17 June 2010 - It’s still by far the best day of my life. Generally, an incident such as a major accident isn’t considered to be a memorable day but a day to be burnt from the memory and forgotten. However the struggle to normalcy post that incident is so beautiful and a miracle that can be unravelled only when the suffering is embraced and not shut down.
In the movie “The passion” of Christ, Mel Gibson portrays Jesus as embracing the cross when it was given to him. Someone then watching him surprisingly asks him not to do so because it is the very cross, he is going to die on. Even though this narrative of embracing the cross is not there in the Bible gospels, it depicts Jesus correctly as someone who had a secret ambition of embracing suffering through the cross he could die for the "sins" of the world. The cross was and is considered to be a symbol of shame. There are those who mock the cross of how God could be helplessly dying on a cross when he had the power to escape from it. The answer is because human suffering is real and everyone goes though pain and suffering. Jesus taught and then lived it out when he asked for those who are suffering innocentlly for no fault of theirs to embrace the pain and suffering that comes along with it. The death and resurrection goes hand in hand, so Jesus rose again bodily on the third day proving that death is not the end and there is justice.
As I am writing, there is a noise of animals screaming with two stray dogs chasing my neighbour’s rooster, and even as I go to my balcony and scream to shoo the dogs away, the rooster is now a meal for the dogs. The neighbour runs towards the dogs with a stone in his hand but the dogs are quick to take their prey towards the bushes. The dogs had planned it well and cornered the rooster until it had no place to jump and escape. Observing this incident from the surface, something which belonged to my neighbour is gone. The neighbour's children loved the rooster and we also at times listened to the rooster's crow. There is disappointment and it gets compounded when it’s a corona time when there is already limited resources and limited opportunities available outside.
Suffering strikes people many times when they are not prepared for it and it is not possible to live life expecting the worst to happen. However when suffering strikes, every one reacts differently. The pure character of a person comes out during suffering which is inherently raw - sometimes it can be converting the suffering into a healing balm for someone else or sometimes it happens that people look forward to hurting others causing a suffering chain. Many times people tend to do the latter.
One of the general advises from family and friends is not to talk about the past or the accident in particular. The goal of this advise is to prevent a negative image from being perceived in the minds of the people. Culturally I understand that people exaggerate credentials, their job and their family status to prevent being treated badly by another individual. There is some kind of boasting competition that takes place. This is sad because it stops people from being genuine and most often makes one hesitant to ask for help. The more I spoke on this topic, I understood that people wanted you to clearly and without doubt prove to them that you are without a doubt not handicapped at all. Even though I could prove them easily, this idea conflicted heavily with my values and my perspective on life. It simply states two things on the surface - one is that you are accepted and held in a higher regard only when you are not physically challenged and the second one is that it is discriminatory to the physically challenged themselves who are not in the picture, who many times suffer for no fault of theirs. The more uncomfortable I was with their thinking, it made me to evade answering the questions which made people assume that I am hiding something significant. The main problem however was that the particular way of thinking was not acceptable to me. Since I had been in a wheelchair for some months, it made me think that you would not be accepted had you remained in there permanently. On the other hand, no one should have the victim perspective or have an inferiority complex at all but rather be filled with compassion.
Manivannan used to work as a senior manager with Tata Consultancy Services, an IT firm in Chennai. One evening in the year 2015, I got a call from him because we were supposed to go to a conference together, the very next day. Since we didn’t know each other before, we introduced ourselves and decided at what time and which place we would meet up. Since I had the car, I had offered to pick him up and some of his colleagues . Even though he requested me to pick him from his home, we decided that all of us would meet at the nearby bus stop. Generally I pick up people from their homes even though they don’t live on the way towards the destination. However for some months I had been through a phase of mourning, and there was a thought in me that I had suffered immensely above anyone else so it wasn’t worth going out of the way to help others. This prevented me from even asking how the others would get to the bus stop.
On that particular Saturday morning as I went nearer to the bus stop, I could see Manivannan annan (as I respectfully call him), sitting in the busstop. I then tried to open the passenger door, expecting him to walk normally, when I saw him help himself with his bare hands from the seat to the pavement which was more than a feet high and then slowly help himself into the car. I was speechless for most of the journey as he told me how he came from his home to the busstop. He had to hitch a ride to the main road while his wife walked for about 3/4 of a kilometer to come to the highway where he could help him hold his hands and cross the road. That day I decided that we be friends and we have come so far that I asked him to be my mentor in life. He was a senior manager having travelled to several countries, he remained simple. Manivannan annan never spoke abut his disabilities and for once I thought I can be friends since he has suffered several times more than me quietly and positively. We continue to work together and help others as much as possible, and I consider it a privilege and a blessing to be close to him.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten