TRYING TIMES
(In continuation to ‘Fading Memory’)
I am writing this on 21st
of September, the World Alzheimer’s day. Today’s newspaper carried special
articles on the disease by eminent and experienced persons. People who are not
directly affected or experienced its horrors might have skipped the pages. But,
I read each and every word in them. Because I have a patient at home and I am
passing through its nightmares. I wanted to know better about it.
Two months are over, since my
mother got discharged from the hospital after her hip operation. She remains in
bed, with a home nurse to attend. Food is given in liquid form. She had been
taken to the hospital four times for medical reviews, each time by
ambulance. The last time, the doctor said that her bones are perfectly joined and that she can be allowed to walk. I replied that I am afraid to let her
walk again as she is certain to fall.
“That is your choice, but as for
the hip she is perfectly well”, the doctor made his part clear.
The damage to her brain is the
real cause of her fall and it only continues to get further deteriorated with
the passage of time. For an exercise to her legs, we began to make her sit on a
wheel chair while serving food. At times, we would support her to stand for a
while. But, that is all. No risk of walking.
Her mind is an ocean of roaring
waves. It is as if she wanted to get up, run about and do many things, as
earlier. Even psychiatric sedatives at the prescribed doses fail to calm her
mind. She would keep on throwing her hip and legs up, sometimes hitting the
wall and causing sores on her heels. I often wonder from where she gets the
strength to move her body so violently. Sores began to appear on her back too.
Every day the sores are washed and medicines applied. But the sores do not get
healed because of her frequent movements which further injure the injuries. It
is only while sleeping that she remains peaceful. Today we took her to the
bathroom in the wheel chair for a complete bath after an oil massaging. Her
skin is too soft and easily susceptible to sores.
In order to protect her body from
bed sores, we have made her to lie over a water-bed. Earlier, when the food is
served while on bed itself, she had to be lifted up and supported from behind
for which someone sits behind her back on her bed.
A few days ago, my wife was
standing behind my mother’s bed watching her. Suddenly she felt that the flat
portion of the cot was beginning to move towards her. The water filled in the
bed also began to exert pressure towards her end as one of the legs of the cot
there began to crumble. Somehow she managed to hold the cot supported with her
thighs and hands and called out for me. In a moment, the nurse lifted my mother
up and laid her on another bed which was nearby. I supported the cot for my
wife to take out her leg from under. I slowly put the cot down and saw that one
of the legs has developed a crack due to which the cot collapsed, unable to
withstand the weight of the water-bed. This caused severe pain and swelling on
my wife’s legs, but it didn’t affect mother any way. She was unhurt. My wife
got her pain and swelling relieved in two days, but of course after doing
necessary massaging and heat treatments. It might not have been the weight of
water-bed alone, but the weight of person sitting behind mother to feed her
also that caused the leg to develop the crack and give way.
I took the cot to a furniture
shop to get it repaired. The carpenter agreed. Next day, I thought of getting
it modified to provide for two wooden shields at both sides, so that mother
won’t fall from it even if she rolls in the bed. I thought that this could also
be got done since the cot was any way under repair with the carpenter. Earlier
the practice was to keep sufficient pillows on one side with another cot
nearby. There was the wall to take care of the other side. This modification
would allow me to keep her cot independent and comfortable.
To give necessary directions to
the carpenter, I took off on my bike. The shop was on the other side of the
road from the direction of my drive and I had to cross the road which has a divider
in the center. The divider has gaps in between through which bikers and auto
drivers often take the turn or cross the road. But, one has to be careful for
the oncoming vehicles from the other side of the road. I slowed down and lighted
the indicator of my bike to show that I intend to turn right. I stopped my bike
close to the divider with the front turned a little to cross, waiting for a
space from the oncoming vehicles which kept on coming one after the other.
Suddenly, I felt a jerk and instantly I was thrown up from the bike. Up in the
air and out on the road, I fell. In the moment when I was in the air, I looked
back to see what had happened. I found that a huge truck had hit my bike on the
backside. In that moment when I was in the air, many thoughts crossed my mind.
Later, I was surprised at how so many thoughts went through my mind in that
split of a moment, like a sophisticated computer accepting and analyzing
different data all at once. Let me now recollect those thoughts one after the
other.
My first thought was on my
imminent death. The moment I saw the truck behind, I decided that I was going
to die. That was because I remembered what a friend of mine who claimed to know
palmistry told me 17 years ago. Looking at my palm he had said, “Sixty plus”.
“What do you mean?” I had asked.
“It means you would survive to
get your pension, but you won’t remain to receive it for long”, he explained.
I laughed. I was 45 then. 15
years were too long a period for me then. Not only that, I didn’t much believe
in palmistry. But even then, his words remained in a nook of my mind.
