A post about Valentine’s Day, a week after the D-Day or
V-Day, is late by any standards. But I had legit reasons for not been able to
post anything on the same day. While people were busy declaring their love for
their partners or wishing that they had someone in their lives to share the
special occasion with or reminiscing about their lost love, I found myself
literally dragging my feet into the place that I most detest in this world –
Hospital. With three instances of accidents in my childhood where each instance
had me or rather my parents rushing me to the hospital, to get my injuries
tended to, where each one required getting stitches, with one requiring multiple
surgeries also, the hospital was one place that I dreaded, as it
reminded me of those instances. In my childhood, I was anything but naughty,
but I was the one who was always falling down and getting injured, when my
naughty friends were up to all sorts of mischief, but were never hurt. Luckily,
the saga of falling down and getting injured, ended after school. It was smooth
sailing once college started, I had no major falls or illnesses that required
me to visit a hospital.
And after so many years, I found myself in a hospital, that
too on a Valentine’s Day. It had been more than five days that I had been
suffering from fever, cold and cough, but I was confident that I will overcome
my sickness without any medication. The body has self-healing powers, I had
read somewhere, I had taken it a little too seriously, I guess. The initial few
days of the ordeal were bearable, hence I was busy with my work as usual, but as
my health started deteriorating, I realized that I was not able to work, leave work,
I was not even able to get out of my bed to fetch a glass of water. The
interesting part is that it is the former that made me more miserable than the
latter. Anything that came in the way of work had to be dealt with,
immediately. I searched my bag for the emergency medicines that I keep in
handy, found the one for fever and downed a pill. The first one made me feel
better, but after a while, I was back to square one. The morning of Valentine’s
Day, my situation was so bad, I thought that I was going to die and since I had
so much unfinished work, I thought I would probably have to come back as a
ghost to finish all of that! Before my mind could conjure up more such images, I decided
that it was time to pay a visit to that place that I dread, before I actually
dropped dead. When workaholics fall sick, the thought of not been able to work
makes them more sick than the illness itself, I guess!
So, I headed to the nearby hospital for what I would like to
describe as a Valentine’s date with doctors and nurses, and injections and
medicines, and devices that looked straight out of those digital electronics
labs back in engineering college (now that is one scary date, all those who
used to dread digital electronics would vouch for that!) on which some graphs
were displayed and which were letting out some beep sounds at regular intervals.
As much as I hated visiting a hospital and as much as the very thought of being
in a hospital scared the daylights out of me, I must say that I did feel thousand times better once I
was inside the hospital, there was this unique sense of calm in my mind, it was as if my
mind was telling me that now things will only get better, so just relax. And
things did get better. Multiple injections and a whole bottle of some
mysterious fluid (which the nurse told me had to be injected into my body as I
grew impatient when it was showing no signs of getting over even after an hour)
I felt like a brand new person. My test reports had come, there was nothing to
fear, no life-threatening illnesses, just fever and a pair of infected lungs,
which could be treated with a handful of antibiotics. As I got my medicines and my
reports and was leaving the hospital, I realized how fortunate I was. In the
few hours that I spent at the hospital, though I was part conscious and part
unconscious during the whole time, I saw many things around me that changed me
for the better.
In the bed opposite mine was a young girl, I didn’t know
what her illness was, but by merely observing her and her family for a few
minutes, I could see that she was in pain and seeing her in pain was unbearable
for her family, leave alone her family, it was unbearable even for a complete
stranger like me. When a grown-up like me itself dreads the very thought
of hospitals, doctors and injections, I cannot even imagine how afraid that
little girl must have been, how scary the sights and sounds in the hospital would
have been to her. On the way to the labs to get my tests done, I saw many other
sections of the hospital, the dialysis room, the oncology department, the orthopaedics department. I saw
patients being moved around in wheelchairs and stretchers, their families
tagging along. There was desperation on some faces, whereas relief on some
others. I overheard someone talk over the phone, his voice ecstatic, he was
saying that the reports of the CT scan of his father had come and there was
nothing to fear. That look on his face, that happiness in his voice, pure bliss!
When I got back from the hospital, I thought about the time that I spent there,
I thought to myself, well, it was probably not a bad way to celebrate Valentine’s
Day after all. Because all I could recollect from the day were images of love,
love for one’s family in the eyes of the family members of patients, love for
one’s life in the eyes of the patients, love for one’s job in the eyes of the
doctors and nurses, who were in my mind blood sucking vampires (blame it on the
white uniforms and syringes) up until this last hospital visit, but who have
now been elevated to the status of God send angels in my mind after the recent
visit. I am not sure how many times I would have thanked those doctors and
nurses who had attended to me, the next morning after I woke up, as I had the
most peaceful sleep in ages that night, as all the nights before that I could
hardly sleep a wink because of my illness.
