Lest We Forget

“The doctor said he might have – emm..  Parkin’s.. err…Parkinson’s. Yes, yes. That’s what he said – Parkinson’s disease. He wants an MRI of the brain to confirm.”

“Oh”, he said as his heart knotted, and continued – “Mom, can you give the phone to father? I want to talk to him.” He switched hands because his phone got heated up showing sheer nonchalance to the frosty air-conditioning inside the office. Or maybe the phones nowadays are really smart, and by some cutting-edge predictive modeling can indicate the gravity of the conversation thermally.

“Ok wait, I’ll give him the phone”, she said.

“Hello? Hello son, can you hear me?”, he said mustering all the courage he had to not let his voice crackle.

For the longest second, there hung a digital silence. Like smartphones, time is thermally susceptible too, except that it freezes under pressure.

“Yes father, I can hear you. Father don’t worry. It’s just a prognosis. And Parkinson’s is anyway nothing serious. You’ll be fine”, he lied as he stood looking outside the ashen evening sky, with his left hand balming his forehand.

“Okay beta. I’ll get the MRI done tomorrow. But beta”, he paused with his voice losing its tenor, “Beta, I was always a little scared of going into that machine.”

“But fa…”

“But don’t worry..” he interrupted. “I won’t delay it anymore. You carry on with your work. Must be busy in office. Bye bye.”

“Bye”

The skies had turned grey by now and the winds had started scurrying, trying to cuddle up the surface of the lakes that kissed the edge of the office. ‘Water Side’ they’d named the building.

Inside the office, people were busy being busy at their neatly organized cubicles. Apoorv, rushed back to his and started his research on Parkinson’s. His heart-beat raced like a gazelle chased by a lion, his eyes pierced the screen, and every single mitochondria of his body went into an overdrive as he frantically gobbled up the articles. When he was done, he felt a lump in his throat. For a few long moments he forgot to breathe.

Some of his father’s symptoms were consistent with Parkinson’s. Though not fatal, Parkinson’s has no cure yet. It starts with movement-related disorders, and later causes thinking and behavioral problems, dementia, and depression. Though it can be managed with drugs, but as the disease progresses, the drugs eventually become ineffective and the eventual resort is palliative care to improve quality of life.

He drew a long breath and with glistened eyes that hoped obscurity, looked away from the claustrophobic screen to the façade of the office. The world was still busy, it hadn’t stopped, unlike the parallel world he lived in.

No but that can’t be true. The neurologists would have definitely caught it earlier. And only some symptoms match, many others don’t – he argued with himself. There is fine line between doubt and denial. And there is no way to know when one has crossed it. Okay. Even with these symptoms the chances of actually having Parkinson’s were less than 1%. But then, that’s why probability is so cruel. In profound matters of life and death, the 1% screws the 99%.

At night, as he sat at his desk in his hotel room working on scenario planning for cost optimization for his client, he wondered whether in our lives we bear sub-optimal costs by not planning out our life-scenarios properly. Whether by unwittingly committing to the ‘race’ we become too busy to account for a scenario where those who care for us might run out of time to continue doing so. Whether by succumbing to You-Only-Live-Once philosophy, we forget that they’ll live only once too.

Whether their sole demand of having a tiny part of our time is so difficult to fulfill. Whether we fail to realize that there will once come a day when their manifestation will be only in the intangible, and we’ll regret not having done enough. That’s an inordinately high cost to pay. The thought knifed his heart. Maybe we should treat our lives as corporations, where revenues are happiness, and costs are the time we spend. And like every successful corporation, we should operate only the high margin and/or high growth product lines, shutting down the rest.

The MRI was done the next day.

“Beta, the report will be delivered on Thursday at 5 pm. Don’t worry, with God’s grace, I’ll be fine. You carry on with your work. Must be busy in office. Bye bye.” he said.

