An evening in a clinic

I was patiently waiting for the doctor in a foggy, rainy evening. Patiently - because I had no other option.

It was 7:30 PM, one and half hours later than the scheduled timing of the doctor’s arrival. There were four patients in total – three individuals and one group. I was there to get a dressing done for my injured knee. There was one elderly lady who was coughing frenziedly and an old man who looked sadder than the word ‘Sad’ can ever appear in a human form. And then there was this group.

I call it a group because there were four people – one old man, an old woman, a thin but tall guy with mustaches and another thin but not-so-tall guy without mustaches; and they all looked sick, all malnourished. The old man commanded extra sympathy because he was faint for some reason.

I was already bored after looking at the few things and few people available in that room, and had cursed the doctor for being so carelessly lazy.

At around 7:50 PM, the helper announced for the chief guest’s arrival. (Give a round of applause, people!!)

The old man with the ultra sad look went inside the doctor’s chamber. In the waiting room, the group patients were becoming anxious. The-guy-without-mustaches went out, walked around and returned. They had one common emotion on their faces, except the old man as his faint state didn’t allow him to emote. The emotion is called fear, I suppose. I also supposed that they must fear the hefty fee they are going to be charged for being a group of four people. But hey, they could ask for a group concession!!

When their turn arrived, all of them tried to rush into the doctor’s chamber, but were asked to stay back. Only the guy-with-mustaches was allowed with the old man.

In a minute’s time, the doctor came out and shouted at the group - two inside, two out side.

“Get out from here. Don’t you understand it’s a police case? I don’t want to get into all this. Get out, please.”

The old lady from the group started crying. The guy-without-mustaches pleaded in the best possible way he can.

“Doctor Saab, we did go to the government hospital in the morning. Could not get a doctor there. Waited for the whole day. Most of them left by five evening…when inquired, the staff said ‘they all go to their private clinics.’ They gave us your address. They said you are a good hearted doctor. We don’t know anybody here. Please save him.”

The doctor signaled the helper to move them out.

I was the next to be examined. But before anything could start, I asked, "what was the matter with the old man, doc?”

“Oh! He is from some distant village. The crazy fellow consumed poison!! And he was already dead. We can’t cure a dead body, can we? Forget it. What is it you are here for?”

“Forget it.”

I rushed out; or I’ll say, I tried to rush. I found them at the other end of the street. I did not know what brought me to do this but I patted on the back of the guy-without-mustaches and asked, “Who is he?”

“My father.”

“What happened?”

“He was a farmer.”

He tried very hard, but the guy-without-mustaches could not hide his moist eyes and rushed to join his group.

I stood still. Still, in that frame of moment. It seemed like the mist, all around me, was frozen. I fell short of air. I wished I could run.

On the way home, I saw a huge crowd in and around a big burger joint where they sell burgers for only Twenty rupees. And people pay, happily. But out of those only twenty rupees, how much goes to the farmer who produced the flour for that burger? Who knows? And who cares?

I thought all these because I saw a death, may be. But then do we need hundred deaths to stimulate the same thought in hundred other people?

It was already quarter to nine. I took one last turn to my gully and saw a bunch of kids holding a candle in one hand a placard in another, they were doing some march for the safe arrival of some India-born, American astronaut.

A thought crossed my mind and I told this to myself, “Long live America.”

Holes... that suck out the whole!!

I returned home at Twelve, Midnight, from office; went into kitchen towards the water filter to fetch some water for myself. And god!! It was almost empty. To satisfy my thirst, I had to use tap water, which is not very good. In fact it’s dangerous in the rainy season in a city like Mumbai.

I got to bed, and tried to get some sleep. When I closed my eyes, the day, just passed, appeared again in mind as repeat telecast of some Saas-Bahu serial. And as my sisters always give a second thought to all such serials, I gave it to my day. So here’s my day for you-

“It started off well. Like anybody’s. I went to office happily and my boss gave me an assignment. Work was good enough and could have been finished in a day’s time (or that’s what it seemed to me!!). I jumped onto it as I wanted to finish it off earlier than expected because I had catch up with my friends. But look what happened. I could merely finish off a little more than quarter of the work and it was evening already. My friends called up and barked on me for postponing our meet, yet again. I apologized as always. Went to work again with a heavy mood and could finish a bit more than half of the whole before I could take up the last office bus.”

