So it has finally rained in Delhi. Like I once prophesized, my mood is closely linked to Delhi Weather, and it was getting fouler by each passing day. The only reason kept me going to workplace was excellent cooling they provided in the premises, and the power cuts at home. Yes, all the reports of power cuts that you see on TV are not, for once, fabricated. ( Most of the time, all the nuisance makers start pelting stones etc on their object of scorn- Police station, Power station, Buses – only when they see a TV camera close by). Coming back to all things cool, it has become much cooler and humid. I don’t mind humidity as much as that searing heat which has tanned me in not a good way. I am thinking of de-tanning solutions. Any suggestions?
Since I last blogged almost a month back there is so much to post.
But before that let me just announce to the world that I feel happy.
Happy and content after a long time. And it’s just not the rains that have made me happy.
I like things sorted out. All the rationales, explanations each neatly applied into their right respective problem areas. I get my answers mostly from what I read, what I observe, who I meet etc.
This time I know there have been lots of triggers but it’s mostly the realization of how good life has been, or rather there are far more positives in life than negatives in my life.
Like I mentioned before, I have taken reading Marian Keys with a vengeance. I am on my second book ‘Last Chance Saloon’, though this is one guilty read, I enjoy her enormously. The book deals with friendships, love and cancer. Yes, chick lit is the least place one would expect Cancer to be written about.
I have never written about it earlier but reading about the disease and the various tests, chemo, radiotherapy affected me deeply since I have had a close encounter with the ghastly disease myself.
Three years back my mother succumbed to the disease. It was not the best time for any of us in our family. I know how it sounds when you say it was not best, but cancer was not the only thing that was going against our family. In the book, when I read about how the patient goes for bone marrow test, and how actually despite being given local anesthetic the needle has to prick the actual bone marrow which can’t be numbed for the sample. I remembered the day my mother went into that tiny room after a wait of two hours in the intolerable heat of that dingy hospital. She never told us back how painful it was. At that time, our only concern was to pray for test results to come negative.
But do things ever turn out the way we want? We got the bad news soon that cancer had spread to bone marrow too. In other words, she was on the last stage of cancer.
Before all this happened, cancer was a deadly word. It was something that happened to others. Something that only a few really unfortunate ones get. As is the human tendency, our first response was “why me?”.
Our visits to the hospital answered that question. There were young three year olds kids being treated for cancer and one has to have some nerves to speak to his mother asking his conditions.
There was a pretty young teenager girl who was not just tonsured because of chemo she had stitches on her head. Yes, her brain was operated for removing tumors.
While, we were not actually very lucky either.
There were many rounds of chemotherapy. Her low hemoglobin level before each chemo session required us to find blood donors for every round, and soon we exhausted our friends and acquaintances as potential blood donors because you need three months break before you can donate blood again. We got friends of friends and people who just heard about it and came to donate the blood in the hospital.
Before one session, her blood platelets count dropped abysmally low. If I remember correctly, 5-6 blood samples would make up for one platelet bag. I was too busy arranging for blood that I never had time to mourn her disease.
As I am writing these, I am reliving those horrors. I had read one of tendulkar’s interviews where he said a visit to a cancer ward in a hospital gave him new perspective on life.
My perspective changing moment came too. Perhaps all too soon.
I still remember the deafening cries at the time of one of our earlier chemo sessions when a patient died in the next room. Though, the wife was crying at least hundred meters away from our ward, there was nothing else you could hear in that ward. All other patients and their families had a look which spelt despair and death. Though we all knew that anyone among our loved ones can be the next one to go, we tried hard to look normal. I smiled and tried some normal banter to make it look like an ordinary thing, but I knew in my heart that it was our worst fears coming true.
There were so many moments when I actually thought if it was happening to me. One thing, I took from that experience and which I had forgotten about was the fact that “ why make all the fuss”. I know it’s a very fatalistic approach but perhaps I don’t push myself that hard for things which I know are very trivial when you compare them to cancer.
What if I don’t conoodle with my boss and impress him so he gives a big raise and sends me to an exotic locale for work (Yes, that happens in our company for some ‘lucky’ people). I don’t try that hard. I do my work and let my work speak.
I may not be going to Colombia (despite learning Spanish) or Greece, I have a well paying job. I am quite healthy, though I still have some way before I can de-lard myself completely; people still compliment me on my physique ( in a non sexual way)
I may not be the most intelligent guy on planet, but my colleagues respect me for my knowledge and opinion, and frankly I am trying to give a damn to what people think of me.
I mean if I start counting the things which are in my favor, they will far outnumber my whining list. So I have decided to do one thing. Throw that list to some corner of my head and tell everyone that life is really good.
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