First Love!

This profession is not easy. Not easy at all especially when you are a surgeon. It tests you in more ways than one. After 25 long years of experience, over 100 awards and recognitions and more than 1000 surgeries, today I still find myself nervous and hesitant. Not that this has been the case on all days but today. Today I am to operate upon her.

The only time I saw her in the last 25 years was last week, unconscious, weak and emaciated by the disease, but still looking as beautiful as she did 25 years ago. Her face bore the same serenity that used to render my heart with bliss. Those hands still seemed to bear the softness of a baby and those long hairs had still looked like a flowing river. Amongst them her eyes refused me their glance. Perhaps they were still a mirror of her heart which had not forgiven me yet. She lay there, silent and still, perhaps sleeping or may be thinking of someone. May be me.

She was brought to me as a patient, a 50 year old woman suffering from cancer. Accompanying her unconscious body were her Husband, a rich businessman of perhaps exactly my own age looking worried and tensed as any husband who loves his wife would look, and her only son, a 21 year old boy who kept holding on to her hand, perhaps safeguarding her body from any separating entity. Ever since the first glance I had of hers last week, I have been trying to see her merely as another patient, but it’s not for nothing that people say,” First love is never forgotten”.

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It fell on my hand. A single drop. Enough to inundate my heart. I did not wipe it. May be because I wanted to preserve it for as long as possible. I knew this was her last gift to me.

I waited for the next one. But she had turned her head away. And when it turned back, instead of tears those eyes bore questions. They bore anger. They bore love.

I tried to avert her gaze but her eyes were fixed on mine in abject defiance. She wanted the answers while I had none.

“I thought you love me!” she finally spoke.

“Of course I do. But I love them too. After all they are my parents. And don’t we say that love is sacrifice? We’ll have to sacrifice our love Priya. We’ll have to end it here!” my words came with a trembling firmness.

“So you can live without me, huh? Oh God, how mendacious you boys turn out to be! When you needed someone to call a girlfriend, you came to me with promises of perennial companionship, but today…today when…..when its time for the realization of those promises you ask me to forget you? How easily you said it, without ever realizing that what you moot as the unavoidable is the unthinkable for me.” her words were punctuated by her sobs.

“No! I can’t live without you. In fact I won’t. I’ll bear you in my heart. And no, that’s no filmi dialogue, that’s the truth. It’s not a question of our love for each other, it’s about what we can or rather we should do for our parents. You very well know that your family would kill you even if they get a hint of our relationship. My family too won’t be a pleased lot. Have we become so selfish, that for our own happiness we are prepared to disappoint so many people? That too our very own parents who at every juncture of our lives have gone through so many sacrifices for us? No Priya, I can’t be so selfish. I know you’ll never forgive me for this, but I have no other option. I shall never call you, nor write to you. Neither will I speak of you after today. But I will always love you!”

This time I was looking directly at her and so was she.

Her gaze was more of surprise than anger. Her eyes themselves looked like questions staring at me. Asking me why I had not seen this before. Why I had not been able to find another way. Why did I love her? Why I wasn’t able to understand her? Why we had to part?Why did I give it a beginning? Why did I bring the end?

“I don’t want to stay here anymore. I am leaving. Leaving you forever. You’ll never have me back again”

That was the last time I heard her voice.

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All eyes were fixed on her. Mine included. She emitted a radiance that filled the hearts of all who were present there with a simultaneous feeling of pain and love. To me, in a room full of people she looked alone. As alone as I was.

I would never have given her away, not even if God had desired so. But unfortunately the desire came from her father. That too in a way that ‘No’ was no option for me. He asked me to return his daughter back to him. He asked me not snatch his life’s treasure from him. The world wouldn’t have accepted our alliance and her father could not have refuted the world. He asked me my life. And I, I loved her. For her, I gave my life away.

I lived on but like a dead but death had never been so cruel to me as life today became. My life failed me.People say that Failure makes a man stronger. That one didn’t. I had never felt weaker in life. I could not fulfill my promises. Neither to her, nor to her son. I could not save his mother. Last time she left her words, this time only silence. And memories that spoke of her charm and her pulchritude. A pain in my heart of never being able to own her. I could not get her back. She had left. For the world, may be that day, for me 25 years ago.

Aila ! Plane?

The last time I saw Sachin on the cricketing pitch, I was rather sure that he would now anytime ask someone.” Main kahaan hoon?” (Remember the Pepsi ad)

The way he played, he really looked like having suffered from a memory loss. And perhaps someone had convinced him that he was not Sachin Tendulkar but Courtney Walsh!

However he made sure that the Indian team doesn’t get more chances to embarrass itself and that he soon gets to say once again,”Aila! Plane?”