‘How could he be so calm?’, he wondered. When a drop of liquid is poured on a very hot surface, the part of liquid that first comes into contact with the surface becomes an insulating layer of vapor keeping the remaining drop safe and calm. Scientists call this the Leidenfrost effect. Maybe it’s this hope of God’s grace – the first line of defense for the believers when in the heat – that was keeping him calm. But the layer of vapor can only delay the inevitable. Slowly, the droplet gets annihilated.

Time dripped tortoise-ically on Thursday. After every one hour, the clock slothed by only a couple of minutes. They say work expands to fill in the time available to complete it. That day, work shrunk and shrunk until it collapsed into an irreversible singularity. But then, unlike matter, work can be created out of nothing. The more senior you become, the godlier you get at creating work. “Secondary research” saved the day.

When the clock finally struck 5, Apoorv called his mother.

“Hello Mom, did you get the report?”

“Son we are stuck in traffic. There’s a CM rally that’s caused a huge jam”

“What! Rally? Anyway, let me know when you get it”

O how his blood boiled! If the sap of the CM’s life was extracted and poured on Apoorv’s veins that moment, there would be nothing Leidenfrostic about its destruction.

An hour later, Apoorv’s phone rang. It was his mother. Strangely, reluctance trucked his heart. He didn’t want to answer the call. Between now and receiving the news, there were still a few moments to go – moments in which there was still a probability that things were fine. There was hope. And hope’s all we have eventually. But as he gazed at the phone he realized that reality had already transpired. He was just taking temporary refuge in ignorance. There’s only one way to pull out a band-aid – with one quick pull. Preferably when one is under the influence – a luxury Apoorv didn’t have then.

“Hello. Ma, what does the report say?”

“Hello beta, can you hear me? Hello?”

“Yes, Ma. I can hear you, what does the report say?” he raised his voice.

“No Parkinson’s, beta. The doctor has suggested some exercises, father should be fine.”

That moment, that very moment, the sound of traffic, of the drivel of the colleagues chatting in his car, of the annoying music being played – everything faded away like the last rays of the sun do after a scorching summer day. A mountain just fell off Apoorv’s chest. He closed his eyes and breathed the longest breath of his life yet.

There’ll be a zillion times you’ll hear a “No” in your life – from friends, lovers, interviewers, colleagues, government officials. You’ll come to hate that word. It can give you sleepless nights. Until a doctor one day says “No” to a prognosis of an incurable disease. A ‘No’ will never feel better.

“Ma, give him the phone”

“Hello beta, I told you I’ll be all fine. These doctors are always confused. You carry on with your work. You must be ve…”

“No father, I’m not that busy” he interrupted. “I’ll see you on the weekend. Take care. Bye”

As he pushed the phone into its haven, a silent tear eschewed from the corner of his eye, rolled down the terrain of his cheek, held onto the chin for a brief moment before taking a solemn dive into nothingness. He wanted to jump in joy. But sometimes it feels better to sink into your seat protectively hugging the joy like a mother cuddles her babies, than sprinkle it away to the world.

Within 2 days, his happiness had curved from a global minima to a global maxima. It’s in the curves where the wisdom lies, where we learn our lessons.

We are all in a classroom, with the topper being Life – she’s smart, suave, seems to know everything, her hand raises to answer every question. Teachers adore her, the other students rave about her, they want to be like her. She says there are infinite possibilities that we can achieve, infinite ways to lead our lives. And then there is a shy, silent lad with dark cavernous eyes – Death – he’s the twin brother of Life, only quite the opposite. He stays in his own world, scribbling away indecipherable patterns on the wooden desk, not caring about others. People find him odd. They don’t understand him, hence fear him. But if you muster some courage to go up and befriend him, he’ll hold your hand and invite you into his dark yet beautiful world, show you how finite and uncertain everything is, how important the time left in your life is and hence out of the “infinite possibilities” how limited your options really are, how limited the people who matter in your life are. Once you understand him, you no longer fear him. Of all your friends he’ll never be the best, but he’ll be the wisest.

Wise. Precise. Concise.

Death.

__END__