that bare minimum I am unable to give. My mind is continuously on tenterhooks - paralysed by anticipatory pain, perpetually flinching for a blow that is unpredictable but inevitable.

It's not as if I haven't been seeing doctors. I have gone to four doctors, sloshing through puddles, sweating under the thick woollen cap pulled low over my ears, waiting patiently in the rain for a cabbie who doesn't say no. As for the doctors, they aren't sure of the cause of the pain, but they've given me medicines. I have been taking them, more in hope than confidence. But the terror attacks still happen - at the same place.

I hope that they will be brought under control. Soon. But I know that it cannot happen only through painkillers — which is the law and order approach to the problem, and has terrible side effects. I know I will get lasting relief from the pain only by addressing the root cause of the pain - some infection somewhere, some inflamation somewhere, which is causing some discomfort to some unhappy nerve in my ear. Some nerve.

The only way this nerve has of telling me about its existence, about its unhappiness, is by causing me pain. By filling my face, my body, my entire being with this terrible, stabbing pain that makes me want to die or go kill somebody.

Maybe there is a lesson in this somewhere for all the intelligent people in charge of tackling terrorism.