Our Ram is Home

 

|| Hari Om ||

On the 22nd of January 2024, we, the Shraddhavans of the Sanatan Dharma, witnessed the greatest of events: the re-establishment of our Prabhu Shree Ram at His birthplace, Ayodhya.

We celebrated this occasion with our beloved Sadguru Aniruddha Bapu, who danced with all of us, His children.

Our joy knew no bounds.

As I watched this divine spectacle, I was filled with a feeling that was far beyond anything I can truly express in words.

This humble poem is an attempt to express this in-expressible feeling, for all of us.

Dance and Rejoice, Our Ram is Home!

#JaiShreeRam

#RamRajya

#AyodhyaRamMandir

#Ambadnya

#Naathsanvidh

#DrArnavMHT

Kaleidoscope: Broken pieces can make a beautiful picture

 || Hari Om ||

For those of you who do not know me personally, a brief introduction:

 I have completed my MD in General Medicine from KEM Hospital.

I joined Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai as a Senior Resident in Medical Oncology in December 2020.

This is a collection of my thoughts and feelings that I have imbibed in my Oncology residency. This is a branch that not many are ready to step into. A branch everyone, patients and doctors alike, associates with suffering. But where there is suffering, there is hope. And in the midst of darkness, we appreciate the light even more.

Kaleidoscope: Broken pieces make a beautiful picture

Working in the medical field for more than 5 years now,  and particularly in the last few years, working in oncology, I have got an insight into how fragile our lives really are. We live in bubbles, secure in our own illusions. A feeling that things will always be the same. It is not always so. We are all just a word, a sentence or phone call away from the bubble bursting. The picture-frame shattering into a thousand shards; jumbled pieces that may never be the same again.

This is true for all of us, whether we see it or not. And getting diagnosed with a medical problem, particularly something that sounds as scary as “cancer” can shake the very foundations of a person’s life. I have seen that happening, I see it every day. But I do not write this to spread despair or sorrow. No, I write this, because even where I saw darkness and suffering in patients’ lives, they showed me so many ways in which they find joy and light for themselves. 

 

 

They picked up the broken pieces of their lives, accepted them and rearranged them till the picture was bright again. Till the cracks arranged themselves into the intricate patterns of snowflakes, and light could shine through. A thousand different colours, a changing picture with just a small shift of perspective. Like a kaleidoscope. And those that try to find the light for themselves, add a bit of light and colour wherever they go.

 

 

 

 It's not that I feel that just positive thinking is enough to cure or heal, not at all. All I feel is that a touch of positivity makes everything easier. That applies to all our lives, not just for those who are ill.

I would like to quote a patient of mine here. She was under treatment for a stage of her disease that would essentially require her to be on some form of chemotherapy life-long. She was already a few years along in her treatment when I met her. By this time, many people are (understandably) tired of visiting the hospital some 2-3 times a month, and fed up of the constraints that puts on their lives. Not this lady, not at all.  Her energy and enthusiasm exceeded that of even the doctors. We looked more-unwell than her! I asked her the secret to her spark. She told me her very simple philosophy. “The hospital is my temple. I visit it once a month, to get my life extended by another month. That is God’s blessing.”

I was stunned. She had turned her chemotherapy into a pilgrimage, something she actually looked forward to. She had looked past all calculations of life-expectancy and was just living her life for all it was worth. She opened my eyes to a new perspective about my work too. I was a priest now. A priest in the Temple of Life. I counted my blessings a little more that day. 

Very often, we allow our work and life stressors to get us down. I know it happens to all of us. And I have always found that when my own flame is burning a little low, God sends me an Angel. By this, I mean that He sends someone into my life that is so full of warmth and light, that I remember to try to be that way too.  I have met a lot of patients and even their relatives who have changed my way of thinking. I recently met a young lady who is pursuing her own medical residency after completing her Cancer therapy. She had enough light and energy in her to power the electrical fittings in the room. We could have probably asked her to step in as a back-up generator in the event of a power outage.

