ONE: I keep myself unconscious of the beauties of life as much as I can. I hate life, only because it will vanish one day.
TWO: To me, the most refined form of art is Music. It delivers what, and where, most other forms of art cannot.
THREE: I had made a secret society when I was 12.
FOUR: I am a moral nihilist.
FIVE: I talk to myself during midnight, while ambling under the starry sky.
SIX: I still cry, so much that my clothes get drenched. Not that anybody knows when I do it. Here’s what makes me cry.
SEVEN: My alter ego is much more successful than the real myself. It even makes it into the news.

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST

Who the hell am I to nominate?

Well, well, well. I do like some blogs already. It’s just that I was explicitly asked to credit those in form of nominations for an imaginary award called “Versatile Blogger Award”. Who asked me? Well, the one who nominated me. And yes, you figured it right… the ones I selected shall have to Nominate 5 other bloggers for the same award.

Does that even make sense?

Well rewards are always rewards, no? So is this. Alright, I don’t know where it started and I do realize it’s more like an absurd chain reaction…. but still, I somehow like it. (not because I was nominated ).

Who nominated me?

Rooha Tariq, over here.

So whom do I nominate?

Critical Velocity
By Nida
Type: Funky Journal

Far From The Madding Crowd’s Ignoble Strife
By Ghausia
Type: Feminism

Envisioning Future
By Rooha
Type: Versatile

Danishwar
By Tayyab
Type: Fiction

Biya’s Vivid Thoughts
By Biya
Type: Poetry & Fiction
What Now?

Visit the above blogs. You’ll love those.
If you were nominated above, you are expected to (these are the things I were asked, don’t say I’m rude for asking for these straight away:

1. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 personal things about yourself. (Mine here)
3. Pass this award along to 5-15 recently discovered blogs you enjoy reading.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

har taraf shor hi shor hai, log bol rahay hain, waqt chal raha hai. ham falsafay ke jhartay drakht se girtay patay samet rahay hain. yun nahein ke sukoon nahein hai, ya kam hai. shesh jehat sukoon hi to hai. aisa sukoon, aur itna sukoon, ke zehmat bannay laga hai, dard denay laga hai. aur wo, joh qatra qatra mera maqsad-e-hayat ho chuki hai, meray paas to hai nahi, iss purtakaluf sukoon ko uss ke takhayul hi ka raag nachata rahta hai.

main to ussay janta bhi nahi. wo hai zuroor, mai ne uffaq kinaray ussay mehsoos kya hai. par wo aati hi nahi. wo darti to nahi? wo kyun darti hai? main ussay kaisay bataon mein to uss ko sirf sunna chahta hun, uss se kehna chahta hun. uss ke saath beth ke inn taareek aansuon mein ulajhna chahta hun. daastan-e-safar ke qissay cherna chahta hun. sadyon ke chupay raaz uss kay fahem mein sajana chahta hun.

ussay choo liya to main rakh ho jaon.

main to sirf uss ke wajood ki parchayi mei sona chahta hun.

It’s too chilly for a November evening, isn’t it? Or perhaps it’s that cold only where I’m standing right now, the apex floor of Burj Samaa which at 1400m is the tallest object man has ever constructed. I come here once every week for meditation, which I do in my very own way. And believe you me, standing in the balcony of the 280th floor isn’t a very comfortable experience. Most people who get here get dizzy and nauseated while some have even vomited. Just that I’m used to it.

I have just arrived from office. I left early today because reminiscences of my earlier life, which I lived with my father, impulsively overtook my mind and made me too glum to focus over work. Well, I’m not upset anymore. I took a cup of this magical antidote, The Starbuck’s Cappuccino, from the mall at the mezzaine of this tower before I left for the One and a half kilometers of meditating ascent to this floor, the 280th floor, something that plays an additional role in sweeping my worries away. But still, as I’ll enjoy watching the whole of Dubai from here for the next hour, I’ll be lending my thoughts to Baba, the greatest person I’ve ever known.

