Not sure if you keep track of the most exciting things that happen in Life, but last week an actress called Samantha somebody-somebody, whose name I had most regrettably never come across earlier, stated emphatically that inhaling hydrogen peroxide provides relief to those with flu.
She is quite right in a way. If you inhale hydrogen peroxide in significant concentration, you are likely to be dead, the clear advantage in that outcome being relief from flu of course.
But something tells me that this outcome -flu-free-but-dead- isn’t exactly win-win, if you see what I mean.
Now, the only thing I have ever inhaled in my blameless life has been Vicks Vaporub in hot water (no, no, I was not in hot water, the Vaporub was), but back in my college days, I knew of a whole bunch of guys in the last bench of our large class who inhaled stuff that gave others in the room comic relief, (though not, sadly, flu relief which is the exclusive prerogative of Samantha Peroxide). My long-suffering delightfully boring Commerce teacher, Mrs Vaz, would ask one of them a question such as, ‘Give me two features of a Joint Stock Company’ and the 6 of them would laugh uncontrollably at the sheer imbecility, the ridiculous simplicity, the utter asininity, the profound impertinence of the question, when they were inhaling and contemplating the larger meaning and deep fragility of life.
‘Get out,’ she would yell in helpless rage. Now, this created a problem for this group as, in their current state, the line between Out and In was richly diffused, which, of course, would make them put their heads down and laugh some more like those hysterical hyenas in Lion King on steroids (inhaled). Plus, to Get Out, you need to Stand Up, which was clearly a task beyond their immediate comprehension or athletic ability.
In retrospect, I wish Samantha H2O2 had been around then - since those classes were about as interesting as sipping idli batter with soda, we would then all have been carrying inhalers, some with her SamHyDro Pero stuff, me with Vicks (and hot water) and those six guys with, well, the stuff that guys in the back bench generally inhale in Commerce and International Relations classes.
Note that, for the record, Mrs Vaz needed to let off steam, not inhale, which would have messed up that H2O2 with more H2O resulting in molecular mayhem and creating a law-and-order situation that, the Hindu would have reported, was tense but under control.
