Blood Pressure

That’s Life – 4: Blood Pleasure

I logged into my session and wrote a simple script that acted as a “fake front end”. It looked, felt and smelt like a HP UNIX Log-on screen. I ran the program on all the terminals in the computer center. The unsuspecting Nitya would come at eight in the morning, enter her login details and my program would promptly save those details in a text file and kill the session! Poor gal! She just couldn’t realize that she had been phished!



I had been admonished by the system administrator as well as Adiya Balasubramaniam for this phishing act. While our SysAdmin, a good friend of mine, agreed to take it easy, Aditya practically lynched me for taking the hackers’ pride to the cleaners.



“This is the worst approach to get the passwords. This is insane, indecent and a shame on all of us – Hackers. This is the dumbest way of doing it. Don’t you dare call yourself a hacker!”



However, the fact remained that I could crack Unix passwords. I did it. Maybe it was not the most elegant way of doing it but it served my purpose. I knew Nitya’s password and that was enough for me. My self esteem had gone up by leaps and bounds after this incident.



So Nirmal – the arrogant ‘quizzing dude’ – ultra thin and ultra hi-fi – the most talked about guy (at least I thought so) in the class – Quad Erat Demonstrandum.



Unfortunately none of these accomplishments seemed to impress Nitya - the only girl in my secluded world of fantastic dreams. I wanted to talk to her but I didn't. I wanted to walk with her but I couldn't.



My life – in general – had always been a series of interesting events evenly spaced out on the time axis connected by an unnerving thread of boredom. After the Unix episode, the thread continued for an eternity! There wasn’t anything happening. Same old day, same old people, same old Unix, same old Venu!



God! Gimme something new!



This, He did. He gave me something new and very very interesting as well.



The doctor with a very serious expression on his face asked me – “How old are you?”



“Nineteen” I told him.



He nodded and stared at his notes.



“What is wrong, Doctor?” I asked him.



He sighed, “Your blood pressure levels are a bit too high. In fact very high. 200 by 100! At the age of nineteen.”



Why?



Perhaps it is your Kidneys.



How?



Perhaps you should get yourself examined thoroughly in Madras Apollo.



Well, when I walked out of the campus hospital that day with a bunch of Inderal tablets in my hand, everything looked quite different. I was kinda detached. I spoke to none. The high blood pressure thing had killed the enthusiastic Nirmal. Even Nitya could see something was happening to me.



Why are you so dull nowadays?



I am dying. Believe me.



Come on!



I stopped attending the classes. And I was convinced that I had lost both my Kidneys. My legs started aching. My heart grew heavy. I couldn’t breathe properly. My stomach ached and my little finger could not move at all. My pulse rate came down to 52.

To be continued…