Baba was a fisherman. We were poor. The only fun part I can recall of the first decade of my life was devouring the fish, or shrimps, which Baba brought home once every week, or twice if he had been luckier.  Then, when I was entering my teens, all of a sudden and for reasons I was then too young to grasp, our lives got radically transformed. We relocated from our one-room hut in the slums to a well furnished flat in Downtown Dubai and later to a 6 bedroom bungalow. Its only when I got into high school that I realized my father had become a fisherman who didn’t  fish by himself anymore and instead made some dozen workers do that for him. He had made his own fisheries company in a matter of few years, all from scratch. That was surprising but I was brought up in an atmosphere which had rendered me impervious to surprise as I had subconsciously learned from Baba in my early life that everything was probable, that everything was possible.

Hey look at that. Wait, let it come a little closer. See now? Doesn’t it look like a flying bus from here? Oh of course there’s a reason they call it “Airbus”. By the way, Burj Samaa is only a few miles from the New Dubai International airport. When the foundation stone of Burj Samaa was being laid four years ago, International and Local authorities had done their best to impede the approval of it’s construction at the present site. They said it was too close to the airport. Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zaid, the Ameer of UAE had mediated on the ground that Burj Samaa was the pride of our nation and for that reason had declared that he would not allow any hindrance in the project. It is said that there has been some ulterior motive behind building it over here, distant from Dubai Downtown, a motive that the owner has never shared with anyone, except perhaps the Ameer of UAE.

Oh, I was telling you about my early life. Well, by the time I entered adolescence, I had traversed my entire previous life on a roller coaster, thanks to Baba, and was a strange person for the multitude of circumstances and social classes I had lived in. He sent me to the United States to get a degree in Informatics from a very prestigious institution, something that most people only dreamed of. But that wasn’t really what I wanted. I wanted to be a medical scientist. I dreamed of becoming a world acclaimed innovator in medical science. But my belief in Baba’s sagacity was way more than my loyalty to my dreams. That’s why I never challenged his decision. Instead, I spent some six months in rooting out scientific ambitions from my dreams.

When I returned to my homeland, The Emirates, Baba was fighting for his life in terminal stages of lung cancer. He asked me and my elder brother to carry forward his business, a demand that shattered me once again. I had switched to newer dreams in accordance to the career Baba had forced upon me, an endeavor that had been utterly painful and difficult to accomplish. But, for reasons I’ve already told you, I couldn’t refuse. Baba was my idol. From him came all inspirations in my life. I eventually took over Baba’s business a week after Baba’s existence faded into the graveyard’s soil.

When I stepped into the business, I saw for the first time the economic machinery that had been fueling the privileges I had rejoiced all my life. I never got the opportunity of learning business stratagem from Baba as our relationship was anything but frank. But what I learned from him without words was more than what I could have taken from him otherwise. Baba would often swear that he could see dreams in my eyes and that I could never fail the way I tethered those dreams to my soul. Those words gave me all the confidence I needed to push that business forward despite serious initial failures. My ways of trade were unorthodoxy, something that the manager and the dozen workers didn’t like. But I was too confident to ignore my inner voice, which I believed to be Baba’s soul speaking to me from the heavens. Baba had planted the seed of my dreams in a very fertile soil that he had plowed all his life before he left the world.

Can you imagine how childish my dreams were? I dreamed of possessing the highest floor in the world’s tallest skyscraper. Isn’t that Silly? Well, that’s exactly what everyone else I shared my dreams with used to say. And I got married to the only one on earth who didn’t. After Baba, she has been the most important bridge to my dreams. Well, as you might have inferred already, today I do own the 280th floor of Burj Samaa, the highest point on earth that man has ever inhabited.

That’s because I own Burj Samaa.

I got it constructed over the exact place our hut was thirty years ago. And so, after having lived two decades in Dubai Downtown, I’m back where my life started, only higher.