She was admitted in our ward for fever. And each time her fever dropped a little below 100F and she felt just a bit better, she would walk around and talk to the other patients, to tell them of her struggles, the things she has overcome; that they would make it too. In the short time that she was in the ward, the other patients, and even this doctor (me), felt just a little bit brighter. Just a little bit happier. “Just a little bit” is a lot.

Hair-loss is something that has a really strong psychological impact on the patients. Its something that doctors know will happen, but we are not the ones who have to live with it. In this context, I came across the heart-warming tale of 2 sisters, one of them planned for a cancer therapy. As soon as the diagnosis was made, the other sister got her own hair cut short.  They faced it together. She shared her experience with another one of our patients who was a bit upset at the time, hurting from the loss of her hair. And after they talked, I saw that child smile, really smile, for the first time in so many days. It was beautiful.

It is very easy to lose sight of that which kept keeps us going. We all carry our own burdens, and it is definitely important to shoulder these as well. But if we can carry them without losing sight of the little joys in life, the little things that make us who we are, I think we could walk a great deal further.

A particular event stands out in my mind. I remember that I had a night duty that day.  I was tired. I was stressed about something ( we are always stressed about something, it’s a matter of degree). In fact, I had a truck-load of pending submissions. So I geared up to try and finish some work while I could.

I entered the patients’ room to just see that everyone was okay. To my surprise, I found the room alive with singing and laughter. The 4 patients in the room were playing “Antakshari.” It sounds fictional even as I write it now. I felt as if I’d walked into a scene from a movie. I was happy to see them having fun, but I was a bit worried that my presence would dampen the mood. I tried to beat a hasty exit.  It was not to be. Their ring-leader, the one who had started this Antakshari business in the first place, called me back in and asked me to join in as well! I couldn’t exactly say no, so I joined in; shyly at first, then with an enthusiasm to match my friends in the room. See, I said friend. I entered the room as their doctor, and left as their friend. We sang together for almost an hour that day. And somewhere, a little piece of my soul was renewed that night. The pending work also went much better, and all the weight on my shoulders felt so much lighter.

So it is for all of us. We all face these times when the world tilts on its axis and it seems like things will never be the same again. In those times, we need our Faith the most. We may be able to see only a jumble of pieces, a mess where nothing makes sense. Sometimes, the pattern is not for us to see. God’s Hand is at work.  Transforming those broken pieces into a beautiful mosaic, His masterpiece. His Plan will always prevail. We just need to open our eyes to see. 

 

 

 

Even in the darkest of the times, the Sun always rises again. And while we wait for the sunrise, It helps to light a little candle for ourselves, for those around us, so that the path becomes visible again. If we can give a little joy and add a little colour to lives we touch, this world will be a more beautiful place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My older blog posts are listed at the top of the page.
If you liked this, do read the others too!

 

||Shree Ram||

|| Ambadnya ||

|| Naathsanvidh ||

 -Dr Arnav H. Tongaonkar ( DrArnavMHT)

26.3.23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Yourself

 || Hari Om ||

“ Finding yourself “

It's been a hectic few months. A tireless series of duties, merging into a seemingly endless tunnel, and the tunnel vision that comes with it. The next task, the next goal, the next objective. 

I say this not to highlight my work or my branch, but to point out that it is much the same for all of us. We all have something or the other that keeps us moving. An endless series of real, virtual or self-imposed deadlines that bind us, that drive us: or so we think. So we keep telling ourselves.

Well, it finally took me a viral fever( some chap less famous than our dear Covid ); a forced leave and an excess of time spent in the company of my thoughts; to have an all-important conversation with that special, special someone: myself!

I realized that it’d been ages since I had actually sat down and looked at myself. Actually spoken to myself. Actually checked to see if the person I think of as “ my self “ still exists, or has been swept away long ago by the tides of time.

Have I really been thinking about the things that mattered most to me before? Have I been giving enough time to the people that matter? Have I been asking myself these questions frequently enough?

Probably, the answer is “no” to all.

