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Unbound.

  It is a lazy sunday summer afternoon as I place my bag on the lustrous teak wood table. I let out a mental sigh!  It requires Herculean effort to retrieve my laptop for work. I am a regular at the Longchamp cafe. It is normal for that cafe to play slow jazz while customers enjoy a cup of coffee but somehow the song , “Somewhere only we know”, booms on the speakers and breaks the monotonous commotion inside. In a split second, I transcend back to his arms. The song floods memories that are ready to pour out of my eyes. The barista snaps me out of my misery. He towers over the counter as he motions me to try the newly brewed concoction waiting on my table. I comply to do the needful as I am one of his unbiased coffee connoisseurs. The aroma of simmering hot coffee permeates my nose, calming my nerves.  I gulp down the bittersweet realisation. It has been close to two long months since I’ve last heard from him. It would be wishful thinking that our brief encounter would et...
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Luxurious Phenomenon




Since time immemorial, swirling stormy skies have called for a mug full of tea. Lt. Gurbaksh Sandhu and I, stood in the corridor, sipping ginger tea when I inquired, how his date had gone the night before. He faked a smile and told me that everything was going great between the two of them, when out of nowhere she decided to enlighten him. She told him she was a kleptomaniac and sincerely hoped Gurbaksh wouldn't have a problem with that established fact. We both burst into laughter instantaneously and I tried to comfort him by stating that it could just be an innovative pick up line, like, "I'm a kleptomaniac, don't wear your heart on your sleeve, I might steal it?". The banter and gossip continued, wherein we discussed how we were the A-team; from waking each other up for the gruesome BPET to handling non compliant patients, our bond became stronger even though we were from different medical colleges.
After a while, I lifted my book of Surgery and heaved a sigh of relief, ready to call it a night. Suddenly the eerie silence of Command Hospital Udhampur was broken by the deafening sounds of choppers. We ran to see casualties pouring in, heavier than the rainfall that had us drenched in that millisecond. We looked at each other reassuringly, knowing well that it was going to be a long night.
Three hours into managing the chaos, I tried to charm my way out of the DMO's flooding room, in order to steal a pee break. I tried to amuse Gurbaksh to do the needful and said, "I've been told that I've got beautiful brown eyes." I looked at him intently hoping the odds would be in my favor because my bladder definitely wasn't.
"Well now, they're just blood shot.", he shrugged and whisked past me to the first bed in the emergency room.
The staff was on their toes. The attendants and mildly hurt patients were also trying to help. Being new to the Duty Medical Officer duties, the whole scene was messed up but ecstatic. Amidst the bustle something caught my eye, Gurbaksh walked past a seemingly normal soldier with moderate breathing difficulty, who was now going into respiratory distress. I rushed to his side, checked the veins that were sticking out of his neck. He had pneumo-thorax, with both paucity of time and resources, I put in a wide bore needle in his second intercostal space and prayed it didn't puncture his lung. Gurbaksh realised what he had missed, slapped his forehead, slipped on a new pair of hand gloves and got back to work without wasting any time. 
"Weren't you supposed to clean the mess you made?", I reprimanded Lt Gurbaksh Sandhu playfully as the patient load got under control.
"I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant.", he shot back.
"Mama, tell you that?", I smirked.
"No. Life taught me that.", he winked as he checked a patient for posterior pharyngeal bleed.

At around 2 am, a tall and lanky young officer with striking features walked into the duty room. He introduced himself as Captain Dhananjay Singh, while I took his history, which suggested fracture of the radius and the ulna. I examined his hand and declared that he would need a surgery for internal fixation of the bones. I pressed upon him to tell me the real story that led him to break his bones. He was from the esteemed Para regiment and what's left unsaid, said it all. He offered to fix his hand on his own with a little anatomical guidance from my side. I was surprised at his audacity and threshold for pain. He saw the look of disbelief on my face and told me the incident from when he broke his toe in the Academy and in order to avoid being boarded out, he pushed the bones, callus or whatever he could feel in his toe together and thankfully it fixed itself. I thought he was simply crazy or the epitome of machoism. While waiting for the analgesics to arrive, I asked him, what made him join the Army.
"To change the system. Safeguard my country. Help more people. I felt helpless when I was a kid and I knew I didn't want to feel that anymore.", he replied without wasting a breath.
I raised my eyebrow and asked him, how he planned to change the system to which he curtly replied, "You can stew over the way things are or you can start somewhere." 
Captain Dhananjay continued, "Every action leads to a chain of events that lead to a bigger event. Stopping any of such chain of events will just delay the inevitable. 
I’ve been reading a little history(basically wars and all) and I’ve realised with the passing of time the casualty has increased but the key players have all been the same. 
Earlier it was kingdoms, then came religion, then race and later countries. 
It’s mind blowing to really discover the pattern in all of this."
My sterling instincts told me along with the burning Amazon or melting icebergs, his rock hard exterior was giving way to his softer side. 
As the night progressed, I discovered his uncanny sense of humor. Moreover his quick witted replies were remarkable. It was intriguing to finally meet an intelligent, rational, rough and calculative man with a dash of psychopathic thoughts. What set him apart was that his ego hadn't taken the best of him yet and he knew what he was talking about without firing up a laptop.
That night I realised, people are built differently. You don't have to understand but just respect. 
We talked about Motorsports to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and it was pretty evident that he had garnered reactions for all the right reasons. 
He asked me not be worked up and brought coffee for everyone in the Emergency room. He cheered us all up with his boyish charm and it was treat to have him with us that tiresome night. 
The next morning, after being briefed about the night's debacle, Lt Col Aman Sirohi, the surgeon, asked us to report to him. Gurbaksh and I barely made it to the lift from the Emergency room and he threw a bar of Snickers at me which hit my head in order to keep me from going into hypoglycemia.
Lt Col Sirohi was always dubious of us but when we went to him, he told us we did a great job and that he'd like us to assist him in his surgeries. It was a scrumptious promotion for us, from just witnessing surgeries, giving vivas and being harassed by unscrupulous surgeons, we could now assist them. 
I remember walking out of the surgeon's office and bumping into Captain Dhananjay. With a naughty twinkle in his eyes and toned down sarcasm, he told us that his surgery was being scheduled the next day. His unwavering self proclaimation of medical knowledge 
was a tad bit scary. We all exchanged pleasantries and left the hospital.

It has been three years since that incident but every time I'm on duty and there are signs of a storm, I transcend to that night in Udhampur. Memories have a pesky way of distorting the facts but the truth is no matter how cumbersome my job has been, the universe has made me feel good things and meet better people.
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