The XVOLUTION stash.

I got promoted by 3 classes in one go back in high school, something that made me 3 years younger than my class fellows in a snap but turned out to be a disastrous move later when I had to live with inferiority complex for many years.

Me 5 Years Back

When I stepped into Medical School five years ago, I was timid, introverted and perfection obsessed. Being a perfectionist I decided to get myself a whole new personality that freed me from all the bad traits I had and infused the ones required for realistic pursuit of my dreams. I made a blueprint for my destined persona and started organized attempts of transforming myself to that ideal I had drawn. I called that “xvolution”.

We all reason, passively. Few of us, however, use this faculty to bring about drastic changes in our lives, and those of others.To them logical reasoning is a sacred ritual, a comprehensive art. Thanks to xvolution, I was able to acquire this skill of active reasoning too. So xvolution had, like Alchemy had for medieval Muslim scientists, built me a sophisticated framework of logical reasoning upon which later my entire personality development was to base. Other than that, xvolution was a failure. It never worked.

It took me three years to realize that personalities weren’t very malleable after certain age, a discovery that undermined the credibility of the whole xvolution thing. I wasn’t ready to give up but didn’t have any solutions either. Except one. God. Coincidentally, I had got dramatic success in some academic ventures in those days which were so out of proportion of my efforts that I immediately associated them with divine intervention. It felt as if God was calling me to himself and promising me a working alternative to xvolution. It is then that I got totally transformed into a very religious man. More religious than any other person I personally know, even to date.

"God's Loyal Servant" Me during my fourth year in Medical school.

I spent my entire fourth year at Medical school as a loyal servant of God. I’d literally spend hours praying, and supplicating and meditating before God. It was a time of infinite bliss and absolute peace of mind. Getting religious, for reasons, had also made me much more productive in my academic affairs. That year, I studied the most comprehensive of Quranic exegeses. I studied hadeeth. I studied Fiqh. I studied philosophy. I studied theology. The whole year of study brought me to a very important and life-changing conclusion:

God didn’t require me to be what I had turned to and being fundamentally religious explicitly violated the true spirit of religion.

At the beginning of final year, I was once again devoid of a roadmap that would take me to my destiny. I was naturally left with only one option: To leave myself on my own. I did that. I stopped intervening in the inner workings of my head with the hope that the environment around me would shape my personality itself, based on whatever was more suited for it. The results were phenomenal and that decision marked the turning point of my life. Within a month, subconsciously, I changed from a hardcore introvert to a hardcore extrovert. Extroversion, in turn, blessed me with the confidence and communication skills I had longed for, for years. Also, I was objected to social criticism, a luxury I couldn’t enjoy in my introverted days. That criticism, in a way, paved way for objectivity in my thinking. Objectivity in thinking sharpened my decision making skill and made doing complex intellectual tasks more neurologically economical. All this happened in less than two months. But there was still more to come.

Everything was going pretty well until the final year MBBS summer vacations when I was back in a life in which friends weren’t around. I had become so addicted of social interactions that I couldn’t bear the loneliness I was confronted with during the vacation. That month is in fact the gloomiest month I remember to ever have lived. By the end of vacations, I had decided to revert back to the introverted myself to bring back harmony in life. I was about to chalk a rollback plan when suddenly I came across a random person across the Pakistani blogosphere who, for enigmatic reasons, made me realize that the thing my new personality lacked was arts and creativity. So rather than reverting to introversion, I decided to try arts.

As soon as college re-opened after summer vacations and friends were around once again, I was back to normal life. But I honored my pledge of getting creativity into my life and started working on a large scale web project as web designing was the best I knew of arts. The web project, codenamed Parsayi, was a huge success. It got considerable media attention and was applauded by numerous intellectuals, philosophers and scientists from around the world. While working on the project, I was introduced to a totally new type of people: The Creative ones, the type of people I hadn’t socialized with my entire previous life. Through them I learned things which I’d otherwise learn only my making mistakes and after paying heavy penalties. The experiences I gained are so numerous and so diverse that the subject merits a separate and detailed article.

