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Gosh! Can you believe it? Three years. It has almost been three years. If you ask me, it doesn’t nearly feel like it has been that long. It would be no lie if I say that everything about the past three years has come as a very big cascade of surprises to me, much like a cascade of dominoes except that things seemed to be standing up instead of falling down… like dominoes in reverse. From Day 1, nothing about my episode was a planned event. In fact, we didn’t even know that anything remotely this life-altering was about to happen. I suppose it’s like Boris Pasternak said, “Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” What began with perhaps a tiny blood vessel rupture in my brain manifested itself into this incredible journey that, in every way, was developmental,  teaching,  enlightening and if I may dare to say, even a bit fun.

Each and every bit of this roller-coaster ride, from haemorrhage and nearly dying, to being on ventilator support, to hemiplegia and losing my voice, to the hydrocephalus that gave me the appearance of a creature from those sci-fi movies, to seizures and code blues, to the left-side neglect, to my dancing bone, to every occasion that we celebrated in the hospital (even though we were breaking the rules),  to every patient companion I had on this journey and seeing their equally tough battles in a different light to provide each other strength to keep pushing on, to the months and years of therapy sessions, and to every surgery, procedure, vomit and specialist appointment, was a learning experience and lesson for a lifetime.

Every second of this “vacation” has contributed to my growth and quite unintentionally like a beautiful accident, to the growth of others too.

It redefined for me the dimensions of the class of words that include “strength”, “perseverance”, “motivation”, “grit”, “hope” and “determination” (to name a few). I doubt anyone really knows the limits to their abilities, or the very fact that one might possess such abilities, unless they are propelled into testing times or any situation that truly tests their mental and physical capabilities and boundaries. Many a time, as was in my case, the abilities might come as a pleasant surprise or as contradictions to one’s notion of themselves.

It also did me the favour of making my feeling of “gratitude” towards everything increase exponentially.  Gratitude for what, you ask? Well, for everything I have been blessed with – from the people and faculties that I am surrounded with to their actions, to the universe and to its infinite positive energy and support, to the life that is a boon, to my body and mind – for bearing my endless necessary torture towards them… the list has no end. Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it? You only realize the value of something after it’s lost. Losing control over my body’s left side made me realize the real value of all the things that we take for granted on a daily basis. Simple things, like the fingers that enable us to write and to hold a loved one’s hand and even to play a musical instrument or do something as simple as drink a glass of water. Or the voice that enables us to communicate what’s on our minds or to elucidate our feelings to someone whom we hold dear. And let’s not forget our oh-so-beloved legs that act as a means of getting from place to place or as the key ingredient in a recipe for success in a footballer’s (or athletes’) arsenal. In fact, even my gratitude towards my parents, friends and loved ones has also increased umpteen-fold. Probably from the fact that I missed enjoying their company for so long. After all, it takes sadness to appreciate & know happiness, noise to appreciate silence and absence to value presence.

I suppose, another thing that it perhaps did was give me real handy motivation material, while at the same time providing me a different perspective towards life that truly enabled me to use that motivation material for good. This was in a strange way fulfilling my dream of really spreading motivation or sharing experience for good and really being of some meaningful use to this realm and its dwellers.

And, of course, quite understandably, it amplified the feelings of “optimism” and “no challenge is too big” or “no hurdle is too big to overcome”. Pretty handy life lessons, if you’d ask me, considering I’m finally going to go to college this year and continue my studies as anyone else would.

Most importantly, it taught me the importance of family all over again, and not just my immediate family. And most definitely, the true essence of “Vasudeva kutumbakam”, which means “The world is my family”, was experienced in its vast manifestation. The way that everyone has been with me, through every step of this incredibly long journey has really shown me a different kind of perspective on the dimension of “family”.

You readers, have also been part of this wonderful family, giving me the motivation I needed to pen down my experience, before it gets erased from the history books, and my oh-so-strong memory pages, and in that, giving me  the biggest mental (and even emotional, if I dare say) exercise of them all in writing this blog to share my experience with you folks, my readers… Thank you so much my dearest reader family, for keeping up with this blog on a weekly basis and I do hope that this blog has given you all something to take with. I know all of you have definitely given me a lot by being a part of my story not only in the past but also in the present via this blog 😊.  If I had anything to say, it probably would be :

“CONGRATULATIONS!! You Have Caught Up To The Present!  And In That, Have Successfully Completed This part of the series.”[

SEE YOU SOON FOLKS!!! IN THE NEXT PART, FOR NOW IT’S TIME FOR AN INTERVAL 😉