My friend needed my help in translating one of the audio recording from Kannada to English. It was for his PhD thesis. I agreed to help him and I started working on it in bits and pieces in between my consultations. On a certain day, I was informed by the receptionist that an elderly couple had come in for the consultation.

I quickly moved all the papers, headphones and the laptop from my table and placed it aside. The elderly couple came in and got seated. Exchanged greetings. They started explaining their health concern and I was noting it down. It took sometime. When they were done, now it was my turn to put forth certain other questions to get the clarity with their health status, before I prescribe them anything.

Here as per Ayurveda, we start of the consultation with asking questions about their lifestyle and food habits, which helps us rule out the cause for their issue. So I started with my questions to them and they came up with their answers I would try to read in between the lines. 

Since I was working on something else(not my area of expertise) before this particular consultation, maybe that was still running at the back of my mind. When it was time for me to ask them the questions about their food habits, I wanted to ask them if their diet includes “cornflakes” everyday.

But with slip of  the tongue, I asked” Do you take cerelac??!!!!”;)

The elderly couple in their early 60s burst out laughing and so did I..:). They said, “Doctor we don’t take cerelac.” We again started laughing.

I apologized, they were kind enough to say, “not an issue doctor, it happens.”

The consultation took longer than usual, but they were happy with the consultation and left with a prescription. I kept smiling the whole day, recalling my funny question. 🙂