So.

As my five years study of medicine concludes, I have achieved all the dreams I had while stepping into the medical school. In fact, I’ve gone far beyond what I had envisioned back then.

I dream of the skies now.

To,

ezuhaib, or whatever they call you,

Hi,

I would have been dead by today if I wasn’t ignorant enough to realize that 6 tablets of Paracetamol weren’t good enough to vanquish my existence. I’ll keep trying with “better” drugs or higher doses until I make it. Coincidentally, I’m sick these days.  All my friends and family would think I died of respiratory tract infection. See how clever I am? Well, you might be wondering why am I doing all this? Well, why would you want to know? If there was someone to listen to my stories, I’d really love to live.

So yes, that’s the thing. I’ve never been listened to. I’ve never been noticed. My only friend, Asma, has kept saying all these years “You’re adorable; the world is only too dumb to see that” and I’ve always pretended to have been convinced of that argument. Deep inside, however, I have been broken all this time as I could easily see the truth, the bitter truth: I’ve been nothing more than an ugly worthless creature brought into existence just to fill up the space. Yeah, I know you’ll now call me irrational, pessimistic, self-conscious and what not. But I beseech you to see my world from my eyes for a moment. I swear you’ll defend my right of euthanasia once you do that.

Yes. I’ve been in love once. For a year, two years ago. I never told him. I would. I almost did. It was the high school farewell night. I prepared for it for a full hour and got the best dress and ornaments I could buy. “You look like a fairy today”, said Asma while spoon-feeding me with blatant optimism as we stepped into the prom hall. I looked around the hall for Yasir. He was standing amongst his friends near the stage, looking as charming as ever.  As I walked to him, Asma grabbed my hand and said “Good luck. And don’t you say that in front of everyone else. Tell him you need to talk in privacy.” There she let loose my hand and watched me walk to him with a smile on her face and hope in her eyes. My heart was racing and by the time I reached Yasir, my heart was beating so hard that I could actually hear it, and feared that others might hear it too. “Hi”, I said while trying to start the conversation. His reply was something you cannot even imagine :

“Hey Kittie, look at you…. So you thought dressing up better and that funny make-up could make you look any prettier. Haahahha. Just Kidding by the way.”

Alright. He did punctuate that insult with “just kidding”. But seriously, could that compensate? I was so shattered and my dreams so broken that I raced out of the hall, back to my car and straight to my home. I cried all the way back home. But look: I didn’t attempt suicide. I didn’t even think of that. Why would I take my life for an arrogant bastard?

I decided to quit life yesterday, two years after this story, only when circumstances had made me realize that…

Yasir was right.

And there really wasn’t a brighter side in my life which I could look at.

I’m writing to you because Asma used to say “Strangers understand your stories far better than your friends and family and are sometimes the only ones who actually listen to them.” I don’t know if that makes any sense. But since there was nothing to lose, I dropped this message into your inbox. Pardon me if this makes me look like a troll or if I have disturbed you late in the night.

Please do not say, like everyone else, that I am rather pretty and only too pessimistic to see that.

Because, that would make a stupid lie. You haven’t seen me.

Have you ?

Yours Nothing,

Miss Anonymous.

It’s raining. It’s cold. But I swear I’ll not move an inch from this place. No, not even if I get sick. Alright, now listen.

I still love you. Not that I love you more than anything else that exists, you’re the only one I love, or even like. You had been the keystone of the bridge that connected my mind with my soul. Without you, all the understanding I had of this life and this world perished and left me standing clueless in this black meaningless world.

