TRYING TIMES

TRYING TIMES

(In continuation to ‘Fading Memory’)

I am writing this on 21^st 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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