LOVE TO LIVE.

LOVE TO LIVE.

The first time I travelled up north was soon after my marriage. It was the peak of summer and the heat in the plains hit me with chicken pox. I had only started to experiment with cooking when I fell ill. With my limited knowledge I gave directions for my husband to cook. Armed with a pressure cooker and two recipe books I bought from Trivandrum, whatever he made was definitely edible.

The antibiotics which the medical officer had given suppressed the eruptions but I developed a very severe throat pain which led me to believe that what I was having was not chicken pox at all but cancer of the throat. The pain made me so blind that one full day I believed that I was going to die. It was the first time I was faced with death and it terrified me. More than my dying what horrified me was the fact that all others I loved would continue to live while I die alone. It was only when the doctor confirmed that it was the pain caused by the eruptions inside my throat, I put my fatal thoughts to rest. I had learnt a big lesson that day; it is not easy to face death. Still, I led myself to suppose that my fear was logical because I was too young to die. I thought it was acceptable to die in old age when life’s aspirations were either fulfilled or abandoned.

Some years later I visited a renowned scholar who was ripe into his old age and was gravely ill. He had a successful career and a good family. I felt he was satisfactorily eligible to enter the kingdom of the dead. He lay in his bed with a crumbling body but  still held a penetrating gaze. My four year old son was with me.The old man  looked at my son and raised his hand. I understood that he was asking to touch my son. Since no wish of a departing soul should go unrewarded, I pushed my son towards him. He held my son’s hand tightly, longer than required. His solid face held a frightening stare which sent a shiver down my neck. It looked as if the old man was trying to slither his soul into my child's body. My son was trying to pull his hand away. Regretting that I had brought him there I pulled him away from the old man. I could make out that my son was scared as he fell very quiet. The old scholar succumbed to his age within a few weeks. I had concluded that day that he was a selfish man who didn’t want to die even after living his life to the full. But, today I wonder, he too must have experienced the same feeling which I had when I thought I would die. He was old and life was slipping through his fingers when youth and childhood thrived in front of his eyes.

When my father fell ill at the age of seventy and was diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer which was incurable, I remained in shock for weeks together. Eight months later, I travelled with my sons to his death bed. My son, who was then eleven, had gone very pale seeing his grandfather’s grave condition. My father understanding this told me not to bring him again to the hospital as he was finding it difficult to look into the child’s petrified face. When his doctor came, she called me out and told me that his condition was very bad and he can go anytime. When I re-entered the room he was waiting with his hopeful eyes and asked me whether the doctor said he would survive. I was shattered to see his hope. Gathering up whatever sagacity left in me, I slowly sketched his life in front of him.  I reminded him of his successful career, wife, children and grandchildren. Stifling the pain in my chest, I told him it was okay to let go. I do not know whether this put his thoughts to rest but he was peaceful after this. In the evening I saw him insisting his male nurse to go to the canteen and have tea. I left in the evening from the hospital only to come back in the night to take home his lifeless body.

Intriguing it may seem but the hassling ugly death is hard for any sane person to embrace. It was not selfishness but the love of life that stood in the way of consenting to the inevitable.  Solving life’s puzzles seem to be more captivating. I love to live.