Phony were your promises and fictitious was your existence. Did I ever object? I continued singing for you, every dawn, every dusk. I kissed your feet over and over many times every day for years. Do you remember that? And do you remember when I asked the flying birds to take my messages to you and, in return, bring back yours? And that night when I locked myself in my room and cried before you for hours and beseeched for forgiveness for not being loyal enough to you? Such was my love. Blind. Unconditional. Limitless.

Alas! If only I hadn’t gone beyond the limits you had drawn. Please forgive me. Please come back and vanquish my rationality. I’ll wipe off all that dwells in my head and make ample space for you to live again. I’ll present my existence, my soul to you. Again. Because I still love you.

I swear I do.

Blunt gloom. No people. No emotions. No stories. No life. No Affliction. Only absolute blackness stretching all across the cosmos. Behroz didn’t know what to make of that limbo. He was even doubtful of his existence.

One day, though there were no days in the Black Universe,  Behroz saw a girl approaching him. She was a fairy without wings, an embodiment of light, and the first thing Behroz had ever seen. She carried with her a basket with glowing pearls. The pearls were blue. Their light was immense and vanquished the darkness all around. In no time the girl was sitting next to Behroz.

“Lord Nature has chosen you for a visit to life.” Said the mysterious girl.

“Life?? What’s that ?” Asked Behroz. These were the first words he ever spoke and the girl the first physical thing he ever saw. It felt strange.

“I’m sorry. Enigma is the nucleus of what you’re going to experience. Lord’s creation is not supposed to know answers to these questions”. She affirmed and advanced a blue glowing pearls to Behroz, “Here, take this. This is called soul. Do not lose this, you’ll never get one again, ever… “

As soon as Behroz touched the pearl, the girl disappeared and the darkness all around started vanishing. As veils drew apart from the window of his sentience, he could see himself standing in a meadow, by a roaring creek, with myriads of creatures hoping and creeping and flying all around, some horrid, some adorable. Some shrieking, some barking, some mute. He looked at his hands, his feet and realized that none of the creatures he was looking at were like himself. So this is Lord Nature’s Life. Behroz wondered and smiled.

He wandered across the meadow, tried communicating with random animals and plants, and enjoyed watching the stream water flow with and without patterns until he started feeling very tired and hungry. He had never felt any of those in the black universe he had arrived from and having those feelings made him very perturbed, partially because he didn’t know how to deal with those. He cried to the top of his voice in anguish. If only he knew how colossal were the sufferings that stood ahead compared to mere hunger and fatigue, he might have wished to perish.  After getting exhausted of the fruitless endeavor of crying for help, he fell asleep.

Plain darkness. No people. No emotions. No stories. No life. No Affliction. Again. Behroz, apparently, was back in the black universe and he was glad for that. Life was painless once again. Colorless too. But who cared ?

Then, all of a sudden in the black viewport in front of his eyes, a river started flowing. A heron appeared at its bank and started gobbling fishes laid symmetrically along the bank. It was looking at Behroz. Then, patches of green started appearing, interspersed all around the jet black viewport. Behroz immediately realized that those were Lord Nature’s creations but couldn’t figure out their purpose in the black universe. He stood up from the shallow muddy trench he was laid in to approach the heron. This wasn’t the original black universe, Behroz started feeling, because in the black universe he couldn’t  get out of the trench, nor see anything other than perpetual darkness.

Behroz walked briskly to the proud white heron. He wanted to talk to it. When he reached the river bank and tried communicating with it, to his dismay, the heron didn’t respond as if it was too proud to answer him or too dumb to comprehend his words. Then, to his surprise, the heron walked through his body and vanished. So this isn’t physical. It’s all a delusion. He was quick to educe.

Behroz was now craving to touch something. Anything. He was longing to talk to someone. He was longing to see something more than sporadic patches of green and a flowing river, both of which appeared and disappeared randomly. He realized that, all of a sudden, he was addicted to the life he had just experienced. He was ready to take the pain that came with that life but couldn’t bear the meaningless darkness of the black universe anymore.

