In my prayers!

    Grey clouds had gathered in the sky, water droplets were dripping from the leaves; couples were enjoying a romantic moment as gentle breeze passed by them, children were playing and dancing in joy, nature would have painted one of the most beautiful moments that I was witnessing in the monsoon, only if this was a visual that I was not experiencing from the window of a hospital room. Like most people, I hate going to hospitals. The very sight of white curtains, pale patients, sad relatives, the odor of medicines and medical weapons (as I call them!) make me sick in my stomach. As much as I hate visiting hospitals, I was left with no choice but to be by my brother’s side while he was undergoing a surgery recently.

    While my brother was fast asleep, I had immersed myself in a book to avoid looking at people around and feeling their pain when suddenly I heard some commotion from the bed opposite to my brother. At first I tried to keep my curious mind out of the matter but as the doctors and nurses started running helter-skelter, my brother woke up and asked me what the matter was. I told him that probably the patient on the bed opposite to us had some emergency and the hospital staff was attending to him. I saw a bit of sadness on my brother’s face as he began to tell me the bare minimum he knew about the patient. The patient was a well educated guy in his early thirties who was working in his office as usual when he suddenly fell off the chair about 35 days ago and lost his consciousness. He was immediately taken to the hospital where his family was called and to the utter dismay of his family the guy had a brain hemorrhage and had slipped into coma.

    As my brother was narrating the incident to me, I was visualizing the series of events that would have unfolded that day. The guy may have got up in the morning with thoughts of what work he will be doing in office, the meetings he has to attend, he may have planned an outing with his friends post work, he may have discussed the world news with his father, his mom may have cooked his favorite dish for lunch, he may be waiting for his girlfriend to call him (if he had any) and then suddenly out of nowhere everything came to a standstill.

    While I was still lost in my thoughts, the mother of this patient opened the curtains of his room and I could see this guy lying motionless on his bed with tubes pierced all over his hand and nose. I couldn’t bear the sight of it but just than what I saw filled my head with innumerable thoughts. The mother of this guy was wiping the sweat of his head and was talking to him in Kannada; I don’t understand the language so I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say. The only word that I understood was putta which means beta or dear. From her expressions and body language I felt she was asking him to get up, to speak, to react, to say something-anything, she was probably telling him some stories, asking him if he could recognize her, telling him to be strong and making him laugh as she laughed. The poor lady was trying her best to get a reaction from her son something that she may not have seen since that ill fated day. While the mother was putting all the efforts for her child, the child remained motionless, he didn't even blink his eyes, there was absolutely no acknowledgement, as much as I wished her efforts would bear fruits, at that instant it look as if everything was in vain.

    After having the one-sided conversation with her son, the lady started moving towards her chair when our eyes met. We exchanged smiles and she went to sit on her chair. I saw the lady’s face clearly in that brief moment and the positivity this female radiated shook me. There in front of her lied her young son, who slipped into coma all of a sudden and had since not spoken to his mother, the lady was not sure if her child will ever get back to normal life and yet she remained so calm and composed. I was hardly able to keep myself from crying but the courage that I saw in this lady bought zillions of thoughts in my head, all at once. I couldn’t make out whether the calmness was because she had complete faith that her son will be okay or was the calmness coming from the acceptance of the situation, or was it because she was trying to give herself and her son a hope, or whether the calmness was because she had given in and had no energy to fight or react. Till date I can’t make out what was going on in her head and heart when I saw her but this lady has surely left an impact on my mind.

    This lady to me is exactly what mothers are made up of, no matter what trauma they experience, what emotions they feel, what thoughts they have, they are true pillars of strength for their children. I didn’t see this lady showing any signs of sadness; rather she was showering her love and giving her son the strength that he needed.  For a mother to see her child in a state like this would have shattered her completely and broken her heart into pieces, yet she was carrying a smile on her face, she was maintaining her composure in pain and bearing positive energy in her heart.  I don’t know if the son’s brain could perceive anything but I am sure his heart could feel the love and courage with which his mom was nurturing him and so I am sure that the son will someday get up from the bed and the mother-son duo will celebrate their victory over the ugly game that life had played.

    Ever since that incident I am religiously praying for the son to win over his misery and praying for his mother to get the happiness that she deserves. I will never know if the son ever gets well but in my heart of hearts I know that my prayers will be answered and a mother’s love will succeed. Lots of love, luck and respect to this iron lady and her equally courageous son. Get well soon champ, all my prayers are with you.