Yes, it is easy to blame a busy schedule, but I realized something different. Something I can attest for myself, and probably rings true for a lot of you reading this as well!

We bury ourselves in our work, in our “fun”, in our social media or whatever else, precisely to avoid this sort of intimate conversation with self! A talk with your “soul”, so to speak.

It is so much easier to keep going with the flow than to actually pause for breath and take a look at where you’re flowing.

The digital age, with a thousand blessings, has made everything so much easier, so much more accessible. It also drowns us in a sea of information, keeps us so cocooned in a shell of entertainment, that it becomes easy to forget the people we once were.

How long do we spend submerged in the tide before we forget what matters to us the most?

So I share with you my journey of self-re-discovery. It was like finding that faded old bookmark in your favourite novel. The old photograph that captures so much more of the memory than is visible in the frame.

My Faith has always been my anchor. Again, faith helped me stand truly still, if only for a moment, and understand where I am. Here you must understand that faith is itself a journey, a dynamic process that keeps renovating itself. It is not an endpoint to be achieved. It is something that changes you, and changes with you. And so it changed me again. I sat down and had a quiet conversation with God. I regained perspective of what it was that mattered most to me. The core values that make me who I am. Things that should definitely change, and things that should never change. I reached out to the people that matter to me, some out of touch, none forgotten, and it only ever takes a single word to rekindle sparks of true friendship.

At the end of the day, I could see myself in the mirror, look myself in the eye and be at peace with what I saw.

The other thing I realized was that I had never been lacking the time. I had just been lacking the insight, the will and probably the courage to sit down and have a frank word with myself!

As a dear friend said to me recently: “ everyone has their own poison”. Mine was probably keeping myself busy, one way or the other. A forced break, an essential pause for breath, and I see the world anew, or rather I see again everything I saw before.

So I encourage you. Wherever you are. Whoever you are. Whatever you are doing.

Take that time off for yourself, not by falling ill with a viral, but by speaking openly with yourself and finding out and finding out what it is that matters most to you. What it is that makes you: you.  What would you like to change? What would you like to keep the same, forever?                                                                                                

The conversations and the answers may surprise you, but you will get a better understanding of the person you should know best: yourself!

None of us is perfect. As Bapu has so frequently said in His discourses, Perfection is an illusion. Only God is Perfect. We are human and we are bound to stumble, to make mistakes. The best we can do is strive to be one step ahead of where we are today.

And moving forward starts with knowing where you stand. Here. Now. At this moment.

So, take that breath. Take that pause. Gather your bearings, and then take that step forward. I’m sure each step will be much stronger than the last!

My older blog posts are listed at the top of the page.
If you liked this, do read the others too!

Follow the blog to receive regular updates on new posts:

 ( Click the follow button in the column to the right ! )

|| Shree Ram ||

|| Ambadnya ||

|| Naathsanvidh ||

|| I Love You my Dad ||

• Dr Arnav H. Tongaonkar ( DrArnavMHT)

02/06/22

 

( those of you who do not know me personally, I have completed my MD in General Medicine from KEM Hospital in September 2020.

I joined Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai as a Senior Resident in Medical Oncology in December 2020, and am currently in the second year of my oncology residency.)

 

The Lady in the Painting : Short Story

 || Hari Om ||

The Lady in the Painting

With weary steps, the Artist boarded the train. Truth be told, he had been many things, even at a young age. Tried his hand at everything, even got a lot of acclaim. But he was a simple soul at heart. 

For the present, he was an Artist, and a weary one at that. The well of inspiration that added so much colour and life to his works seemed to be drying up. He was on a journey to his hometown, to rediscover some part of himself that had drifted off, as life took its course.

He sat down in the empty bogey and took a moment to greet his companion. She smiled back at him from the canvas: his most famous work: “The Lady “. She was young and vibrant, captured mid-smile. Truth be told, he had no idea who she was, or if such a person even existed. It was a face his mind had picked at random from the crowd. 

