The Bus Stand

THE BUS STAND

This was the 5th time that I had gone under the knife for some blessed reason or another. I was kind of used to the OTs and Recovering Rooms. I was also kind of familiar with the feeling of being thrown in Hell, somebody lifting the heavy body, throwing it on another bed, passing out, feeling miserable, then hearing my husband’s comforting voice etc. These were the usual feelings.

This time, the 5th time, I was lying on a hospital bed in a Recovering room, awaiting my turn to be wheeled into the OT. For some weird reason I was petrified this time. Apart from the fact that I was suffering from the dreaded “C” disease, I think I was also afraid because the surgeon, Dr Sid Sahni, said that only after the surgery, when the sentinel nodes had been biopsied, could he for certain tell us whether the cancer had spread anywhere else or not. I was in jitters and so was Pradipta, I think!

It seemed an eternity as I lay on that narrow bed, praying. Once the wonderful hospital staff and the polite anesthetist had finished off with the formalities, nobody really seemed to even acknowledge my presence. I looked around trying to calm myself down. I was in this enormous hall with innumerable cubicles separated by white curtains. There were patients being wheeled in and wheeled out. “Number 23 to go to OT 5” somebody shouted. Within minutes nurses began rolling out a bed like mine! Oh my God, what number am I, I wondered. Soon I heard, “Number 15 “opthal”. to go to cabin 10”. I have no idea, whether the patient rolled into the RR was number 15 or not but that somebody had countless tubes fitted all over the face!!! I could not for the life of me, guess whether the person was a woman or a man!!

I felt small, in fact insignificant, and indignant over there! I always knew that I was a perfectly nice, relatively special woman, considering that my family and friends loved me. I thought that I had an identity, a name. I thought that I was “someone”. You know what I mean…some one special in a nice sort of a way!! Well, I felt insignificant because, there, I was not a person with a name or anything. I was just a number! In fact I was not even “someone”. I was just a puny “something”!!

I realized that the Recovering Room was just like a bus stand. People just boarded beds and went into or left the OTs. Their names, sex, achievements or their failures did not matter in the least. Every hospital staff is a “karma yogi”. Each on of them went about doing the jobs to the best of one’s ability with a smile on the lips.

I demand, I desire, I achieve, or I fail. I see Life in its complexities. Yet Life is so very simple! At the end of the day, all that I recognize, is my smallness in the face of Life!!