Yet Untitled 007 - Infirmity be Damned
Smiling people on hospital beds
My mum inspired me with how she handled her simultaneous knee replacement surgeries on both knees. She was determined to get through it, she prayed hard and did everything she needed to get through a week in hospital. Despite being loaded on painkillers and having two legs that looked like victim prosthetics in the Alien films, she managed to give me that smile when I pointed the camera at her.
This edition is the equivalent of a toast to all those I have witnessed bear their hardship with a smiling spirit, and you know what - I’ve been fortunate to have seen many. In fact, I started practicing Buddhism because I saw someone bear their burden with such grace and fortitude that I immediately wanted to emulate the source of their strength, their’s being the Buddha’s teachings
If there’s one thing I can share with confidence about my own life - it’s that every time I’ve been brave, I’ve been the happier for it. This comes not from philosophy, but from empirical observation. Thus, I’m both fascinated by and drawn to those who are brave and feel fortunate that life dropped me into the orbit of so many really courageous people. There’s so much to learn from them.
Father in law👆🏼 - smiling away on his hospital bed. Code red, Defcon 5, tornado warnings, disaster by earthquake couldn’t get this man down. Neither could the galloping cancer that took him from us in 2015. Days after a major surgery, he leaned back and got a home pedicure while the disease still raged and compounded in his body, with a smile that made him look like the cat who got all the cream.
While this picture👇🏼 is from better times, this is how he essentially remained till the end. The grin stayed the same. The grin is an essential counter-narrative to all the madness happening around me. I’d lose my grip without grins like this. Even their memory is enough.
Teen Jijosa and his boon
About twelve years ago, I went with Vani to meet Teenu Jijosa - my mum’s nephew-in-law who was suffering from a paralysing disease affecting his motor functions. Though he could barely speak, he could smile - and smile he did, even after the nurse attending him had suctioned his lungs to help him breathe better.
Vani and I had just got engaged and my mother essentially sent us to Teenu Jijosa to get his blessings while he was still there. He spoke slowly. After he finished 2-3 painstaking sentences, I was totally struck out of the park, because he’ cracked a joke. His twin daughters - Anubha and Amrisha - attending to him patiently, gave me knowing smiles. This was their dad.
Before we left, he called me close and whispered in my ear: “I can give you the recipe for twins,” he said, and broke into a laboured but mischievous laugh.
He died a few months after we met him.
Four years later, Vani and I became parents, to Ananya and Aahana, born one minute apart.
“Saint Ralph” (2004), dir. Michael McGowan
In this movie, a fourteen year old kid whose mum is in a coma is told:
“It’ll be a miracle if your mum wakes up.”
The same kids is also told:
“Your winning the Boston marathon will be nothing short of a miracle.”
What does the kid do? He decides to do whatever it takes to win the Boston marathon in order to wake his mum up!
It’s the crazy, mind-bending simplicity with which this young protagonist grasped the idea of faith that caught my attention - to be able to truly believe in something that made no logical sense. In my experience, what’s fascinating is what all happens when human beings start acting on the basis of such a commitment with something that essentially lies behind a closed door, all on the conviction that it will lead to something of value. It’s revealing. It’s inspiring. It’s the actual miracle, if you ask me.
For Ralph: he understands that in order to win, he must believe. He reflects hard on how he can cajole himself into believing and concluded that Santa Claus is something he believes in. In the final moments of the Boston Marathon as he nears the finish line with a solid chance to win, he sees…SANTA CLAUS running next to him, egging him on! This reminds me of another interesting parable:
The village gathered to pray for rain. The child brought an umbrella.
I’m curious: what do my mum, my father in law and Teenu jijosa have in common with Ralph and this optimistic kid with the umbrella?
Faith?
Faith in what?
Did they zero in on the same insight that I find emerging in my own life - that every time I’ve been brave, the world has gained in happiness, even if only slightly?
Thank you for listening!
Before I say ‘I’ll see you next week’, I’ll leave you with a photograph of my 17-year old self emulating these fantastic elders from the future in my own teenage, dorky way.
I cannot sit up because of a slipped spinal disc between my L4 / L5 vertebra (courtesy of a weak back and hard training with the school squash team) so I’m lying on a mattress. I’m at a party and likely - as my gesticulation suggests - Metallica is playing in the background. So of course, I decide to make the best of it and stun the universe with my positive life force.
The ladies to my left are trying very hard not to look inspired, because they don’t want me to have an inflated ego at 17, of course.
I’ll see you next week.
Vasant
Always something to learn , and reams in Happy , God Bless 🌺
What a lovely write up of hope and positivity, Vasant. Energised me.