Over the  years, he had spent a lot of time with her picture and formed a lot of ideas about what she must be like as a person. He smiled at himself.  This was the fruit of solitude and an overly-creative mind. It was folly to look at a picture and try to get the measure of a person!

Lost in his own thoughts, he dozed off.

He awoke to the sound of a low and melodious voice. It seemed he had a human companion in the bogey, and she was having a polite argument with the porter. She expressed herself firmly in slow, measured words, and duly won the round. 

He turned to take a look at her, and almost jumped out of his skin. It was HER. The Lady.  The Lady in the painting. What astronomical odds, what conspiracy of God’s Hand had brought about this moment! That their paths should ever cross. Hastily, he returned the painting to its covered case. Keeping it visible would have been awkward beyond measure.

Presently, the argument was settled, and silence prevailed. She returned to her seat.

He looked at her again, the resemblance was very strong, though not perfect. To him, it seemed as if his painting had come to life. She noticed him looking, read something in his face and smiled mischievously: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! I hope I don’t look that scary”

He smiled too. “ No, its just that I thought you looked familiar” 

The conversation sparked off, and they spoke for hours, hours that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. They had very little enough in common, but it mattered not.  Both of them represented the missing pieces  of glass that completed their kaleidoscopic views of the world. There was  something about her voice, her manner, he connected so much more with her than he had with “ people like him“. One by one, the shells he built around his core fell away. 

She was very different from the picture he had painted of her in his mind; for he had seen her as he saw the world. And everyone is built differently. She was what she was, and she was beautiful.

They spoke of nothing concrete, but still spoke of much. They were parallel banks of a river, on their own separate journeys; yet the words built bridges they didn’t even know existed.

He felt himself getting immersed in the depths of the conversation, in the depths of her; and he was floating, not drowning. 

It is difficult to immerse yourself in the depths of a person, and emerge unchanged…

The train whistled, signalling the next stop. The spell was broken. She got up from her seat abruptly.

“ That’s my stop,” she said. “ I really felt good talking to you. I guess this is goodbye. I hope we meet again someday” 

An awkward handshake, and she walked away.

Words can change the meaning of a book. Seconds can change the course of a lifetime. 

In that spilt second, as he watched her walk away, the Artist realised something. The inspiration he was looking for was not a destination, it was a journey. And he had found the person he wanted by his side through it all. 

They say a single event can redefine your perspective. Shatter and rearrange everything you always thought was unbreakable, till you see the world again, in a new light. Often, that event is a person. 

He sat there frozen, a storm of a thousand thoughts flooding his mind. There was so much he didn’t know. So much that could go wrong. But there was only one way to find out. Time to take a leap of faith.

She was near the door now, she turned to wave out to him. “Goodbye”. Everything stood still. It was just the two of them, and a moment frozen in time. Then she smiled. It was a ray of purest sunshine that cleared all the clouds and pulled him out of his slumber.

Now or never. 

He got up from his chair of comfort, and took a single step forward…

The train lurched to a stop. The Artist woke up with a start, his heart pounding. It took him a moment to find himself. For a second, he was young and full of vigour. Then his eyes found focus; he saw his gnarled old hands, with parchment skin and the spots of age. A lock of curly white hair danced in his vision. The same soul, in an aging vessel.

He smiled. The memory of the Lady, of that day, always did that to him. Across time, space or anything else that had ever separated them. He turned to the seat next to him and looked at her, resting there. She still looked the same. The same glow, the same vitality, even after all these years. A lifetime spent together, and yet it seemed like just a moment.

There Lady was so much more than the picture he had painted. She was a person, full of beauty and warmth and so many imperfections. Just like him. Just like all of us are so much more than the pictures painted of us.

Their journey together had been a long one, but worthwhile, every step of the way.

He picked her up from the chair, and wiped a speck of dust from her frame. She smiled back at him from the canvas, an echo of that moment, so many years ago. He could almost see her waving goodbye. A single tear rolled down his cheek, not of sorrow, but of fulfilment, of gratitude.

He smiled back at her and said: “I think my love, we have reached our station.  Time to get off the train” 

So saying, they stepped into the sunlight.  Together. Always. 

