A day that will remain deeply etched in my heart forever….

After procrastinating for nearly a week, I studied peacefully last night. I guess the reason was that I was reading “Genes and society” - One of my all time favorite subjects. Purines….Pyrimidines….DNA double helix… Watson… Crick… Boyen… Coher… Transcription… Translation… amino-acids…poly-peptide chains… White blue selection… restriction mapping… hybridization… Mendel… His laws of inheritance… polymerase chain reaction… variable number tandem repeat… restriction fragment length polymorphism... Southern blotting…
Hey, don’t gimme that look….I am not trying to show off….neither am I revising my stuff… It’s just that when we read all these stuff, we appreciate and understand why we are what we are, what we are made up of and why we react in the way we do to situations. Wow, life is too complex men.

Anyway I was also able to sleep peacefully last night. Then, when I woke up a little late the next morning (hey…11 o’ clock is not that late…lol…) only to find that I was late for a ‘particular secret club thing’. It was basically all about listening to people in trouble and helping them sort their feelings. Today morning was the first time I was having my duty. I was very excited about the kind of calls I might get and the way I would go about helping them. I rushed up to the venue thinking I was late only to find that my duty was only at 12 noon. So, I thanked god as I didn’t miss anything. Then I was patiently waiting near the phone, hoping for it to ring for half an hour. When nothing happened I was too bored and I just flipped through a few notebooks there. They were the log books of the previous call records. I was simply flabbergasted on reading them. How sinful a life, some people lead. I observed that most of the callers were victims of some cruel atrocities by these people. One of them that affected me the most was a pathetic 14-year-old kid calling up unsure of what to do after being violently molested by her 40-year-old uncle; it was too disgusting to think about the existence of such people on earth. Those who cant prioritize their needs and duties. And this was just one among the cruelties that the victims were subjected to.

And then I waited hopefully for the phone to ring.

But then, I had to leave the place rather irritated when I received not even a single call even after 4 hours. Phew…then, in the same bitched mood I went to a befriending seva organized by a particular club in our university. It was a visit to a hospital where we would have to talk and feed the patients and also to make them feel as comfortable as possible. I was rather tensed on how I would handle the situation as it was another first for me today.

I was introduced to an old and lonely lady in a secluded ward. She looked like she was well above 80 years. She had no visitors at all and that made my heart heavy. She looked very fragile and sick. It seemed to me like that she would neither speak nor understand if I spoke to her. But, I wasn’t sure of what to do. Then, the nurse there confirmed my suspicion that the aunty understood nothing and so would be better if I rested there until she brought dinner for her. So, I sat besides her feeling very guilty as I was not of any help to her. I felt very incomplete and considered it a grave error to have signed up for the seva.

Then, after 20 minutes the nurse brought her food. It was of 6 different colors brown, white, pink, red, custard-colored and green; but they looked very similar in their composition and consistency. (So pathetic it was to look at the food…)The nurse said me “She has quite a lot of food because she is on high calcium and high sugar…” and gave the details of how I was supposed to feed her and what all. Patiently I fed her not clear if she liked it or not. And then I stopped feeding her when she refused to open her mouth any further. Then, she got her dessert, an ice-cream, which was the only thing that she ate fondly. Being an ardent lover of ice-cream myself, it was very encouraging to observe that Ice-creams saw no distinction of age among people. It felt as though I had successfully climbed the whole of Mt.Everest when I finished feeding her. It felt so happy and satisfied as though a hole of uncertainty was blocked in my life. Then, it was time for me to leave. I went to bid my farewell to her. That was the moment of pleasant surprise for me. She held my hand closed her hands over mine and took it to her heart. As she couldn’t speak, it was her way of expressing her gratitude towards me. Instantly I was so touched by her act and tears of joy welled up my eyes and finally I was so happy I signed up for the event. I am looking forward for more days to spend there in the hospital.

And yeah, honestly, it was a day that will remain deeply etched in my heart forever.