That's Calvin's thought and my sentiments too on the subject!! :)
Jokes apart...every possible human being under the sun thinks Life/God has been unfair with him/her. I’ve heard it from the young to the old but it hurts most when u hear it from elderly people when they share their life’s experiences with you with a tear in their eyes.
One such incident happened recently when I was talking to an elderly couple and they happened to share their share of difficulties of life with me. Uncle usually walks around with a limp and I happened to ask aunty what happened to uncle’s leg and so she began..
They lived in Pune for quite some time when they were young. Once when they visited Bangalore and were on their way back to Pune by bus.. the tier of the bus got punctured and the bus toppled down into a river. The river was dry but the bus went rolling and most of the people in the bus had multiple serious injuries and fractures.
Aunty had broken her spinal chord and her shoulder bone had shifted to her neck which was operated but she showed me the dislocated bone even now in the neck. Uncle was more seriously injured where his leg had multiple fractures, the thigh bone was broken into pieces, pelvic bones were completely broken down.
The bus behind them saw their bus topple over and immediately came to their rescue and the passengers were admitted to the hospital. The doctors there gave up on uncle after multiple surgeries when uncle’s brothers came to his rescue. He is suppose to be a very influential man and he got them flown down to Bangalore and got him admitted to the best hospital and was treated by the best doctors. Aunty kind of recovered with all the treatment but uncle went into a state of coma. He was in Coma for 17 days!!!
When ALL the doctors finally gave up, there was a swamiji from some ashram whom they believed in, who came down to see him. He placed his hand on uncle’s forehead and uncle woke up and asked for water I believe. When uncle opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the swamiji’s face and till date he believes with a tear in his eye that it was that swamiji who gave him a second life.
BTW uncle is a very highly qualified man with a MBA from IIM-Ahemadabad and some Phd holder and a big time man is some organisation and highly read in terms of Indian culture, Vedic science, Bhagavad-Gita and more. Now I don’t know how to take this ‘cause I don’t believe much in gurujis/swamijis nd stuff myself but he believes it to be a miracle the swamiji performed on his life. So it is difficult for me to discount what he says and he so strongly believes.
Here on he was on bed rest for close to 2yrs and all these 2 yrs it was his brothers who took care of them completely financially, morally, psychologically .. in everyway possible. Today uncle and aunty have survived this huge tragedy of their life.
To add to their struggle, uncle and aunty donot have children nd due to all the trials of life.. they could not buy a house of their own even by their 60s. Aunty was choked in voice as she spoke nd said.. “I had heard life changes after marriage but for us it has been tragedies over tragedies. When we get old and cant take care of ourselves, we believe that god will make some way to take care of us”
As the thought passes our mind saying.. “God!! That was some life they lived”.. let me tell u all one more incident which happened few days back which really taught me an important lesson in my life!!
I was kind of feeling low one Saturday afternoon for no good reason and not wanting to brood over anything just went to sleep. Then by around 6.30PM I was woken up by dad saying see who’s come to meet you. I woke up to see Pushpa sitting there next to my bed in a chair silently waiting for me to wake up.
Then dad told me that Pushpa came home an hour back to talk to me and since I was sleeping spoke to dad and mom for half an hour. When our neighbour uncle came home, dad got talking with the uncle and she walked in to my room and waited for close to another half and hour without waking me up!!
What’s all this about u wonder I guess.. so here’s an intro... Pushpa.. she’s my friend. A very sweet girl whom god sent to the world ensuring she remains a child forever. Her mind grows slower than her age. She is a spastic child.
Nobody talks to her rather I should say nobody has time to spend with her. Everyone laughs at her back and pass sarcastic comments and sadly she understands it sometimes. Guess I’m among the extremely few who treat her like any other person and speak to her properly. She loves me a lot and considers me a close friend of hers. So she drops in home once in a while when she feels like talking to someone.
So then once I got up.. she came and gave me a hug and then we spoke for sometime. Then she whiled away time in my room looking through my wardrobe, my cosmetics, my bag and identifying the objects there. I just sat there watching.
Then she came down and sat next to me silently. To my surprise, she moved my hand off my lap and laid her head there and lied down there for sometime. I was totally take aback. She has never done this before. I didn’t know what was troubling her or if she was feeling lonely which she was not able to express or if something had hurt her or what exactly was running in her mind. I almost had a tear in my eye looking at her cause probably she was not even able to express how she felt nor was she capable of changing her life or situation for herself.
At that point in time.. all I could think of is … I wanted to do something to keep her happy and so I started off generally talking to her and checked if she would be interested in going out with me on a drive… and all of a sudden.. she was super excited!! I asked her if she liked chats and she burst out laughing with excitement. So finally we made a plan to go out one weekend.. just me and her without her parents… on a drive and then have some chats and come back.
I guess just the idea made her very happy that day and she went home smiling promising to come back the next week for the drive but I guess she forgot and she did’nt come.
After she left .. I sat there thinking… here we are with godz grace having quite close to a perfect life with the strength to think, with the potential to work and make our lives the way we want nd still we complain and cry about life being unfair. Should’nt we be considering ourselves so lucky and blessed for the life we are given.. do anyone of us have the right to call our lives unfair?? Do we have any right to crib or complain about the small challenges God/Life puts us through?
These are small ways of God to teach us the most important lessons of life!! :)
India is such a diverse country with such huge variety of culture, people, society, landscapes and more. Every time I travel around India to a new place.. I always return with a new experience, new kind of refreshment and completely re-energized.
