It is a very painful experience for me to make an attempt at writing all that I have gone through and I am sure that it would be equally painful to all my dear ones who would be disturbed by the harsh reality that shook our peaceful life. Perhaps I need the catharsis to cleanse my inner self of all those feelings that made me to see life and death from a very close angle and changed my perspective towards life! But the best part is that the good wishes of many, known and unknown people, and the blessing of the God above made us come out of this episode—stronger and more in love!
It was a late evening one fine day when I found my husband pouring over some papers scattered before him. I found these were my income statement for the year. My husband was going critically over my income tax statement and calculating my gross salary, deductions and tax liability, I was really surprised or may I say was pleasantly shocked. Now you would say that what is so surprising about a man going over the tax returns of his wife or could it be by any standard called an intricate job when almost all the working people go over this exercise in a routine manner. But if only you knew that just a month or two back he was lying in the Emergency ward of the PGI Chandigarh struggling for his very life with a severe head injury!
How can I even try to explain my helplessness when the Doctor on his routine visit, while showing his one finger to him, would ask : “how many fingers can you see?” And in a feeble voice he would say, “One”! Encouraged by his answer the Doctor would further ask showing two fingers of one hand and three fingers of another hand, “How many fingers can you count?” And next he would ask, “Five plus five is?” and “Ten divided by two is?” I would be anxiously watching expression on his face and would feel like putting words in his mouth and would be prompting him to answer these basic mathematical questions. No, I am not talking about a small child but am talking about my husband who is fifty six years of age, a veterinarian by training and is at a fairly senior administrative position in Government job! But being at a right place at a wrong time led him to the Emergency ward of the PGI Chandigarh that changed y perspective towards life and its ways.
Now, when I look at people around me dramatizing their insignificant problems into “life and death” situations and make them seem like catastrophes, I think hard. They don’t know what it is like to be on the verge of death and survive! I value life for its beauty more than I did some time back for I have seen death staring hard at our complacent and simple life.