About forty years ago, he had
earlier predicted that I would have to lie in jail. I was a little scared, even
though I didn’t believe it. I reminded him of that and said that I was never in
jail so far.
“Did you not get a posting once
to a distant island?” He queried. He had known of that. “An island is like a
jail. Your palm said that you would be under confinement. Your movements are
restricted when you are in an island. That could be the one seen on your palm”,
he reasoned.
I had been to Port Blair Island once
and I had visited the jail there. It was the jail where our freedom fighters
were deported. One portion of the jail complex was still used and there were
inmates. But the other portion, where the freedom fighters were put, remained
like a memorial and was open to the public. It was a cellular jail and each
freedom fighter was put in solitary confinement. I did enter in the cell where
Veer Savarkar, one of the well-known freedom fighters, languished his days.
There was hardly any space left on the floor, when a person lies down. The
walls were tall. A ventilator far above was the only access for air to enter
the cell, when the door is closed. One can simply imagine what a harsh life he
might have undergone there. There were many scribbling on the wall which he
might have made in his solitude. I remembered my friend’s words that I would
have to lie in jail. I thought I would take the opportunity to regularise that
part of my fate. I stretched my back on the floor of the cellular jail where Savarkarjee
had lain once.
I had been daily reading a lot of
accident cases in the newspapers. Where bikers are involved, they often die. I
am hit by a huge truck and I feared that the same fate would befall on me too.
This was also a reason for my first thought that I was going to die.
My next thought was on my mother.
I wondered whether my wife would be able to take care of her and at the same
time manage her job too. I was bewildered also on how my wife and children would
take my sudden absence. And finally, I thought that I should have told my wife
the name of the furniture shop where I had given the cot for repair. I firmly
felt that it was my last moment. It was like I had still things to do, but no
time left for any.
I know that it would be hard for
anyone to believe that all these thoughts crossed my mind in that split of a
moment when I was in the air. But I can only tell what I experienced in that
moment.
Nothing untoward happened. I just
fell down on all the four like a cat, with my head and helmet on it well high
from the ground. Fortunately, the flow of vehicles from the other side had
ceased to give way for me to fall. It was a miraculous escape. Within no time,
people gathered around. By the time I got up, the traffic police with their
vehicle also arrived at the scene. I looked at my bike. It was lying underneath
the front portion of the truck. I had a little bit of bruises and scratches
here and there, but nothing serious. No bone broken. No fractures. I expected
death, but there I was well and alive.
The driver in the truck was still
on his seat. I requested him to take the truck a little back so that I can pull
my bike. He did so and someone lifted the bike up for me. “The bike is totally
damaged”, commented one. “So, what? He is still alive and in one piece. Forget
about the bike”, commented another. The police officer was ready with his
writing materials to take down my statement. He asked me whether I had any
complaint. What complaints I should have when my life is back to me? I replied
to the officer in negative.
The bike body was heavily
damaged, but the engine remained fine. I got on it and rode back to home. There
were bleedings from my fingers, knees and elbows. All were only small bruises.
I got them washed and plastered. Seeing the bleeding, the maid at our home
asked me the reason and I said that I fell from the bike. I didn’t tell her
that a truck had hit my bike, because I didn’t want my wife to know about the
accident at all as she would be upset. But our maid went out to see the bike
and came back.
“In fact, what happened?” she
questioned me again.
“I told you that I had fallen
from the bike”, I replied.
“That is not all. The back side
of your bike is crushed. Probably you had been hit down by a vehicle. Your
bruises on both the knees are on the front side, which shows that you have not
fallen sideways.”, she argued.
I looked at her and thought that
she should have been a member of a crime investigation team instead of sweeping
my courtyard.
I told her all the facts and
requested not to disclose them to my wife. My wife had also been going through
bad times and I didn’t want to burden her further. I rode the bike to the
service station.
Back at home, I was deeply
engrossed on the misfortunes that are falling on our lives one after the other.
While being so, I didn’t notice my wife coming and stealing a snap of me on
that. The questions followed later. I couldn’t resist her probes for long
and I told her everything that happened. She listened in silence.
“This must be the ‘sixty plus’ my
palmist friend had read on my palm”, I consoled her.
When I later went to collect the
cot, the owner of the furniture shop said that he had seen the whole incident
through his glass door. It happened right in front of him. I asked him the
details of how it happened. He said that the truck had slowed down and was
about to proceed through my left, when suddenly its driver noted that an
auto-rickshaw was overtaking it by its left side. By the time he straightened
and applied brakes, the truck had hit me.
“It is simply the strength of
your life-line, or else you wouldn’t have been talking to me now”, he said.
Even now I wonder on whether I am
dead or alive. Who knows on how death is felt? Could it be that I am dead for
others, but remain alive for myself? Who is certain of the difference between
life and death? After all, what one knows of death can only be that when he himself
comes to experience.
May be, my mind is going crazy.
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