Thursday, October 27, 2011

I wonder


  Dad got admitted to Fortis for his intestinal polyp removal procedure. It was maddening in the morning, I almost picked up a fight with him. I'm way too impatient with him at times but somehow truce prevailed. According to the plan I was just gonna go to the hospital to pick ma and drop her back to her workplace once my dad had finished all the work and had been admitted but seeing that he was a bit tensed about the whole act of driving down with my mother to withdraw money, go to the hospital and getting admitted was getting to him so I felt I should chip in and help a little more than the plan. I returned home and drove them to the bank, the hospital and was with them throughout till he was admitted and allocated a room.

  I thought of taking ma to Cafe Coffee Day inside the hospital premises. A group of people occupied a table across us; rather rich looking people. Ma said that she probably recognized the two ladies sitting there and I just passed it off with a rather silly comment "ma when they get that rich, they all start looking the same". Yet after a while one of the ladies, tall with short hair, walked up to our table and greeted my ma. Stunned, I got up and smiled at her, ma told me she was Ms. Shehnaz, Col. Judge's daughter. Soon the other lady joined in too, her name was Nagina. "Ah! Nagina...Nagina Waters, Col. Judge's famous daughter. She never forgot to send my dad and his family a greeting card on Christmas all these years." I recollected.

  So I finally meet the lady. They asked us what brought us there and I told them about dad's procedure. They were very concerned and asked if it was serious, I told them that it wasn't. They treated us like family, we chatted for a while and they told us that Col. Judge was on the ventilator. He is 95 and was doing well till the time his wife expired two years ago, after which his health started to wane but of late he stopped eating, his immunity went down and he had fungal infection in his respiratory tract!!

  Every time come across someone old and ailing, i wonder what they must feel like. I wonder if they surrender to the fact that their end is near. I think of the trauma my father underwent three and a half years ago and I wonder what he would've felt like when at the age of 63, a loaded bus ran over his toes. You spend 63 years of your life without facing a similar situation and you probably take it all for granted, then one day while getting off a bus your shirt gets caught up in some hook on the bus and the wheel runs over your toes, smashing them and tearing off your whole sole.

  We take it all for granted, something like could happen to any of us, yet many of us do not appreciate our good health and fortunes. Well maybe we do, I guess that's why they celebrate Thanksgiving, thanking the almighty for keeping them save or at least alive. I wonder what one sees in a lifetime, carefree childhood, atrocious adolescence, tantalizing twenties, tenacious thirties....I dunno what follows. At my age, I just know that I can't make sense of life, I'm really curious to know what a nonagenarian like Col. Judge makes of it. He's rich, yet in his nineties with a frail body, I wish to know what exactly he's thinking, I wish to know if he thinks if being born a human, with all the conscience and analytical brain that we have, was really worth it, despite all the powers that we possesses (or maybe we think we possess). Or maybe it's a peaceful feeling.

2 comments:

Raina Sabharwal said...

Hi,

I do not know who you are but I know Nagina Mam and Shehnaz Mam.
Col Judge is no more but I have heard a lot about him. He was a great man and also Nagina Mam and Shehnaz Mam are also really sweet.

AJ said...

Hi,
Yes I know Col. Judge is no more and really sorry about it for it was a long standing wish of mine to talk to him and tell him how high I hold him in my mind because he's responsible for my dad coming to Chandigarh and making it his home-town. Of course what followed was my dad meet my mom and...well! that way Col. judge is almost responsible for the fact that I exist.
Yes and Nagina ma'am and Shehnaz ma'am are the sweetest ladies I've met, that coupled with the fact that I saw them battling for their father's life and being around him till him till his very end (despite having their busy schedules and family) testifies that Col. Judge was a very blessed man to have children like those.