Allergy you say!?

“The dam broke and the water just started flowing!

He was feverish the face was just not glowing!

It was the season when everything starts to itch!

One of the ways the allergologist becomes rich!”

The other day I was attending a talk in which an allergologist was mentioning how one of his patient developed allergy after eating crocodile meat! 

Yes, the first thought was why!?

Moreover the surprising fact was not that he developed allergy but he already had allergy to another food which apparently is very close to Crocodile meat!

Intrigued!?

read on!

My experience with crocodile has been the movie crocodile dundee which I have not seen but heard so many stories of! When this came in our open air theatre all my friends had seen but I missed it!

Then when they got to know that I have not seen it; they used to add more spice and flavour to the stories and narrate them to me!

Then I saw this amazing Bond movie in which  Roger Moore was the bond! Roger is the bond whom everyone likes to see but is never anyone’s fav bond! I used to like him as bond till Pierce Brosnan came along and stole the show! 

So in one of the movies he is trapped with these hungry crocodiles and he cleverly uses the meat to jump over them! 

Later on I got to know that it was done without any special effects!

Then on a trip to Sri Lanka we were taken in a boat to a shady cove and there near the bank you had a old man with small animals! He called them cute but we were terrified and I did not find them cute in any angle!

He of course charged us for holding and ‘petting’ the ‘cute’ crocs! Or alligators which frankly no one cares! You see one, you run! 

But the fear of the croc and or alligators was from the Movie Khoon Bhari Maang! Those days we used to watch movies mainly after they come in the filmfare awards! In fact many of these movies used to be watched more popularly via the video cassettes after the awards! Of course the video cassette watching is another blog!

So in the movie, Kabir Bedi’ the newly married husband pushes Rekha into the lake with the croc! The whole scene shot with effects scared and scarred me! Even in the filmfare awards show whenever the movie was nominated for any category; they used to replay this scene over and over again and finally end up with the badly mangled face of Rekha! Of course later on after ‘plastic’ surgery she becomes the Rekha we know! After that every kid who had seen the movie would hate both Kabir Bedi and crocodiles!

Now being a vegetarian who is now slowly going towards being a vegan; meat is the last thing to eat! But what a patient eats is personally his or her choice and no doctor should tell NOT to eat a particular food! He or she can be gently advised to avoid and then that is that!

Then again as allergologists we used to test all kinds of food and meat for allergy! 

Then again this blog is not about food habit or even allergy as such! But to the weird relation between crocs and this meat you would not have guessed!

This person in question had known allergy to; hold your breath to’ Chicken!

So apparently when he was asked of any allergy he said that he is allergic to chicken so the people at the Hotel did not think twice since they were serving him crocodile meat! 

Of course he developed allergy since apparently both chicken and crocodiles are very closely related since they both have a common ancestor!

So crocodiles and birds are both members of the same clade called Archosaurs!

I got it do not worry! You wanna know what’s a clade!

Well, clade means a group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor!

So the true archosaurs are divided into two branches. The Pseudosuchia branch includes crocodiles and all other archosaurs more closely related to crocodiles than to birds. Pseudosuchians comprise mostly extinct Triassic groups such as phytosaurs, aetosaurs, prestosuchids, rauisuchids, and poposaurs. All were carnivorous except the armoured, herbivorous aetosaurs. The second archosaurian branch, the Ornithosuchia, includes birds and all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodiles. In addition to the dinosaurs (the group from which birds evolved and to which they formally belong), ornithischians include pterosaurs and some extinct Triassic forms such as lagosuchids!

So next time you want to try an exotic food, try broccoli! unless you are allergic to Cauliflower or Cabbage though! Yes, I know that you know that they are all closely related! Almost like twins or triplets rather! Which reminds me of the movie Angoor with the hilarious birthday celebrity Deven Verma! A quick sketch which became cartoonish which is ok since just looking at him used to make me laugh!

Now make a list of your common allergies and sleep!

Shubh ratri!