My older blog posts are listed at the top of the page.
If you liked this, do read the others too!

Follow the blog to receive regular updates on new posts:

 ( Click the follow button in the column to the right ! )

|| Shree Ram ||

|| Ambadnya ||

|| Naathsanvidh ||

|| I Love You my Dad ||

-DrArnavMHT 

14/4/22

Connect 2.0: Healing the Doctor-Patient Relationship

|| Hari Om ||

For those of you who do not know me personally,

 a brief introduction:

 

 I have completed my MD in General Medicine from KEM Hospital in 

September 2020.

I joined Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai as a Senior Resident in Medical Oncology in December 2020.

This is a collection of my thoughts and feelings that I have imbibed in my Oncology residency. This is a branch that not many are ready to step into. A branch everyone, patients and doctors alike, associates with suffering. But where there is suffering, there is hope. And in the midst of darkness, we appreciate the light even more.

Connect 2.0: Healing the Doctor-Patient Relationship

This blog post is a continuation from something I had written as an MD General Medicine Resident. "Connect" was a concept that I visualized, where doctors and patients get to know each other better as people, get to understand who and what they are, when not bound by health and disease. People, getting to know other people. No hierarchy.

Now, I’ve spent almost a year as a Medical Oncology resident at Tata Memorial Hospital. 

Medical Oncology in many ways differs from the rest of medicine, in that we are not always treating to “cure” and that simply disease control or symptomatic relief are also acceptable outcomes. The branch of oncology is very vast and complex, and as a junior “Senior” resident, there are many questions thrown my way by the patients that I may not be able to answer immediately. Work is exhausting, hours are long and the reading matter is more exhaustive(and exhausting) than I’ve ever encountered before. But all said and done, work is very rewarding.

More rewarding still is the lives we touch and stories we see unfolding in front of us.

 

Most of what I’m writing here is not just about myself, but things I’ve observed from my teachers, seniors and colleagues, and of course our patients

At the end of the day, people are people. Both doctors and patients have the same needs, wants, likes and dislikes as anyone else. True, we are bound together as the sufferer and the healer, but that doesn’t really change who we are as people (or at least it shouldn’t).

Also, we doctors invariably end up spending more time in the company of our patients than we do in the company of our families. If you’re spending so much time with someone, you may as well get to know them well.

 

All it takes is a little conversation. A few sentences more than the basic: “ How many times did you get fever today ?” , or “How is the nausea ? “ . A few sentences that remind the patients that we are human too. A short conversation on cricket, the news, politics, a snippet about the latest Bollywood gossip, or even discussing our favourite singers! All it takes is a moment to form a connection, to provide a topic to discuss, to laugh about. To smile, together. 

 

Here, I feel the initiative lies with the doctor to spark off the connection. 

 

Patients often hesitate to ask questions even regarding their illness, making off topic conversation a distant entity. Once you open the doors, there’s so much more you can learn about each other. In fact, once there is a normal conversation going, people feel more comfortable sharing their problems. People. It is not just patients who can share their problems. We doctors have problems too. And more than that, we have small joys that we want to share as well. Before you know it, you end up sharing tiny bits of each other’s lives. You know that patient X has been staying away from her dog due to chemo, and really misses him. You know that Y is an artist and has promised to show you some of his sketches at the next visit.  You know that the elderly gentleman, bedridden with high fever, is a professor with a mind sharper than Sherlock and looks forward to playing a game of chess with you once his fever settles. Suddenly, you have a tonne of well-wishers for a sports event you are going to as fun, and actually end up winning something! You get the idea.  We share prasad from poojas at our respective homes, and stay in the hospital like a family. 

 

Does that mean that there are no rules to be followed ? Well, not at all.  Particularly for patients on chemotherapy, there are a lot of restrictions to be followed. A degree of discipline is definitely necessary. But discipline is so much easier to digest with a topping of love. 

 

Diagnosis, treatment, planning, cure, control, palliation, decisions: these are all the big things. These are the things we always have covered.