Back home, no water, no sleep. No Water? Hey I did fill in the whole of the water filter in the morning!! Where did the water evaporated? The day wasn’t that hot!!

I went to kitchen again. When I carefully looked around the filter, I saw a trail of water running very softly from the back of the filter. Water didn’t evaporate, as it could not. It leaked out of a small hole. My water filter had a hole. I felt a bit relaxed, don’t know why. May be, because the mystery of the lost water was solved. I got back to the bed room and was back to my trial of getting a sound sleep. When I closed my eyes, the day reappeared like a black ghost. I opened my eyes, suddenly and closed it back as I wanted to see what this ghost had to tell this time. I visualized my day again and watched a few things that I had overlook at the first revision.

I did my work for most of the day but that was not all. I did too many others things as well. Like when my sisters watch their favorite TV soaps, they don’t watch just that but a lot of commercials in the breaks. And at the end of the day they forget whether they watched commercials in within the soap time or otherwise!! And I could see these commercial breaks in my work now. Uncountable ‘Coffee with Karan (Or who-so-ever-it-is, doesn’t matter)’ breaks. Chit-chat with friends/colleagues. Unnecessary phone called. Online chatting. Or all of them.

And suddenly I was smiling with eyes closed tightly. I found holes in my day’s life, which sucked out my working capacity. Holes, those sucked out the whole. It was such a simple concept and I could never realize!!

And this concept applies to every walk of life.

You had lots of money but don’t know where it’s gone? You had the whole day to finish off a job but could not and felt that the time given was too short? You had a bunch of amazing friends but lost touch with most of them? Your family begs for your time and you feel you just can’t help it?

Look out for holes. May be you are spending your money where you can easily save; say, a BEST bus can save 10 bucks where you take your rickshaw to. May be you are working with too many interventions and have lost focus on the main job. May be you said/did some stupid things to people who care about you and you never bothered to realize what you did.

The idea is, look out for holes and plug them. And you restore the beauty of life as a whole. I restored my water filter by plugging the hole in it, next morning. And it was a beautiful start.

CONSUMED

He never realized when he stopped loving her. In all the mess created by their break up, all the love was gone. What remained was the idea that he loved her.

It all started with a thought that whispered in his ears that she somehow likes him. The girl was already engaged, just three months to be married; but was not in love with the person she was marrying to or that’s what she thought. And the guy was out of a long term relationship. Office colleagues, sitting side-by-side, were talking over the yahoo messenger day in and day out. It all seemed to be a great fun. Talking late nights over the phone... Saying I-Love-U’s counted to infinity… Crying to each other… Fighting with each other…

She said, “I won’t be able to handle it. We are going no where. I want to be yours but that is just impossible. Shit!! What the hell I am getting into. I told that bugger that I don’t love him. But now he is not listening. ‘It’s too late’ is what he says.”

He said, “Don’t worry. Go marry him. When things start souring and whenever you want to be back, do come. I will always be here, waiting for you.”

She said, “I love you.”

He said, “I love you, too.”

They kissed each other and exchanged rings as a symbol of their love. They thought they are married to each other. They just thought.

In the end days of warm winters of Mumbai, she got married. She got married to a guy she thought she never loved.

He was invited. And he did attend to his beloved’s marriage. She whispered into his ears that she still loved him and only him. He replied back.

The next day, she went onto honeymoon tour for a month to Australia. He was here, in Mumbai, waiting patiently and sometimes impatiently, for her return. And when she did, the summer arrived.

She said, “Let’s be friends. It can’t happen, sweetheart. Please try to understand my position. My dad will die of insult if I do something like…like…leaving my husband. Now that’s my life. Even though I don’t like it, I have to accept it. And you too.”

He said, “But I can’t live without you. It’s impossible, dammit. When you love me and I love you, what’s the problem? ”

She said, “That’s the whole problem, sweetheart.”

She was gone. He was left to the wilderness of that thing called, Love.

He kept calling her, messaging her, chatting with her online, in a hope that some day, just some day she will return to him with a desire to stay with him, for the sake of their love. On every interaction, she held a different flavor of her mood. Sometimes she was friendly, sometimes rude; sometimes attentive, sometimes avoiding; sometimes caring, sometimes ignorant.

