Life is full of memoirs, full of incidents, coming up like foams or bubbles and melting almost every moment comprising minutes, hours and days; we tend to forget eventually. But some such incidents are not that short lived, evaporating instantly like bubbles, at least in the life of an individual though they may be so in the life of the eternity unless they are linked to history or country or the whole world in a bigger sense.

     One such incident of my life I have not and wish not to forget for that I consider as a new lease of my life continuing from well over 45 years till this day, in my well over seventy-one years’ life. That was a serious ailment contacted through germs or virus of some kind accidentally which became almost a killer disease.

     I was posted in a small town hundreds of miles away from my home of settlement, managing my own affairs alone for my family could not accompany me there due to studies of my children. I remember that one afternoon I felt feverish under the sun which looked pale. That night I skipped my dinner and was under the spells of violent shivering throughout the night. In the morning I consulted a local doctor, telling him of my uneasiness, stomach problem and fever. He checked sample of my blood, checked my body by various means including his medical experiences, checked the heat of my body by thermometer and said that he did not find anything serious. He gave me medicines with little relief. I do not remember all the symptoms and how exactly I suffered but in three four days my condition deteriorated. I telephoned my wife urgently who came the next morning and without going for any more check we boarded a bus in the evening which reached our town the next morning after a night long journey. This I remember that the whole night I either shivered or was in deep sleep, semi-unconscious, swallowing disprin tablets which somehow helped me to combat the disease and reach my place.

     Just as I reached the nursing home of the Ashram, the lady doctor-in-charge, observing my face from a distance could diagnose my condition and the disease I was suffering from. She said instantly that I was suffering from Typhoid. I was admitted and after a while given something to eat. A few days and I refused to eat anything, complaining of something abnormal happening in my stomach. They checked and immediately prepared me for a major operation at JIPMER, a big autonomous hospital under the Central Government. They talked to the surgeon who was an M.S or Master of Surgery besides his other medical degrees. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital at a distance of some six km.

     Immediately as I reached they further prepared me for the operation, shaving different parts of my body and doing the other things necessary. I was fully conscious then. While they were preparing for the operation and I was placed on a table outside the operation room, I was suddenly surrounded by some over enthusiastic people, junior doctors and students with note books in hand, and they began questioning me from different angles as to what led to my condition, etc. I do not remember what all they asked but this I remember that I replied them as much possible in spite of the problem in my body and in spite of my almost nakedness before so many people.

     Later I heard some doctor’s opinion that due to partaking of so many disprin tablets in my empty stomach, my small intestine was perforated which created an emergency and necessitated an urgent operation. They took X-rays and made other tests then and there besides some tests that had already been done in the Ashram nursing home. I pondered later that it was usual for the medical entrants and practitioners to ask me questions at the last moment before being taken to the operation table because I was a serious patient, a case hanging between life and death, requiring study which might have helped them in their practical classes. A question was automatically raised in my mind after sometime; how me, a living patient at the critical moment of his life, became a case for study for them who forgot or ignored my critical condition of mind and feelings at that particular moment as I was lying on a table and took me as only a living example of a medical case, rare to get? Was there a case for study between the humane and mechanical bent of mind and approach in such a situation?

     As I was placed in the operation table, the anaesthetists were getting ready to activate their instruments and others with gloves in hand, masked, were ready for action, I was asked by some helping hand or medical practitioner present there, as to what were those, meaning the red moles in my naked body. What would I have said than that they were there in my body since long or I might have fumbled at that moment for an answer, telling him that those were moles only? However, I still remember to have answered, signifying that I was still consciousness. And then that counting began: one, two, three    and so on until I was unconsciousness. It may be that I was conscious again towards the end of the job. Someone called me in my name and I could hear him. They pulled me in a wheeled table out of the room and I was placed in the Intensive Care Unit or ICU.

     Incidents thereafter need no further mention. My wife remained with me for some days. With her help besides the help of the nurses and attending doctors the rejuvenation of my health continued. True that without the expertise of the surgeon and help of his assistants, without the help from the Ashram nursing home and of course without the help of my wife from the beginning of the treatment, I would not have survived. I was ready for either life or death when I was dragged in the operation room, leaving it to the divine decision, surrendering to the Mother’s force and grace. Though I suffered it gave me enough newer experience of life face to face with death. I had another operation later but not of such magnitude and I had some more treatments requiring some surgical help before and after but they were quite normal, as in dentistry.

     I consider that emergence of a disease as an accident though there were causes behind it. Without going into any such cause I take it as a happening essential for my progress for like the causes behind the accident there were causes for my rejuvenation as I have said but the cause behind such physical causes was perhaps a divine intervention in my life to help me go on my path in the best possible way. The accident was a turning point in my life as well as a continuation of it.