But is Healing in the big things, or is it in the smallest of things?

Healing is visiting a doctor who remembers you by name when you visit after a gap of 2 years. Healing is visiting the person who remembers that you were having problems looking for a job, and asks how that is going. Healing is sitting down with a friend and discussing the places to visit in Mumbai after the treatment is complete.

 

Healing is meeting a patient who tells you that she doesn’t know if she will be well at the end of the treatment, but that you have made the treatment journey a very pleasant experience.

Healing is seeing one more person smiling because you have touched their lives, and they have touched yours. A bond that lasts forever.

 

When we take the time to get to know each other, what is it that we are healing ?

Are we healing the disease: not really, we had that covered with the treatment. What we are healing is Faith. We healing the Faith of the patients; they believe that the person who is treating them is doing so out of genuine goodwill. They know that they are more to us than just an investigation chart, a collage of lab reports and vital parameters. They are living breathing human beings, and the people treating them are human too. 

 

We are also healing our own faith as doctors. Healing our faith in our profession, in ourselves, in our ability to do good. This is very true in oncology, where outcomes measures are very different, but equally true to the rest of medicine. 

The moment we remember that we are humans on both sides of the table, just cast in different roles by health and disease, we automatically step down from the pedestal. 

Not deities to be worshipped, not villains to be attacked when things go wrong. Just people, plain and simple; people just like the patients themselves.

 

True, the hospital is a busy place. The work itself is so much, that this kind of extra-curricular conversation, so to speak, really seems impossible.

 

It is impossible, if you treat it like another task on your To-do list.

·      Vitals

·      Temperature

·      Auscultation

·      Conversation

 

Life doesn’t work like that. 

 

Instead, make this connection something natural, a part of the way you live your life. 

Offer the same courtesy to your patient/ doctor that you would offer to anyone else.

We can be a very caring species, let us be so where it matters most.

A slight shift of perspective, and everything changes. As doctors, we can’t guarantee that the treatment will be pleasant. What we can do, is create an environment where our patients look forward to meeting us, to speaking to us as friends.

 

A few years down the line, you will get a phone call from a person you met ages ago, and you will talk about everything except medicine, everything except treatments that may or may not have been successful. Just a person, catching up with another person, to find out how they’re doing.

This is the most rewarding thing of all. 

 

P.S. The concept of "Healing the Faith" was actually something that was said to me in the context of the doctor- patient realtionship. This was the inspiration behind this blog post 😇 

Here is a link to my previous article: "Connect"

https://arnavht.blogspot.com/2019/03/connect.html

My older blog posts are listed at the top of the page.
If you liked this, do read the others too!

-Dr Arnav H. Tongaonkar ( DrArnavMHT) 

Senior Resident, Medical Oncology

Tata Memorial Hospital, 

Mumbai

 6/11/2021

|| Shree Ram ||.    || Ambadnya ||. || Naathsanvidh ||

‘ The Lamp Blinked Twice’

 

|| Hari Om ||

‘ The Lamp Blinked Twice’  

“Do you believe in Ghosts ?” He looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes. “ Do you mean the ones with clanking chains and bloodstained clothes? No, definitely not.“ An open-ended reply that invited his next question:  “Is there any other kind of ghost then ?” 

They were sitting on a bench in a quiet part of the Park. The leaves of the nearby trees were rustling gently in the breeze, as a subtle twilight light bathed the surroundings in its surreal hues.

Just a few feet away, the cliff sloped off gently to the sea below. It was a place where you could just stand still, a place to pause and breathe again. 

She grinned. “ Actually, there's a story about this very park ! “ She had a dreamy look in her eyes. He braced himself as she took a deep breath to launch full-tilt into a story.

“ There’s an old street-lamp along the walking path here. Its in a very quiet part of the park, and people generally don’t go there after dark. Only very specific people go there; the ones who wish to communicate with their loved ones, with people who are no longer here. The rumour is that if you walk past that streetlight, thinking of that specific person, they appear there, not physically, but just enough to give you a sign.” She made wide eyes to emphasize the other-worldly-ness of it all. He was more amused by her story-telling antics than by the story itself. 

