Revere human

Sixty five is not very old is it? It couldn’t be I don’t feel that old now. It was not like this before, a fifty year old used to look really old- with grey hair and a tired face, eyes looking terribly ancient and without any sparkle in them.

I have seen such people. I may not be like them. I still feel that I can rule the world.

How the time passes. It was yesterday that I left my home in search of new pastures. New pastures? It’s a cliché is it not?

Well whatever, I can’t bother about that now. I am mourning the passage of years. I feel like I am trapped inside a dry twig which could snap and crumble at any moment. Twig is bad metaphor, but I have to do with that, I have some experience with old and dry twigs, they disappears magically when you pick them up.

An old man could do just that. Turn into dust.

The physical and psychical, both the vehicles get tired. Perhaps they are bored, not tired. And wants to go away, rest.

Fatigue gets to metals too.

Some say after one’s past forty the body begins to shut down. Not that I had any such feeling at that time. But a doctor said so to me. Not about myself of course. My father was lying in a coma with a ventilator attached. He was only 73.

The doctor was trying to convince me to remove the ventilator and let him pass to the other world.

I would have none of that.

The doctor was brutal.

“He is a tired horse. There is no use flogging a tired horse”

I wanted to catch him by the throat and shout at him.

“You bloody idiot. It’s not some fucking horse that you are talking about. It’s about a man, a man who is like you and me. It’s not a machine which you shut off to save fuel and energy.”

I controlled myself with difficulty. I did not say anything and just looked at him and thought him dead.

He must have read my thoughts. He threw up his hands and left. I could not forgive him for what he said about my father. I wanted to punish him in some way, make him see that a being is different, that it has an identity. That every being was unique and can not be replaced.

The guy lying in the ventilator was not an expendable thing to me. I couldn’t artificially strangle him like that and cut off his life breath. He was not even a body to me. He was a collection of thoughts, feelings, actions and their effects.
He was human, and I revered human.
I don’t know if you have you lost some one you love, who has been in your life, who resides in your memories in innumerable forms? If you haven’t, you would not understand what I am talking about. Before my father went I was like god, nothing could have troubled me. I would have taken anything and everything.

Its not that he supported me always. But he was there. Sometimes the mere presence would save your soul.

My brother and sisters were more practical. They decided to cut of the life supply. It devastated me.

My poor father had told me a story about how his father died. The doctors had drilled a hole in his abdomen to clear the clogged bladder. He had expressly told my father not to allow any such procedure on him. He was superstitious and believed that he would die if operated upon.

He died and my father used to grieve about it always. The grand father was operated upon while my father was called away on some important business.

The same had to happen with my father too. He was not afraid of being operated upon. But he had lost consciousness and had not fully recovered. I felt responsible because I had to take decisions for him.

They wanted to do the procedure on him. I wondered why science has stood the same in all those years. I was in anguish. I felt a superstitious fear that he would die of it as he could not obey his father’s instructions causing granddads death. Such fear has no reason attached to it. It’s always irrational.

But I could not refuse. His bladder was blocked and it could have lead to complications. I gave my consent and he never recovered till the ventilator was removed.

No one knows what people undergo at such moments. You need to go through it yourself to know what it feels like.

Now that I am old all these things come back to me. I can still remember that doctor and have not forgiven him still. I could understand his professionalism, but not his insensitivity. Human beings are more than machines are they not?

They may die and perhaps death is ludicrous, especially to doctors, but that do not make the dying any less human. They are not just a bundle of organs, limbs and bones. They are living things, persons, and individuals.

Even the inevitable could be told in civil terms. Not because the one who is dying is any one important, but because that person has lived and life is always difficult, hard, and punishing.