Are you in pain or vice versa?

This little boy of eight burned his face and arm. Badly ain't the suitable adverb. He could even smell his skin emitting odd scent but he wouldn't cry. It was evident that the boy was too shocked to react. Overlooking his intriguing demeanor, his loved ones rushed him to hospital. He was calmer than the dying tree outside the window. The doctor immediately took over his case and got down to treating the burns with his nurse's help. Not a yelp would emerge out of the boy's system. Even the cotton stubs tending his fresh wounds wouldn't make him squirm. It was as if his body and mind were in collusion with the gravity of the accident that took place less than 30 minutes ago. The doctor couldn't have asked for a better patient! The nurse pretended as if it was normal for a kid to behave so zen despite the obvious pain. The facial dressing itself took about half an hour. Not a sound from the victim's end though. His arm displayed relatively lesser complications when the doctor was about to start his procedure on it. Just to make an exemplary case out of our little hero, he said, “Learn something from him...” making the curious patients aware of the lack of noise in the ward. 

But that was it.

On hearing that accolade, our little monk just let all hell's fury loose. He cried like no patient has ever done before and the unfunny part was his tears were nowhere to be seen as the bandage kept soaking whatever his eyes had to say. 

Listening to yourself

They always say that we should listen to our heart and leave the rest on the universe. 

Well, they are mistaken. And how.

We should listen to our heart, not because they say so but because if we don't listen to the poor thing—that works from the moment we sprouted to the moment we succumb—who else will? I don't know about myself (because i'm not in Delhi) but an acquaintance of mine from my transcription days listened to his (and is).

He was weird in many ways. For instance, he went to Ladakh—this was in 2008 and it was my dream to be there someday—but didn't click a single picture. On resuming office, he explained to Tush and i how he doesn't need photographs to remind him of what he experienced. We could only try not to roll our eyes. But we respected him because he came across as somebody who was visibly content with the person he was. There was no symptom of a man who wanted to prove anything to anyone. This was despite the fact that every second person in the office seemed to be mocking him either discreetly or not so. Either ways, he didn't care as he had miles to go—quite literally. 

What he cared about though was Chinese. My infatuation with Urdu automatically dwarfs when i think of those days we used to catch him scribbling fancy characters in his notebook. Maybe he sensed back then that Chinese would be the language of the future just like English is the language of the present. 

Let's dig a bit into his past as i just made him sound like Nostradamus without a hunchback. 

He was kidnapped from his village and forced to marry a girl from a neighbouring village. While facing a gun barrel, you do whatever you're told to. As a consequence, he circumambulated the holy fire with a stranger—yes, Indians marry strangers but this was taking strangeness to another level only—and stayed under house arrest. However, he managed to escape to Bombay in the second week itself. And the rest is...well, a brilliant story. Whatever happened next, as of today, he's enrolled in a prestigious college in Delhi pursuing Masters in the Chinese language; something hitherto unheard of in Mumbai University. 

All things done and praised, he must be regretting the drastic drop in temperature. Ni hao.