There are experiences we meet. Some of them we choose to get introduced to, some of them we befriend and some of them, for some unfathomable reasons, we choose to loose down memory lanes. Some leave a mark, some scars and some just pass us by with out even the slightest sign of recognition. Some of them we ignore, some of them we learn from and some which simply humble us - One of those I choose to write about this sleepless night.
Sleep eludes me tonight because of the horrors I witnessed by broad daylight.
I traveled to the Bhopal, to meet an acquaintance suffering from an almost interminable cancer. I had seen him some three months ago, while he was on his way back from Bhopal after yet another painful session of radiation and chemotherapy – just one of the many that he has been enduring for over a year now. He had seemed physically fine, though a little scathed mentally.
Today he is a shadow of his former self, nothing more than a shriveled, shrunk and skeletal form of what he used to be. It is almost impossible to hold back the expression of horror from escaping your face, when you see him. It is equally difficult to keep your mind from conjuring up imageries of what must have befallen his family that he used to, stoically, support.
However, in spite of his skeletal frame, feeble voice, partial memory, eyes barely in their sockets and distorted face he continues to live. Out of sympathy, you almost wish him to be relieved of his pain. You realize how defenseless we are against such unforeseen forces and whatever we may have achieved as a species seems so hollow.
But then when you see this man live and not give up, you wonder that there must be a reason. He must have wanted an easy termination to his pain through death, much before you thought of it for him. But he chose to live on, brave every ache that ever arose in his body and defy those unforeseen forces. He, with his feeble frame, chose to pick up the sword of his will and fight against forces you knelt before. That is when it dawns on you that man rose from being a primate not because of his superior intellect, rather superior will. I am sure the same will shall carry my friend through these troubled times.
Sleep eludes me tonight because of the horrors I witnessed by broad daylight.
I traveled to the Bhopal, to meet an acquaintance suffering from an almost interminable cancer. I had seen him some three months ago, while he was on his way back from Bhopal after yet another painful session of radiation and chemotherapy – just one of the many that he has been enduring for over a year now. He had seemed physically fine, though a little scathed mentally.
Today he is a shadow of his former self, nothing more than a shriveled, shrunk and skeletal form of what he used to be. It is almost impossible to hold back the expression of horror from escaping your face, when you see him. It is equally difficult to keep your mind from conjuring up imageries of what must have befallen his family that he used to, stoically, support.
However, in spite of his skeletal frame, feeble voice, partial memory, eyes barely in their sockets and distorted face he continues to live. Out of sympathy, you almost wish him to be relieved of his pain. You realize how defenseless we are against such unforeseen forces and whatever we may have achieved as a species seems so hollow.
But then when you see this man live and not give up, you wonder that there must be a reason. He must have wanted an easy termination to his pain through death, much before you thought of it for him. But he chose to live on, brave every ache that ever arose in his body and defy those unforeseen forces. He, with his feeble frame, chose to pick up the sword of his will and fight against forces you knelt before. That is when it dawns on you that man rose from being a primate not because of his superior intellect, rather superior will. I am sure the same will shall carry my friend through these troubled times.
posted by Anish Basu Roy at 2:31 PM
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