Please SAVE LIFE

Reunions and informal alumni meets can sometimes really change lives. With contacts chain reaction, we surprised many seniors on phone and talked about their lives. Through some conversations I learnt about poignant agony of Malati Shah, 4 years senior to me. It took me some time to digest that. Several months of networking helped us to get her contact……..
Here is the heart-wrenching story of Malati Shah:
Malti Shah, very normal and healthy lady, was working as teacher in Calcutta to support her poor family. One morning in 2003, after three months of marriage, she found her body locked. She couldn’t get up from the bed, she even couldn’t turn sideways and she could not raise herself up. She started screaming in pain, she could not comprehend it. With tears and unbearable pain, she kept on trying to get up but in vain. Her husband and father-in-law tried their best to calm her down and make her sit but failed. She recalls that it was the most horrific event in her life; her legs, spine and hips were immovable the moment she woke up and she is completely helpless about her own body. Then she was taken to a local hospital and was diagnosed with Acute Ankylosing Spondylitis.

I guess, she might have ignored several indications or symptoms for quite some time before it stiffened her entire spine and lower body and got so painfully acute!! This was followed by disastrous blow. None other than her apathetic husband intensified her helplessness: that idiot (in-laws decision) just left her and called off the marriage because of her condition. Her parents, indigent and old, were shocked by the unacceptable episode and sank in despair. Her brothers reacted in a coldly strange way, warning her parents not to allow her home.
Just imagine the plight of a person buffeted so eerily from the very dear ones when she was all a stiffened body dejected by husband and life. She has been battling against worsening Ankylosing Spondylitis without any treatment for she is so poor that she has to choose between medicine and everyday living. She has no choice but to forget about treatment. It made her almost bed-ridden. It has made her TOTALLY dependable on old mom and older father, surviving through abject poverty.
Six years of excruciating life, still does not know whether there is an end to this dark tunnel. She still does not know when her illiterate and ignorant brothers would talk to her.. … Her body is slowly reaching a final rigid state i.e. when her ribs are calcified and they stop expansion and contraction, choking her to slow death. She cannot bear any more…! Even if it is delayed, her future will be dangerously dark if she loses her parents, as they are too old. She would be left with no one to look after her.
When I herad this, I was numb for a day!!!!
I decided to help her to better life and make her independent. I talked about my plans with my friends. I consulted doctors and inquired about treatments, hospitals and expenses. After lot of analysis, discussions and consultations, we have decided to get her from Calcutta to Bangalore. Dr C B Prabhu, an eminent orthopaedic surgeon, has agreed to treat her. On 5th of May, that is tomorrow, he and his team perform surgery (Total Hip Replacement) in HOSMAT. It requires approx. 6.1 lakhs INR as of now!!
My biggest concern is money. I do not have so much money and I cannot help her with the entire amount on my own. I have started contacting my friends, acquaintances and colleagues. And have also asked them to spread the word for help. My office also promised me to help to great extent. I thought to collect it from anyone who wishes to help her and save her life. I want to pool in as much money as possible for suffering Malati.
I request you, dear reader, to donate money to save her life. Please do help me. And do spread this news among your friends. To donate money, please contact me either on +91 9916103250 or zevinster@gmail.com

Mid-Summer Mango Months

Whao!! What an eventful month it was!! Days were long and nights short-less. Month witnessed hard-hitting hailstorms, road ruining downpours (we fondly call them MANGO showers), unkind sun and eves with tantalzing summer wear, but never a sunny day!!

Planet’s largest carnival, Indian General Elections, inundated my eyes with Flower, Hand, Elephant, Sickle and other crazy symbols; But Power cuts, job cuts, salary cuts, and road cuts ensured that "scissors" is symbol of the season.

Of late, companies that are part of my life realized they were OBESE and took a resolution to sport a leaner look! Result: some of my colleagues and friends are at home now, leisurely jig-saw-ing pieces of life torn so fast by furious fate. So far so cut! World really got LEANer!!!
Inevitable traveling made me suffer unavoidable hospitalities. My tummy has become a rock band now ... it roars, rumbles, thunders and does what not. Nature has started calling me rather quite often (sometimes missed calls too), and my musical stomach never had a dull moment so far, be it in office or at home. Troubled tummy won’t let me go to gym or office continually making me a homey!! I spend my home-arrest watching movies on TV and importantly IPL! You shoul know I like playing, not watching..!

Saddest news struck me as Feroz Khan passed away last Sunday. He was one of my favorite actors and always wanted to meet him. May his soul rest in peace!

If I look the season from office end, news appears rather different. This time, all the credit goes to those miserly species whose mission is to spend life in makeup, jealousy, calculation, discount shopping, bitching, blood, and boys! Five members of this canny species (statistically, half of the team) started liking kangaroo..! Ssshful grapevine is very informative but some say ignorance is bliss!! My manager is blissful, still battling the resource crunch created by last quarter’s attrition! I have no inkling of how he will weather this storm when it hits him!!! Lets hop to another topic.
It would be more than blasphemous if I don’t mention INFANTS when I write about my company. Infant, my office shuttle, is auto-engineering’s marvel. It is only vehicle on the face of the earth that beats Tata’s Nano hands down, both in cost and compactness. Tough slightly bigger than Nano, it seats 30 people...exclusive of driver, aila. Sometimes you wonder whether it was intended for normal humans. Because leg room between seats proves that it was originally designed for the people without legs. So, people with legs like me, who travel regularly, will surely lose their legs sooner or later in accordance to theories of Darwin and Lamarck. And width, OMG, fuses the butts of people sitting in a same row; I bet you cannot make out where your butt ends and the next butt begins. The real magic begins when this four-wheeled hell is crowded by 29 sweating and stinking girls at 5 in the evening and I am subjected to maddening decibels of Kannada cacophony(courtesy: our driver has a loud ear for music) amidst them....
Effluvium from 8 hrs sweat-drenched and inherently stinking 29 girls when blended with musical terrorism in an all-windows-closed, snail paced, built to paralyze, four wheeled WONDER, dear Infant makes my journey deadliest, if not delirious. But last week, when summer sun added its thermal charm to this nightmarish setup, my ply home was suicidal!!!That was an event. BTW, this is written by my ghost.

Piquant quote of the day

Somebody told it exactly to the dot what I always felt & believed strongly:

"Everything that comes into your life should either stay with you and become your strength or leave you and make you free. It should not stay with you and become your weakness."