Skip to main content

Miracles



I developed a nagging backache which forced me to visit a doc.  The doc didn’t even bother to ask me any detail.  As soon as I said backache, he wrote the prescription.  I bought all those medicines simply because in this village where I live the hospital trusts you till the end.  Which means you can’t leave without paying the bill though they won’t ask for any payment until you leave.

The medicines remain untouched but the pain vanished. Miracle
I came home and checked the names of the medicines online.  Antibiotics and antacids and painkillers.  (And a bill of ₹449).  Any medical shop would have given me better ideas.  I didn’t take any of those medicines in spite of Maggie’s scolding.  I challenged the pain with carrying water for my garden.  I challenged the pain without singing alleluia to them.  No Praise the Lord.  No ear-splitting hymns.  Just a challenge to myself. 

Three days. The pain disappeared.  The medicines still remain on my side table in the dining room.  Just to remind me not to go to a hospital the next time if possible.

I wish the doc had at least asked me a question.  I wish the doc had touched my back just for the sake of it.  I wish the hospital didn’t belong to the religion to which my name belongs.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Are human systems repressive?

Salma I had never heard of Salma until she was sent to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of the Parliament by Tamil Nadu a couple of weeks back and a Malayalam weekly featured her on the cover with an interview. Salma’s story made me think on the nature of certain human systems and organisations including religion. Salma was born Rajathi Samsudeen. Marriage made her Rukiya, because her husband’s family didn’t think of Rajathi as a Muslim name. Salma is the pseudonym she chose as a writer. Salma’s life was always controlled by one system or another. Her religion and its ruthlessly patriarchal conventions determined the crests and troughs of her life’s waves. Her schooling ended the day she chose to watch a movie with a friend, another girl whose education was stopped too. They were in class 9. When Rajathi protested that her cousin, a boy, was also watching the same movie at the same time in the same cinema hall, her mother’s answer was, “He’s a boy; boys can do anything.” Rajathi was...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Roles we Play

When I saw the above picture of Narendra Modi in the latest issue of India Today , what rushed to my mind instantly was a Malayalam film song Veshangal Janmangal … Life is a series of roles dressed up for the occasion. There are different costumes for celebrations and mourning, and there are people who can shed one and move into the other instantly. Are your smiles genuine? Do your tears mean sadness? Or, are they all costumes that suit the occasion? Are you just an actor who plays certain roles? Is the entire cosmos just a gigantic theatre for you? Where can we find the real you beneath all the costumes you keep changing day in and day out? Have you relinquished dharma in favour of cravings? Truth over expediency?