“Son. Wake up.” said someone from somewhere. Behroz looked all around but found nothing. The voice echoed again. And again. And again. Then, once again, curtains drew apart from the window of his consciousness and once again, he could see himself lying in the meadows surrounded by life. “Son. Wakeup.” someone said again. But this time he could see that someone as he moved his head to the side. It was an old woman.

“Oh great. I thought you’ll not wake up. Alright listen carefully; I do not have much time.” said the old woman as she moved her hand over Behroz’s cheeks, “You’ve been endowed with what they call life and you have to take care of it no matter how unbearable it gets because you’ll never get it again, ever! “

“Oh. Thanks. But what do I make of it?” Asked Behroz.

“Son. That remains a cipher to all of Lord Nature’s creation. There, in fact, are people all around who claim to have deciphered these mysteries. Never fall for such rogues. Buying a purpose-of-life from anyone around here will only make your life wretched rather than meaningful” Replied the old lady while combing Behroz’s hair with her ageing fingers.

“But there must be something I’m expected to do. For Lord Nature. After all, he blessed us with such a beautiful life” Inquired confused Behroz.

“As I said son, we do not really know. Because it’s a one time opportunity, just have fun with it and avoid getting into situations which take this fun from it. And do not forget helping others having fun with it too.” Said the old lady.

The idea of the whole thing being just for fun was very fascinating. Behroz couldn’t stop questioning, “And will this last forever?”

“No”, the old lady said with a sigh, “We all have to return to the black universe we all came from, no matter how much we dislike going back. And we are not allowed to carry back any recollections or experiences. The good news, however, is that we will exist there forever”.

“No? Really? If we’re all to return and that too empty handed and empty headed, what’s the point of having fun here or even keeping this ‘life’ thing you’re talking about?” Inquired Behroz. He was much too upset now.

“I’m going Son. I can see banshees arriving from across that horizon. They’ll be taking my blue pearl back. And Son, stop being obsessed of these questions. Answers to these do not exist.” She said.

The next moment she was gone.

Behroz looked at his right hand. It had the glowing blue pearl. He caressed it and pledged to take care of it. Mysterious forces, which Lord Nature had commissioned to prevent its creation from unraveling the dark secret of worthlessness of life, had eventually overcome the last drop of rationality in Behroz’s blood.

The Life thing had started making sense now.

Sami was ambling gloomily in his apartment when someone knocked at his door. It was the courier guy with a Package. Sami carried the package to his desk and opened it hastily. To his surprise, it was a box full of cash. He counted the cash. It was a Million Rupees. Sami took a sigh of relief but was still upset.

Three days back he had lost 0.5 million rupees to an old man at a local casino. The old man, who called himself “Ebyud” had admonished Sami … “Never gamble all you have or you’ll be betting your fortune”. But Sami did bet all his savings. He was impulsive. All he cared for was the immediate moment, not his past, nor the future. And the package he had just received was from Ebyud. It had a note saying “You can buy the world with this. I cannot”. That wasn’t something Sami could discern but he was broken with guilt. He didn’t deserve back even the original amount he had lost whereas Ebyud had sent him twice that amount.

The next hour, Sami was driving to the casino to get the old man’s address. Luckily, he found Ebyud right at the casino. Ebyud greeted him warmly and bought him a drink. Ebyud kept talking of things, not giving Sami a chance to talk back. Then, he took Sami to his home. Sami was shocked to see the old man’s home. It was a tiny single room house with unplastered walls and dirty curtains in place of doors. But Ebyud , Sami thought, must be very rich. He dressed well. He talked like big people. He had just sent Sami a million rupees just for nothing! Out of curiosity Sami asked if he had some other “better” house. Ebyud laughed at him and replied, “Only if I could tell you about myself”. All this was making a mystic environment. Sami knew it wasn’t wise to ask more questions. Sami came to his original question, “Why would you…”. Ebyud interrupted, “I told that already. You can buy the whole world with this much. I cannot”. Sami replied in a low voice, “But does that even mean anything?” Ebyud nodded his head in positive and said,” It’s all hard-coded deep in your conscience. You’ll know as soon as you let your conscience express.”…. “But how?” asked Sami. The old man replied ….
“Just stop betting. You’re betting your fortune”.

