Feeling almost like Siddhartha!

"Desolving Buddha" sculpture by Bhagwan Rampure, displayed at art festival, Wassup Andheri  

Things have been different around the house off lately. It is past midnight and as I write this, there is complete quiet here. Not the joyful, serenely comforting silence of my home but the suffocating silence and it is unsettling. 


Past few days, me and my family experienced harrowing time and I had panic attacks that were triggered by my son's hospitalization. I am yet to find the holy-grail to eliminate my anxiety completely and when it comes to my son, I find it difficult to go.


For any parent the most devastating experience is to see his/her child in pain. The trauma of bleak thoughts with fear of unknown future is sometimes too much to bear. Fortunately, my son is home after being hospitalized for a week and is recuperating but the vignettes of life displayed at hospital during his stay have shaken and humbled me deeply. We often find truths about life in least expected spaces, in least imagined ways.


The day I rushed my son to the hospital, there was a group of about fifty people, gathered at accidents and emergency ward. One of the staff members of the hospital, a doctor had died of massive heart attack at age of thirty eight. He had worked till six in morning, taking care of I.C.U patients and left saying he would be back soon after taking some rest at home. Looking at his numb wife, grieving parents and siblings was heart wrenching experience. 


There were so many people, all connected with their individual pain, looking at each other sympathetically. There was a lady, in a state of shock, crying incessantly; worrying about her husband who was rushed to the hospital after a fatal road accident, a disturbed father anxious about his daughter's badly fractured arm, an uneducated old couple, all by themselves struggling to cope with overload of terms that they never heard of, making futile attempt to make sense to them. The medical practitioners, trying earnestly to communicate in the simple language but feeling frustrated for not being at the same wavelength to explain what was required to convey and sometimes dealing with patients and their relatives going in state of denial that rapidly changed into anger.


Fortunately, when my son was shifted to his room from accidents and emergency ward and during his stay, I had some respite in learning about so many tales of survival and saw new born babies and the happy parents that helped keep my faith in life.

Life is a precious offering but we are so deeply entrenched in hyperactivities, indulgence, leisure and affluence to realize value of one breath! We don't know what the next moment holds for us and yet we live our life so callously in pursuit of a "perfect" life without acknowledging or appreciated our blessings. Rarely do we understand that life is in NOW, in this very moment! If we don't embrace it, it is gone forever.


In last few days, I have come closer to understanding dilemma of Gautam Buddha that he experienced as prince Siddhartha. No, I am not an enlightened soul like him to head for path of liberation nor is my intent to be preachy but something within me has certainly changed. I will make conscious effort to learn, grow and evolve. Be kind, mindful and grateful about everything life has so generously bestowed upon me. I can't take life for granted, ever again!