Imagine someone holding the above whistle and constantly whistling into one of your ears – day in and day out, month after month. That is Tinnitus for you.

Have been enjoying this since my child hood days – will get loud whenever I have cold or some fluid gets into my inner ear. Couple of days before new year some fluid entered the inner sanctum sanctorum in the middle of the night and all hell broke loose – accompanied by severe pain. I made my first visit to the doctor in 2010 – on Dec 30th – bummer.

You might be wondering – so how does this story end? Well – there is no end. Medical technology is only now figuring out slowly why this whistling happens – it seems there are 20,000 miniscule hair inside our inner ear. They respond to the tiniest of sounds and transmit it to the brain.

For some ( around 30 million Americans – no such statistics for India yet ) – some rogue hair “imagine” that they heard something and keep transmitting to the brain the sound – this is the shrill whistle noise I hear – Tinnitus. There is a famous personality who has this condition – Guy Kawasaki – he had mentioned it in Art of Start.

From my unscientific research – anti depressants are prescribed for Tinnitus – which is depressing to hear ( double pun !! ) . Best solution is to just get used to Tinnitus and enjoy the constant raaga.

If you know anyone in your network having Tinnitus – do connect me to them – would like to know how they cope with this.