One week passed. Sami was so perplexed that he didn’t work the whole week. He kept thinking if Ebyud’s words even made any sense. He even considered the possibility of Ebyud being a mad man having pathological spiritual experiences. I haven’t gone to the casino for a week, so why isn’t my conscience speaking?? Damn! Did I even have to believe that old man?? Sami Thought. And he was driving to the casino again. He was too addicted to all that. He made a big bet again only to lose the million rupees he had. Back at his apartment, he took as much alcohol as he could and cried as much as he could. He somehow knew that he’d lose. But he couldn’t stop himself.

When he woke up the other morning, he was all surrounded with beer cans and cigarette ash. He looked at his face in the mirror. His eyes were swollen. His face embodied his guilt. Someone knocked at the door. To his surprise, it was the courier man again.

It was two million rupees this time.

It was 3AM, midnight. I rushed to Jinnah hospital in a rickshaw while vomiting with pain all the way. The pain was so severe that walking from the reception to the medical emergency literally took 10 minutes. There I was welcomed by an unfriendly group of house officers gossiping and laughing in the comfort of their private room. One of them said to the other, “He’s an abuser, probably here just for opiates” and told me to go away after handing over a few tablets of paracetamol. Imagine that!! I was shattered!!  A person so exhausted with pain and for having to travel 25km in that pain looked like a drug abuser to them? Holy Shit !! How could they even say that? I left immediately.

My next destination was the surgical emergency ward. I feared a surgical emergency and I badly expected the docs there to at least examine me. But the dumb asses were too busy to even take a brief medical interview. In the surgical ward, the doctors again told me to take paracetamol.  I asked a doc how I could take paracetamol if I was vomiting with pain every few minutes. She was pissed off at me trying to challenge her as a patient, a layman, but I was right. So she gave me a vial, probably of Diclofenac, and asked me to find a nurse and get that injected. I tried to find one while limping around the whole ward but surprisingly found none. I asked the doc to administer the drug herself but she replied coldly that only paramedics did that. In rage… I smashed the vial, tore her prescription into pieces and threw those in front of her and walked out without seeing her reaction.

It was getting obvious that I could manage myself far better than those negligent professionals. I walked to a nearby medical store and got myself a good analgesic, an anti-emetic and a big bottle of water. I took those but to no avail. By the time I was back in the hospital lawn… I was literally rolling over the grass with pain.  I was longing for a remedy. I was longing for someone who cared. My parents were thousands of miles away, oblivious of my condition. My cousins were too selfish to accompany me. My elder brother (Medical Registrar in the same hospital) was enjoying his dreams in a nearby flat and wasn’t responding to my phone calls.

Money buys care and I had enough of it. I was only late to realize that. I asked a rickshaw wala to take me to the best private hospital around. He took me to a well reputed private hospital. As soon as I reached the hospital gate… paramedical staff rushed towards me and helped me walk into the emergency ward. I was instantly taken to a bed and a well-mannered doctor came to me immediately and took a detailed medical interview and examined me comprehensively. He immediately cannulated me and administered one the most powerful analgesics that exist, administered some sedatives and did some fluid resuscitation. A nurse came to me just to reassure me and see if I was any better. In no time I was asleep oblivious of everything in and around myself. Money had done the magic.

From that day onward, I have sworn not to go to a public hospital at any cost. I had many subsequent attacks of renal colic and every time I had those, I went to private hospitals. Today I stand by my patients whenever they criticize the doctors or say that they are being ignored by them. All this surprises most people.  But then, they haven’t been “there”.