On being inducted into the famed gout-ridden society

Recovering from an excruciatingly painful and swollen knee, I took solace from watching on TV the 59-year-old Tom Watson almost win the British Golf Open Championship recently. Odds of Watson coming close to doing that at his age were bleak. Earlier, doctors had poked a giant-sized needle into my knee-cap to extract some bloody substance and unerringly concluded that I had the infamous gout. So I had to grin and bear it while Watson survived that grueling 18 whole course, playing four days in a row in horrid weather and still stand on his solid knees. This is not fair.

My more than a casual spectator's interest watching the awesome performance of Watson made me think of hundreds of distinguished gout-club members who had come through with flying colours. Suddenly I recalled the long line of gout sufferers in history. The ancient Egyptians suffered from it. Hippocrates had labeled it 'the unwalkable disease,' How come no one wanted to sympathize with poor me, I scorned in anger! But that's another story!

Many like me may have got caught up in my envious look at veteran Watson's historic performance. Look at the list of distinction so brazenly obvious among the famous gout sufferers like Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Luther, Benjamin Disraeli and Thomas Jefferson, even Henry VIII just to mention a few. There were great scholars, poets, novelists and philosophers like John Milton, Thomas Gray and Joseph Conrad and of course, Karl Marx in that hallowed group. They weathered the soul-crunching pain and came out on top with their unique contributions to society.

Opiates were equally noteworthy

Tom Watson. Courtesy: google.lk

Some have attributed many reasons for gout but the opiates that were described to ease the pain were also noteworthy. My doctor suggested that I take the much maligned steroids. Homegrown narcotics are a favourite remedy of the guys and gals in San Francisco where medical marijuana clinics have sprung up like mushrooms after the spring rains. The opiate of the gout-ridden could be lengthened to include some medieval concoctions applied with religious fervour, sometimes mixed with superstitious rituals.

Watching all these ensue was hallucinating and somewhat soothing. It actually widened our awareness of what any of us is capable of enduring. It is like seeing the wizard Sanath Jayasuriya dancing down the pitch and hitting it out of the park even in his twilight years. That is like when basketball legend Kobe Bryant scores 70 points in a game, we are in awe. When Tiger Woods wins by 15 strokes, we are in awe. But when a man past his prime like golfer Watsons or any of the famous scholars mentioned above whips the best in their own game we identify.

Of course, Watson had unique golfing skills that we don't. Marx had a unique sense of history and Conrad caught the essence of drama in 'Heart of Darkness.' Stretched on my couch and feeling stranded, it is my turn to dream.-gout or no gout. You could not help but look at the great achievers and say something you would never say about Tiger Woods "He's like me, he's my build; he's my height; and he even had a knee injury few years ago like me. If he can do that, maybe we all can do it too." There may be pocket-sized revolutionaries believing that they are the equals of Marx and Engels.

Use and abuse of gout

So instead of moaning and getting befuddled it is time to look ahead. For a lot of people, this is life-affirming.' What Tom did was an affirmation of life. Use your pain and not abuse it. So here is to gout sufferers.

Keep up the spirits. In each chosen field there are hidden pitfalls that could spring disaster in an instance. As I watched on TV Watson hit two perfect shots on the 18th hole in the final round, and the second one bounced just a little too hard and ran through the green, leaving him a difficult chip back, which he was unable to get up and down. Had his ball stopped a foot shorter, he would have had an easy two-putt and a grand win.

One analyst puts it this way. "Baseball, basketball and football are played on flat surfaces designed to give true bounces. Golf is played on an uneven terrain designed to surprise. Good and bad bounces are built into the essence of the game. And the reason golf is so much like life is that the game - like life - is all about how you react to those good and bad bounces.

Do you blame your caddy? Do you cheat? Do you throw your clubs? Or do you accept it all with dignity and grace and move on, as Watson always has. Hence the saying: Play one round of golf with someone and you will learn everything you need to know about his character." This is all about individual character.

No one throws it to you. You initiate the swing, and you alone have to live with the results. There are no teammates to blame or commiserate with. You have to endure long hours inside a library or a lab before the final triumph arrives.

This wonderful but cruel game of life never stops testing or teaching you. Watson himself put it well. "One learns from defeat, not from victory.'

I may never have the chance again to beat the kids, but I took one thing from the last hole: hitting both the tee shot and the approach shots exactly the way I meant to wasn't good enough. ... I had to finish."

So Tom Watson got a brutal lesson in golf that he'll never forget, but he gave us all an incredible lesson in possibilities - one we'll never forget. You get a chance once in a lifetime and enjoy it. Play your best. Main thin is not how you win but how you play the game. Rubbish'! Let them suffer an attack of gout and they will not say that. Then again you can use or abuse gout. Or just be yourself. It is in dreaming that we all become human.

Gout is analyzed simply as a form of arthritis caused by high levels of uric acid in the body and crystals in the joints and the surrounding areas. It is not strictly curable, but it can be controlled relatively easily with a medication. Foods associated with gout are shrimp, salmon, anchovies, red meat, some types of beans, alcohol, vine, port, cherry and that decidedly filling substance called beer. The line exterminate all the brutes was written by gout-sufferer Joseph Conrad. Equally daunting was Marx's "workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose except your chains.' Henry VIII said hell with Rome, give me that divorce!

P. S. Please do not be carried away that I am claiming that gout is irrefutable proof of genius. I am only hoping that if will get as much sympathy as the fun it evoked writing about it.