The Realization

      I would like to narrate an incident that played a role in making me a slightly more humble and mindful person.

      I was an assistant professor in the department of Paediatrics at a medical college in the south of India. I was all puffed up with the arrogance of a swank new degree and all the knowledge I had acquired over the preceding years. To top it all, I was in charge of the Intensive Care Unit where critically ill children are admitted. The minute a few sick children are saved one tends to think of oneself as God almighty.

      One day I was on duty and a little girl, about five years of age, was brought in literally gasping for breath. She had been bitten by a scorpion and the venom had caused damage to her heart muscle as a result of which her lungs were flooded with fluid and she was struggling to breathe. We wheeled the girl into the ICU and started treatment immediately. She had to be put on a ventilator and drugs were started to keep her blood pressure up. She was very critically ill.

      After stabilizing her somewhat, I went out to talk to her parents. I saw a frail young man in the ante room of the ICU. It was evident that not only was he impoverished, he was also not literate. I tried to explain in the simplest way possible about his daughter’s condition. He stood there with his hands folded and listened. I was sure that he had not understood much for at the end of my talk he asked me but one question. When will my daughter come out of the ICU? I held on to my temper and told him that it was hard to say. She could be in the ICU for a few days, I said and walked away.

      Over the next few days I found only the father in the waiting room. I never saw the mother. Everyday I would explain the condition of the child to him and he would ask the same question – “When will my daughter come out of the ICU? Please tell me.”

      The child gradually improved and we could take her off the ventilator. I decided to keep her in the ICU for a few more days as she was only just recovering her cardiac function though she was off all supports. This time when I met the father he asked me with some agitation “When will you shift my daughter from the ICU?” I mentally thought that this man did not care for his daughter as girl children are not generally regarded highly in some regions of the south. For that matter, in other regions of India too. It has always been a matter of great angst for me that a land where Devi ma is revered highly, girl children are not valued. I was hugely judgmental, of course.

      I told him rather imperiously that I will let him know when and stalked off.

      I must confess that precisely because of this judgement, I kept the child for a few extra days in the ICU. I could have shifted her to the general ward but I was feeling very annoyed with the father.

      After about ten days of ICU care, the father asked me rather desperately to shift his child out of the ICU. Something snapped in me and I asked him why he was in such a tearing hurry to have this happen.

      I remember the reply he gave me. It still gives me heartache.

      He said, “Madam, you see after today I have nothing left to pay. I had to sell my wife’s jewels, then my home and finally I sold my cows to pay the bills. I am very grateful that you saved my child but now I have nothing left to sell. I have two sons and my daughter was born after many prayers. You have come into our lives like God and we owe our eternal gratitude to you for saving her.”

      I choked back tears as I thought of the penury I had reduced the family to. The anonymous faces of his young family haunted me. I had, in my ego, snatched away the food from their very mouths.

      Since that day I see that young man in all the parents of the children that I get to treat. You know what the wise say, “It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see.”

P. S: The story is true though some details may be distorted due to the passage of time 🙏.

Image credit: Imikeya

My pranams at the lotus feet of Gurudev 🙏.