A Promising Tomorrow

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage” ― Lao Tzu

I read the article ‘Its Hope that keeps us Going’ by Eziekel Isaac Malekar. It said that ‘Hope’ literally means  expectation and desire combined. Hope though deceitful carries us pleasantly to the end of life as its hope which keeps us alive.

 I read these lines a number of times, each time memories recalled ‘him’. He was there for me and my husband whenever we needed money. He was there to comfort us when we felt we had lost each battle in life advising us to not lose hope. He like everyone else had his mood swings. He was tall and well built. He was agile and could keep anyone busy in a conversation or at work.  He and my father were friends but poles apart in likes and dislikes. He liked reading, but never wrote. He was an ocean of knowledge who would not spare a person till the person heard the whole story. The last time when I met him he definitely seemed older with a beard and a  bent back. He began the conversation, after a while I  rushed to the kitchen only to meet him at the threshold. He had taken the second doorway to reach sooner than me. I sighed then, but today they are pleasant memories. I plainly began being friendly only after I lost my father. 

Whenever we would go to Kerala he would have a list of recipes ready for me. He would love the food I cooked and compliment it. Each day he would ask me if I needed anything from the market. Going to the market, cycling, talking to people, paying the bills, bringing lot of goodies were a few of the things he would carry on regularly. Many a times I would see him getting the house repaired. He was the one who loved the latest electronic gadgets and the lone one there who would look into the cleanliness of the house he had painfully built. He would describe the pain that inspired a homeless to first build a shelter. He believed in saving but always helped people monetarily especially the ones who yearned to study.

  After I lost my father, he would call regularly to speak. Initially, I would end the conversation quickly with the usual greetings but slowly we began speaking about everything in this world. I was learning  to drive for the second time. He would motivate me to learn it soon so that I could help my husband while we were on a long drive, perhaps to Kerala. He would definitely ask me what I  planned to cook. He would ask me guidelines to make it and end saying that I could cook anything well. He was a food-lover and it was a great compliment for me.

Life went on. One day he informed that he was worried about the regular severe backache he had and that he had been advised for a sonography. I could feel the unhappiness in his voice. I told him that it was a procedure followed to know the fact. He bravely went for a sonography which showed a missing vertebra. I wondered when he said that. Was his bone covered by flesh or……… The very next day he was admitted in a hospital and every one of us was informed that there would be a surgery to insert  a rod  in the weak vertebra so that he move on for years. A mandatory biopsy was also to be done. He said ‘Maybe tuberculosis Jyothi’. I now felt he needed to be hopeful, so said ‘may be nothing at all’. He laughed aloud, but  the hollowness in his laughter showed there was something missing in it. My husband, his brothers and my mother -in -law were with him during the operation. At 3.30pm, my husband informed me that his vertebral column had turned into a soft pulp like a banana and a few days later that he was declared to be terminally ill with bone cancer. Each one of us resolved not to disclose this to him. He was weak after the operation, but jubilant that the rod would help him back to cycling and an active life again. He would talk to me each day informing that he was better. I wondered, but hope does heal people. On the fateful day he was rolled into the Oncology Dept, he understood that he had cancer. He overcame that with the thought that worry and fear were of no avail. He repeatedly encountered patients suffering from cancer to overcome the fear of cancer. He was hopeful that he would recover, but he never knew that the vertebra could ever help him stand. He would remain bedridden. My husband took him back home. With a fortnight, he was very unwell. He would talk to me only if I wanted. Every bit showed that he had lost all hopes. I was attending a workshop at FDRC in Delhi, which  made my husband reach Kerala a few days late. He was in a local hospital at Tiruvalla.  He was well-looked after, but his back was sore. My husband was informed that he had stopped eating after he came to know that he would be bedridden. 

All the signs of hope were now missing. He was fed intravenously against his will. My mother in law said that he had read about mercy killing in Jain philosophy and so felt that it was better to fast unto death rather than live a life of dependency. He spoke inaudibly at 2.30pm and left the world tumbling to death at 4.30pm. His philosophy proved to be a deliverance for him, while  his mercy  was a deliverance for others who looked after him. Life has startling twists, but man lives on hope but when hope is lost only our good deeds linger pervading the universe.

A tribute to my late father in law  Shri. R.V. Rao, who left us on the 27^th of September 2010.

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present." 
— Bil Keane