This is going to hurt just a little bit

The empowerment of a comprehensive health check-up comes at a cost

- REHANA MUNIR

One of the rites of passage as one gets older, and prone to doubts about having accumulated any wisdom at all, is the complete health check-up. Figuring out what's on your mind is a never-ending project. You're no longer interested in certain friends (were they always mansplainers?) and foods (what was that paneer obsession about?). You need different things from travel than you did in your backpacking days (comfort trumps character-building). And your relationship with money is more confusing than the logic behind GST. But if you put your body through the rigours of a check-up, you'll know secret things about yourself that will bestow upon you an instant sense of control over your inscrutable life.

Enter Sandman

Well, that's the hope. Before you reach the promised land of all empowering knowledge, you need to negotiate the rocky terrain of tests and probes that push the limits of your self-possession. I've recently travelled through the deep, dark woods of the comprehensive health check-up and lived to tell the tale. It all begins with an innocuous form, creating the illusion that what follows will be a clinical process with no emotional import. The ample breakfast provided after the fasting blood test cheers you up: how bad can the rest of the day be?