Somehow the wonder boy of world cups, Sachin couldn’t quite cash-in! While the whole world expected him to stand bold, all he did was to stand clean bowled.

Sachin performing in crunch matches has always been a rarer scene than Mallika Sherawat wearing a sari but somehow this time round people did expect him to perform. May be because this was his last chance to be a part of a world beating side, but it seems that now he can’t just ‘go for it’. May be he has lost the ‘secret of his energy’. May be all that’s left of him now is the Pepsi ka pappu who can ‘drive’ well only when in the comforts of his Ferrari.

Anyways, I personally never expected much from him other than the ‘buzurgon ki salaah’.

But one man who was termed as the ‘wall’ of India presently has a few ‘sawalls’ to face.

Not for his poor captaincy (for captains are not Gods after all) and of course for his batting neither. But for why the hell is he letting his affinity towards Sehwag sink the Indian ship? His form recently had been worse than Tusshar Kapoor’s acting. The world knows that footwork to him is like quantum physics to Rakhi Sawant! He might have years of cricket left in him (god only knows which kinda instrument measures that) but this world cup would certainly have been better with him as a spectator.

No don’t tell me about his Bermuda innings. That like a 10^th class fail topping a class of 4^th graders and feeling proud of it. And not only that. Also supplementing the achievement with a statement which would mean, “A topper is a topper after all!”

The bottom line is Seh-wag never looked like he could wag!

I really feel for poor Sreesanth who seems to be the only bowler in the Indian side who doesn’t bear a cadaverous look on his face. The worst of the lot is Munaf Patel. Had his bowling been even half as fierce as his looks, he could have done a Brett Lee. With that kinda face one expects you to kill the batsman even before he faces the first ball, but afsos, munaf carries the attitude of a mule who knows he can never win among the horses.

Sooraj paschim se ug sakta hai, paani me aag lagsakti hai, main CAT nikal sakta hoon par Indians jabardast fielding nahi kar sakte! Ya I know Yuvraj singh is an Indian but branding is a ramification of averages. And on an average, The Indian fielding side is no better than eleven ‘sholay ke thakur’ trying to prove their agility.

And now talking bout our very ‘own’ Mr.Chappel. Rassi jal gayi bar bal nahi gaya! Remember him showing the middle finger? Today he looks like one himself! His ego is still ‘erect’ but we all know now how ‘potent’ he is!

Remember a time,when anything wrong happening with or within India drew just one remark?”Zaroor isme koi videshi haath hai!”

It has never been more true!

Anyways, many say that we should not play the blame game but kya karein baki sab khelon me to dhakkan hain, socha kyon na is khel me hi hath aajmaya jaye.

That has always been the problem, no one here is blamed. All come clean. And the only one facing the blemish is the nation.

No Mr Chappel cricket is not just a game. At least not for you or the players. For you it’s a profession, for us it’s a passion. And nothing is worse that betraying your profession and seeing the fall of your passion. If you consider it just a game then inspite of all your achievements you prove yourself to be a loser. Even life is a game but we dare not take it lightly. So should be cricket for cricketers.

Now I hope the shame makes a few of our worthy senior players retire before cricket retires from our hearts.

Female Equality

Now, for some reason I stumbled upon this topic so frequently today and read about so many opinions and thoughts that I had to pour in some of mine too.

To begin with, I have always felt that if someone feels that one is commensurate to someone else in whatever it may be, he or she should compliment his/her belief by action and not try to supplement it with mere words.

Thus my humble request to all the so called feminists is to kindly stop cribbing and letting other “women” down by constantly nagging for equality. If you believe in yourself, act that way and with this changing world, where sexual as well as other biases are gradually losing their meaning, you will certainly be seen as one.

As far as places and regions with sexual bias are considered, I again think that instead of causing a cri de coeuer, they should rather lay down the law. They must learn to snatch their rights and not beg for them. If all the women of a particular country, society or region decide upon achieving equality and bring out a revolution, no force (of man) can really subvert them.

But unfortunately most feminists consider equality achieved only when an acknowledgement from their male counterpart is received, thus suggesting per se that their equality is proven subject to the confirmation of men!

It would be much better than creating all the brouhaha and showering vituperations , to wield their strengths such that the society is forced to provide them a commensurate status.

Thus not by words but by proving it through action, they should cause the male community not only to consider them as equals but in some ways even superior. The good news is that this is what most successful women do. It’s just those handful of self proclaimed feminists who according to me often mislead the other women who have been thirsty not only for equality but also freedom in many respects.

All I have to say to such people is, “Don’t ask for equality, coz it cannot be given. It’s to be discovered yourself coz it already exists”.