She said, “Baby, it’s time you should concentrate more on your career. Whatever was to happen between us has happened. And things were probably had to end this way. Please don’t waste your life like this. I like you, baby, but can’t do anything. You know what, when I see my husband, my in-laws and the way they treat me so lovingly, I feel guilty that I am doing wrong to them. I can’t bear it, sweetheart.”

And he smiled.

After three months, one fine day his friend called the Girl. “He consumed poison; tried killing himself. He is in hospital and wants to see you badly…if only you could make it once.”

She felt disgusted; disgusted by the behavior of her ex-lover. “How could he be so weak?” She thought.

He was lying on the hospital bed, half-alive. She was sitting on a stool.

She said, “Why you did this, baby?”

He said, “For you. I love you so much that I just can’t live without you. I love you.”

He died that night.

It was all in the news papers next morning. A retired couple was reading their morning paper over a cup of tea.

The Lady said, “She was a bitch. She killed him. She played around with him…..How innocently the guy loved her!!”

The Gentleman smiled. The lady retreated and told him not to give any of his unusual, so-called practical comment over this issue at least. And his smiled turned into a sweet laughter. He said, “Ok. Let’s do it your way this time, in a pure emotional way. Why do you think the guy loved her?” “What do you mean? Don’t you see he was ready to wait for her forever?”

“And did he wait?”

“But she was changed!! How could he bear that?”

“Did the guy not know that she was about to be married? Don’t know who initiated the thought but if he did, he was stupid and if she did, he could have easily stopped her.”

“Now hold that thought!! Love does not see all these things. It happens whenever and to whom-so-ever it wishes to. And he loved her so badly!!!”

“So you want to say that it happened because of love? Good. So one thing is clear that the girl is not responsible for the death but the love is. May be. But whose love? You said she never loved him and played around with him. So it can’t be her love. And you think he loved her?”

“Now you are trying to be reasonable….but….love….”

“No darling. I am being very-very emotional. Love is one thought that starts from the core of a person. If somebody says I-Love-You, He/She should know very well about this ‘I’. He lost himself in this game of love. His existence seized. May be he loved her but his love died then only when she was sleeping cozily with her husband and not responding to his calls; when she was roaming all around the city with her husband and ignoring him every time he met her. And it died not only against her but the whole world. He was not capable of love. A person who could not love himself cannot love anyone else.”

“What are you talking?”

“Do you want to know what killed him? It was an Idea.”

“An Idea???”

“Yes. An Idea of his long lost loved. He stopped loving her. But the thought remained. He just thought that he loved her. He felt insulted whenever he thought that she is not with him. From being his beloved, she turned to an object of stubbornness. He never let her go. Love is all about playing it easy. One can’t force love. One can’t plead love. And as you said ‘It happens whenever and to whom-so-ever it wishes to.’ It also ends whenever it wishes to. He never died because love never kills. He was consumed to death, by the idea of his love.”

They sipped in their remaining tea in silence.

Prove or Improve???

When I was a kid, my parents and friends used to tell me “Prove Yourself”. I adhered to this mantra for quite a long time. In fact, it has been a graffito in my room for long.

But after all these years, when I look into this phrase and the way it can affect someone’s thought process, I am not very pleased.

When I say “Prove Yourself”… the question is to prove what? And against what? And to whom?

If the answer to the above questions are –

Prove what I have. Against my peers. And to the people around me.

Then the next question is “Does it solve the purpose- The purpose of my very existence?” If life is all about showing what I already have, against the people who are more or less same to me, to the people who does not mean much to me… I think its no life then. If I waste my whole life in proving what I have, when will I find the time to add into what I already have? That thing, called “Value Addition”, will never happen to me.

There are people in this world who spend their whole life in proving what they can do and in this they loose the opportunity to explore areas.

Hey! If we alter this phrase just a bit, we see a huge-huge difference!!! “When I say to myself “Improve Yourself”, it’s totally a different take on life then. Here, the concept is competing with yourself, for achieving your own benchmarks and, hey, you don’t have to prove things to others but yourself. B’coz when you say “Improved” you already said “I-M-Proved”!!!!!! Isn’t it amazing?

Exploring new universes, reaching out for new stars, and without waiting for the world to acknowledge (b’coz the world takes a lot of time to do that, and you simply can’t wait!!), attaining new heights; that’s how you make a wonderful life, I suppose.