“ What kind of sign ? “, he asked, dutiful in his role as a listener. 

“When they appear near you, the lamp blinks twice! “, He raised a skeptical eyebrow. She looked hurt at his utter lack of appreciation.

“Come with me, I’ll show you the place.”

They got up and started walking, breathing in the scent of the evening, the sound of the waves providing a subtle music to the scene. They walked on in silence, gathering in the details, saving each moment, trying to focus on trivial things like Ghosts and flickering lights, to avoid thinking about why they were actually there.

Soon, they reached a quieter part of the park. It was probably his imagination, but the air seemed to be very still. All the birds that had been chirping so merrily were silent here, not afraid, but waiting. 

They walked on, and as they rounded the last corner, he saw an old, rusty swing, lit in the orange light of a single old-fashioned gas lamp.

There was definitely something different here, something that brought out strange feelings, nostalgia and longing, as if the past and the present were yearning to meet, separated by only a thin veil of light.

They stood there in silence, would have stood there for God-knows how long. Suddenly, the lamp blinked twice. She looked worried now, he could see it. He felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine too. “ Did you call out to someone ?”, he asked. “No,“ she said, positively frightened now.

“ Why did you ask me that  ? “

“Because,” he paused and pointed a trembling finger over her shoulder: “There’s something behind you !

She turned and saw something large and white move right before her eyes.

She screamed her lungs out and burst into tears.

He, on the other hand, couldn’t control his laughter. The “Ghost” was just a fluffy white cat, sitting largely unconcerned by the world, atop its throne on a fence.

She saw his smile and burst out laughing too. They walked away from the “magic” lamp and back to their peaceful, non-haunted bench.

He thought for a moment and said, serious this time  “If ghosts are just supposed to be the energies of people who have moved on, why is it that they are supposed to be tied to places and things? I think they would be more attached to people”

“ Friends and family, the people we love, I’m sure a part of them is always attached to us, wherever we are. I’m not talking about the dead, but about actual living people. The memories of the time we spend together are enough to call out to each other's souls, even when we are miles apart. Some people don’t need to be there, to be there ! “   

“Aren’t you philosophical today” she laughed, but he could see in her eyes that she knew what he meant. He closed his eyes, at peace in her presence.

When he opened his eyes. She was gone.

He could almost see the after-image of her smile, of her silhouette sitting next to him. 

He shook himself back to the present, a different evening, a different season.

It had been more than a year, but the memory was still crystal clear.

That last evening, before all of them went their separate ways. Friends, from different places, with different pasts and different futures, converging for the briefest of moments before their paths branched out again.

Friends, colleagues, a temporary family, each of them with so many different colours to them.

And each had left a lasting imprint on his mind, none more so than her.

He got up and stretched. He started walking, completing a well-practised ritual, down a path that he had walked a 100 times now. 

He reached the old swing, with “that” lamp, feeling the warm glow inside of the people he carried within. “Some people don’t need to be there, to be there” He stood there in silence, waiting…

A 100 miles away, in another part of the world, in another park, she stood near an old street lamp. 

And as the memories flooded her mind, she looked at the lamp, calling out to those she had left behind, with all her heart,

…. and the lamp blinked twice

…. and the lamp blinked twice

“So when I smile

for no reason or rhyme

I know I’m in your thoughts

as you are in mine”

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This story is a work of fiction, however, it is as much the truth. Each of us have people in our lives that matter so much to us, that we carry them in our hearts. Particularly since the start of the pandemic, we have faced the cold reality of isolation and loss like never before. In these times, it is the warmth of our memories, our friends, our families that gives us the strength to keep going. 

And even when it may feel that you are alone and all is lost,  

Have Faith in Him. He is always with you, even without you calling out to Him.

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|| Shree Ram ||

|| Ambadnya ||

|| Naathsanvidh ||

-Dr. Arnav H. Tongaonkar

17/4/2021