The Valentine’s date with the hospital also served as a
beginning of a new love affair in my life, one which I wish lasts a life time –
a love affair with health. Whoever said “Health is Wealth”, was absolutely
right. In fact, I believe it is the only wealth in the world that is actually worth striving for.
Among all the priorities in my life, health never found a place in my list, not
even at the bottom. I guess it is because I had taken my health for granted. It
also had to do with my genes. I have seen my mother take care of everyone in
the family in the best way possible, but when it came to taking care of her own
health, she always turned a blind eye to it and deaf ears to the advice of her family.
Whereas my father, who despite being a workaholic, always took great care of
his health. Thanks to my genes, I became a workaholic who ignores her health. It
is really strange, but many people would go to any lengths to ensure that their dear ones
are healthy, but they would not devote even a small percentage of their time,
efforts or money to take care of themselves. We are ever ready to take care of the people
who are dear to us, but we often forget that only if we are healthy, we can actually
be of some help to the people around us. I love my work and I would do anything
to ensure that my work is not affected, be it spending sleepless nights, travelling
like crazy, skipping meals, I would do it all. But when it comes to doing
something for my health, like spending some time for exercise or eating healthy
food and that too on time, taking breaks, I give myself millions of excuses for
not doing any of that. It is only when I reached a stage where I was unable to
work that I even thought of getting medical attention, else I would have let my
illness go untreated. In my mad frenzy to keep working, I actually did more
harm to my work, as my illness prevented me from working for so many days. I
had been stupid for a long time, but it’s never too late to realize one's mistake
and correct it. So, this Valentine’s day, I decided to start a love affair with
health. I had always taken my health for granted, but in my last visit to the hospital,
I realized that I was so fortunate as compared to the many in this world who
are dealing with life-threatening illnesses. I realized that I should not take
good health for granted, I had to ensure that I did my part in improving it and maintaining it.
I also realized that unless I put ‘Health’ high up on my list of priorities,
I couldn’t take care of the rest of my priorities like family and work. This
Valentine’s Day marked the beginning of my lifelong affair with good health. To
all those who are like me, who ignore their health, I would say it’s high time
you also start this affair, after all, it’s an affair that is totally worth
investing your time and efforts in, and trust me, you won’t regret it!
One usually associates Valentine’s Day with red colour, however this year's Valentine's day was a black-letter day, not just
for Indians, but for entire humanity. When I read about the terrorist attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir that took the lives of 41 CRPF Jawans, I
was shocked as well as saddened. Honestly, my first reaction to the news was
hate. I thought that whoever was responsible for that heinous act had to be
killed, each and every one of them deserved to die. I did not know any of the
martyred Jawans, I was just an Indian citizen and I felt so much angst and
hatred, I couldn’t even imagine what the families of the deceased would have
been feeling. But that’s when I realized that this is a vicious cycle, someone
commits a violent crime out of hate and it in turn give rise to more
hatred and anger; hate breeds more hate. A few days later, there were multiple
killings in my state Kerala, in the name of political rivalry. I could not
understand how there can be so much hate in someone that they go about taking
the lives of innocent people. It was something that I just could not
comprehend. But I realized one thing after these recent incidents – hate is
something that has to be done away with in our lives, if we want to make our
lives better. I thought about all the people I hate in my life – people who
were rude to me, people who have caused me or my family some hurt at some point
or the other in life. But when I looked back at the events that led to that
hatred, I understood that the initial reason for my hatred had been very
trivial, it’s just that I had kept that hate in my mind for so long, it
actually became much bigger than it actually was. I realized that holding on to
hate only made me bitter. I decided
to let go of the hate, not for the people I hated, but for myself. It was a
liberating feeling.
There is already so much of hatred in this world, the world
could use more love. We could use more instances than Valentine’s day to
celebrate love. To all those who keep hatred and envy in their hearts, all I
want to say is that, it makes perfect sense to let go of hate and envy, you will
feel much better when you do that. This Valentine’s day, I decided that I will
start a new love affair with love itself. It is high time we let go of hate and learn to love again, just like we did when we were children, irrespective of differences, prejudices, just pure unadulterated love. My love affair with love has begun, maybe you could start one too, maybe this world
could use more of such affairs! So here is to the beginning of new love affairs
in life, love for one’s health, love for oneself, love for everyone in this
world, love for love itself! May these love affairs last a lifetime and may they
help us become better human beings and make this world a better place! Signing off with a favourite quote of mine, from the Bard himself – “Love
all, trust a few, do wrong to none”.
