The magic and misery that these books are...they consume you, churn you, reform you and make you a different person. One of such books is ‘When breath becomes Air’ by the late Dr. Paul
Kalanithi.
Books become special and precious when you can associate with
them, when they bring alive your story or the story of a loved one. In the initial days, for me, it was a journey of courage to pick
up this book and take a plunge into the corridors of hospitals and cases of
brain tumors. Every disease is sacred, every case an emotion and every death a
scar. I never imagined myself reading a book dealing with brain diseases and
hospitals after my abysmal performance post watching movies and videos of
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients. This was a whole new escalation. It was brain tumors and cancers.
On each page, this book evokes different emotions - sometimes it made me weak and want to collapse and cry sometimes
determined to live a life of meaning. I gathered courage, each page was a
deliberate effort to understand suffering but at the same time a literary
magic, a trans-formative journey, a reflective growth and as Paul says
“I felt that life wasn't
about avoiding suffering.”
At times I scorned the trifling existence I have
with no consequence, no impact and all so meaningless. I wonder what would it be to live
that life of decisions of consequence every day, bearing responsibility for
someone’s life, and here, we fear making decisions in between two almost
identical jobs only varying in the number of kilometers to be traveled every
day...trivial just found a new definition! And so did Profound when he wrote…
"As a resident, my
highest ideal was not saving lives - everyone dies eventually - but guiding a
patient or family to an understanding of death or illness."
I lived and I died with him. Through
his words, I believed in his dreams and the promises the future held and then
saw those dreams shatter and watched life wither away day by day and breath by
breath. I wept, mourned his death after a year and a half of his death and felt
a tinge of guilt as I remember cozily and comfortably studying for my final MBA
exams on the day Paul passed away – 9th March 2015.
This book was a means to escape
my shallow reality, it was a means to touch that life of consequence that I
might never have but it will always remind me to do more on days when…
“I Plod. I Ponder. Some days I simply Persist”
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