ULTIMATE MEDICINE

It was a moment frozen in time by agony and pain. Caught in between a government duty and an all important personal need, I decided, though with agony, to finish the task assigned to me for which I took oath on it. In the world of cancelled family functions, missed birthday parties of children and many more, it has to be understood that the police men are not there to complain but to obey what he has been told to do.

 It is indeed a fact that, nothing more could I have done with my presence where several senior doctors and medical staff striving hard to save the life of my tiny niece struggling for her life in the intensive care unit for past few days, but, in the society where relations are rated as more precious than anything, my presence would be more of a solace to my bereaving sister and mother.

Police officers are taught and constantly being told that they cannot get emotionally involved while dealing with pain and sufferings. Criticisms from the relatives of a police officer as they are self-centered, whiny and irritable, for not attending a family function are often taken by them as a fate with no way out. Job related and personal problems in a police officer’s life are interwoven and contribute to each other. In a society where police officers are socially isolated and viewed as enemies to be feared, their excuses are barely being heard.

This story which I wrote few days after her death and was published in one of the police journal, provide an account on how the relations barely matters in a police man’s life. 

ULTIMATE MEDICINE

That was a foggy Sunday morning in Bhubaneswar on 1^st February 2009. My cell rang when I was getting ready to leave for the barrack where my Company was accommodated. A few more preparations were all to be made before leaving for Hyderabad by road the next day after about three months of hectic policing in different parts of trouble stricken Orissa.

That was my mother calling from Trivandrum. “Ammu is admitted in hospital,” she told sobbing. “She is serious, and on ventilator. Come as soon as you can.” I felt bereft.

As the disturbances escalated, several companies of central Paramilitary Forces were deployed at length in a backward district in Orissa, to restore peace and tranquility. One RAF Company under my command was kept as striking reserve in Bhubaneswar for any eventuality in other districts as well. I reckoned it was exactly one month after my company came to Bhubaneswar, from Phulbani as the situation in Kandhamal and Phulbani gradually returned to normal. An order regarding withdrawal of RAF from Orissa was issued by the Home Ministry in the mean time.

Far away from the Battalion headquarters, I felt beleaguered.

My mother, unable to control her grief, asked me again, “Can you come?”

After the premature demise of my father, it has been a lonely and exhausted life for my mother.  Two years after my father’s death, my mother too was in the clutches of a deadly cancer which she triumphed over with courage, which she never thought herself capable of. But at the age of sixty five, scars of her early days of pain and anguish started creeping in her mind and otherwise fragile body.

Before disconnecting the phone my mother said in a pale voice “Your sister is inconsolable. I cannot see her crying over her tiny daughter gasping for breath on a ventilator. Please come if you can.”

Ammu, my 7- month-old tiny niece was admitted in a hospital for acute meningitis. She was struggling for her life in the intensive care unit of the Medical College Hospital, Trivandrum. She was such lovely and playful when I met her last time during my short leave, a couple of months ago. Beautiful as an angel she was, as if a new light to her mother as well as grandmother.

My mind leapt to Kerala. I sat dumbstruck in my bed. I know, my presence there would be of a great help to them at this time of crisis.  I had always been there with them whenever small crises came about in my family. And now, at this instant, when my presence was expected most, I am engaged in a serious business far away where alternatives are scarce. I had to conduct the movement of the company as no alternate options were possible in this eleventh hour.  As the minutes passed, I came to learn from some of my close relatives that, the condition of my niece remained critical.

“Survival chances are bleak” was what my relatives heard from doctors attending her. Right through the day, my phone remained busy with calls from and to my relatives.

It took three full days for my company to accomplish the journey from Orissa to Hyderabad by road. On my arrival at headquarters, and after completion of the usual official formalities, I left for Kerala.

When I entered the intensive care unit of the Medical College Hospital, I was horrified by the condition of my niece. She was on a ventilator, her eyes half closed; her body was connected to several lifesaving equipments.   In that big iron cot, her tiny body covered in white cloth was barely noticeable from the distance. I stood there, watching my niece struggling for breath.  Her skin was stretched and yellowish. Her otherwise curly hair lost sheen and hung around. Her body was shuddering vehemently as ventilator pumps oxygen.

My sister sat up at her bedside, shattered, firmly clasping her daughter’s slender hand as if to thwart any attempt by the “god of death” to take her away.

“Call her … Call her by name” Tears rolling down her eyes, my sister asked me.

I knew, it was yet another attempt of a desperate mother, searching for a miracle to bring back life to her otherwise half dead child.

“Ammu…!” My voice chocked inside my throat when I made yet another attempt. “Ammu…Your uncle is here,” my sister said in her ear after stopping for a moment her weeping

One last ray of her hope vanished in the air.

I could not stand there for long, watching the agony of my niece. It was painfully clear that she was going to pass away soon. But still, I tried to convince myself about the miracle of god. Cold sea breeze from south, blowing across the quiet corridor of the hospital at midnight failed to quench the fire in my soul. I parked myself on a garden bench nearby. It was darkness all around…. only darkness and nothing else.

Early morning next day, as orange rays of sun seeped from the trees, I went home for a quick shower and later rushed to a nearby “Anjaneya temple” to pray for Ammu. Chief priest of the temple was kind in giving me an extra pinch of sandal paste as I stood there longer and prayed for her. I prayed my heart out.

“Applying the sacred sandal paste on her forehead will save her”. My mind felt optimistic. Time was not to waste there.   Running down the hospital steps with that ‘ultimate’ medicine guardedly kept in my right hand, I reached Intensive Care Unit in a flash.

“Ammu… is no more” tear-filled eyes of my brother-in-law received me at the door.

Our neighbors hastily plowed a small pit behind my ancestral house. It will be her new home where she will chat and play with angels without a care. She came from the skies blessed by gods; she blessed us with her company for seven months on earth, and quietly left forever.

I stood there– as a mute spectator, as a prisoner of emotion, watching the tiny body of my seven month old niece being buried. Tears rolled down my cheeks; I took out the “ultimate medicine”, ‘the sandal paste rolled in the betel leaf’, from my pocket and dropped the same along with the last bit of sand into that pit. I buried my face in my arms as I sat there for a while. Fragrance of flowers and rosewater filled the air. Cold breeze from the south took it away in a flash. Again the fragrance came up and the breeze took it away. The angles together played this game as if to make the tiny angel just came to their world, cheerful.

As everyone dispersed, I kneeled near the heap of mud and was lost in thoughts. Was she waiting for me, her uncle, to come and take care of her final journey in such a befitting manner, bearing all her misery?

Mahatma Gandhi said in his last prayer meeting at dusk on the ill-fated Thursday evening, “death is always worthy of our gratitude because it relieves us of all sorts of miseries once and for all”. Looking at the pit where her tiny body was just buried, I thought, what were her miseries for that matter?  She just came to this colorful world and went away like an angel. Even in death she resembles a beautiful tiny seraph. May her soul rest in peace!