Life gives a chance

It happened in a flash of a moment - literally. Barely five feet to go to the exit, the fireball enveloped me. The heat seared through my skin and thick black smoke made it impossible to breath. Five or ten seconds more, I would have become tandoor...roasted alive. Then it occurred to one of my companions to tear open the door and I tumbled out, followed by a huge fireball, movie style, close on my heels.

Rest of the events are pretty imaginable. whisked away to first aid post and transported 200 km to the nearest hospital, twenty agonizing days to substantial recovery, the support and goodwill of my staff, friends and colleagues to my wife and the tender care by hospital staff.... I suppose a mere thank you to all of them would be never enough. I presume Santosh Gupta, Choudhary, Satya, Banu Pratap, Chandrasekhar Y Pawar, Durgaprasad, Brijesh Kumar, Devika, Brinda, Anju Kumari, VK Sharma, SV Syed, Surya Bhattacharya, Ambika, Farah Patil, and my dear Mona have become now part of my living memory. May God bless them all and grant them His liberal grace in all their life's undertakings.

Throughout those twenty days, somethings else kept playing out in my mind like a gramophone record - those few moments when I stood inside the envelope of fire. Strangely, I did not feel an iota of fear. Fully aware that the fireball has me in its grip, I was conscious of just three things: one, I may last a few more moments; two, I should not change the direction in which I was going (towards the exit) for I would get disoriented soon; three, not to look around since my eyes will burn out. Keeping both my fore arms to cover my face, I just proceeded ahead, in time to tumble out of the entrance. In fact my hands got burnt in the process of opening the cover on the entrance when one of assistants also helped to pull me out.

I kept asking myself as to how come I did not panic; how the mind remained absolutely clear and unfazed. While a score of explanations like upbringing, training, attitude, physical stamina, etc, kept popping up, the simplest of the explanations holds the fort - life gives a chance. It always and in every absurdly hopeless situation too, it gives a chance. Like Paulo Coelho says, the symbols are ever present. It is upto us to take it and move forward or ignore and be done with.

Osho in every breath says that it is being aware which is essential. Be aware. Awareness is life and not being aware is death. Life calls for an awareness of our being that is beyond mere physical senses. It is transcendental in nature. Every time there is a close call, believe that life is actually giving us a chance. Take it. 

I want to be a nurse.....

This was what Charlie Browne's friend told him in Peanuts series, when asked about her preference for white shoes!!

She did wear white shoes and a white coat too. At about four feet plus and bit thin, she gave me the impression of a school girl who wants to 'play' nurse. Well, this was not so...she IS a nurse...I couldn't un-believe... for we were in the hospital room where my friend was admitted for an operation and she had come with the battery of equipments that only nurses bring around in hospitals. She must have realised that I was actually staring at her in wonder. She broke an infectious smile and asked:

"would you mind?", holding out a prescription, " get this from the pharmacy, please".

I shook my head and returned with the medicines. By then she had struck a lively conversation with my friend; knew that I had come over to give him company; could not speak  local language and had a son in a medical college!! My turn to know. She had finished her nursing training and joined this hospital a year back; belonged to the place; enjoyed being a nurse; and yes, she can speak a smattering of my mother tongue!

In the next three days that I was with my friend, she was there every one of her shifts on time and usually left a little later after her shift. I kept seeing her smile infectiously at every patient, sometimes pampering them and sometime chiding them. While her pampering managed to touch a cord in the patient, her chiding never stung. She would know exactly what the patient wanted and seemed to materialise with a shot-tablet-pain reliever-a pot-whatever, just when they needed it.

As I kept seeing her, I wondered what the patients would do had there not been a nurse like her? Doctors will prescribe medicines, operate on, come on rounds to say encouraging words and of course bill you handsomely, irrespective. It is a nurse who actually takes the patient through the fears, anxieties, traumas and shudders with her smile, encouragement and enthusiasm. What will we do without good nurses? How will we ever come back to health if they aren't there? Oh, how many of us actually care to even say thank you to them? We keep praising our family doctor and his referral doctors for keeping us in good shape. Lest we forget, it was the nurses in their clinics and hospitals who actually gave the courage to stand through our bad health. They deserve our gratitude....do not forget to thank them the next time you are attended to by one of them....