Keep smiling!

I am invariably in a grouchy mood till a week after my chemo therapy. I bite my tongue every time I want to chew up somebody. Most of the time I think I am successful…at controlling that overpowering urge. Of course I am not. I end up snapping, cribbing, ticking off my husband and my children. The net result is that I end up fighting and then drowning in self sympathy.

The truth is that I am in misery. Every possible side effect of the chemo drugs reigns over me. I feel drowsy and lethargic. I am weak. The nausea kills me. My mouth is full of ulcers. My tongue aches. I cannot swallow the food which in any case has no taste. My stomach aches and my heart burns. Not a short, tidy list, isn’t it?

Yet, I can sink only that deep. I cannot possibly die of misery when I already have an option of dying of something as majestic as cancer!!! So I keep popping in various capsules to keep my self afloat.

While those colourful pellets, one, two, three and more go in, I realize that the most important duty of my life is to be happy. I call it “duty”. It is so easy to bask in self pity. It is so easy to call my family and friends and tell them how unfortunate I am, how much I am suffering and how unjust God is. It does not reduce my suffering in the least; it just increases somebody else’s. Isn’t there enough misery in the world already?

I figure that I cannot chew the food, it is painful. But I can relish yogurt or gorge on stewed apples and vanilla ice cream! So there you go…much of my misery reduced! I attack juicy melons, mangoes, bananas, yogurts, ice creams and kheer with such passion…it is unbelievable! I also do not need to worry about adding kilos…I am a cancer patient, remember? I am happy and so is everybody around me.

I do not want to chit chat with anybody…I am grouchy and I feel like being nasty. I develop a new strategy…just ignore the world around me. I pick up little children’s books to read or just watch mushy romantic films. Such fun!!

The point is who wants to be with grouchy negative people? Look for the positives in a disastrously negative situation. So what if you don’t have a, b, c? You at least have x, y, z. You will see the rainbow. It will make you smile and the world around you will smile at your positivity.

I heard the voice of God!

June 23rd

I went back to the only place I go nowadays…the hospital. I had to get all my organs checked up. I rushed from one room to another quite mechanically. You see, I am used to baring my body for tests.

One such room that I rushed into was for Echo Cardiogram. I cheerfully changed into a hospital gown and lied down on the narrow bed. The female assistant smiled at me and made me turn to my side. The doctor walked in and chatted up the young girl. He switched on his machine, applied jelly on my breast and began gliding the monitor over it. I lied still and suddenly I heard “slush, slush, slush, slush”. Was that my heart beating? The doctor shifted the monitor while chatting with the girl and again I heard the magical sound of “slush, slush, slush, slush”. But this time it was a deep reverberating sound. That was my heart again!! I wanted to shout out, “ I am alive! I am alive! That’s My heart!”.

I always thought that the heart ticked away like the clock…it went tic, toc, tic, toc. I couldn’t imagine that it could ever sound like the slush of water…in fact like the waves against the sea shore. Of course this rhythm was a lot faster than the sea waves. As I pondered over this it struck me that my little heart has been rhythmically slushing at this pace day and night for the last 48 years that I have been living. If it took a second off from its job, I would have been declared dead!!!! If I wash three loads of linen in the washing machine one day, I worry that it needs to rest. If the computer is old or over worked, it “hangs” itself, if the car has run too many miles, it needs servicing….what about this little machine called the “heart”?

If I stand for too long, I need to sit. If I sit for too long, I need to stand. If I work a little more than usual one day, I need rest. If I am up till late one night, even for a perfectly worthy reason, I need to sleep till late. What about this little “heart”? All the while that I sit or stand or rest or sleep, it works on… slush slush…untiringly!!! What an unnerving thought!!! It hits me so vey hard as I realize that I abuse this little machine just about any time and in any way that I want. If I want to stuff fatty food, I do so. If I want to be lazy, I am. I feel guilty and would like to find a fine majestic excuse…but I cannot. No matter what I do, I want my heart to slush on for ever…never slow down and of course never ever, ever “hang up”!!! Even 100 years is not enough, isn’t it?

So this little heart, the God made little marvel is expected to tick on, forever if possible, and do I question the proof of existence of God??

Pandit Laxminarayanan ji of the Vedanta Institute who teaches us the Bhagawad Gita says that, the fact that we are alive in this world is the proof of existence of God. Today I heard the voice of God!!

I was running a marathon!!!

Not literally silly!!

Ever since I had quit my job of 18 years, I had every finger in every pie. I was not bored for a day. I had so very much to do...the boys, poised precariously at the brink of CBSE exams, were coming in to study; two little ones were also coming in to study French; the French books that my friends and I had written needed editing; and I had also taken up a mammoth task of teaching spoken English to a very enthusiastic but immensely inhibited group of 26 under privileged children!!!

I had absolutely no time to waste...I was very busy and I felt so important!!! Then it all happened suddenly!! I went for a perfectly "fashionable" health check-up.....and lo and behold I was detected with Breast Cancer!!

Only if the doctors knew that they spoke total gibberish!! What on earth were they trying to tell me? Breast Cancer? Me? What utter nonsense!!! My time was not up yet! They were just after my money!!! They were so incompetent with their work!!......I was in a whirlpool of indignant thoughts.

One test lead to another and opened up a Pandorus Box...it was an extremely aggressive strain which normally explodes in the body! I was on the operating table in three days time and before I could count ten my beautiful, organised and comfortable world had undergone a tornado.

Somebody jerk me out of this nightmare, I implore you!!