would i ever have imagined that i would feel the way keats wrote: "as though of hemlock i had drunk..."?
the heart is increasingly burdened by swamiji's absence. his absence in my life. so i try to remember the good things, the amazing things...
sometime in 1993, young hari caught a cold, and a slight fever came upon him. but it would not be shaken off even after a week. he was teething, perhaps. but then, his left eye began to swell. he was given antibiotics but it didn't help. then uma called to say that it had struck her that morning something was not right. we should take him to the hospital.
my child had been crying in discomfort, especially at night. my darling boy who clung to me - and neither geetha nor i knew what was happening. the only comfort he could find was in watching prakash play hanuman in our ramayana. that beautiful scene seemed to take his mind off his fever and his pain.
when we showed him to the eye specialist, dr sukumaran, it was decided that hari would be admitted and put under observation and medication. my poor boy clung to me with fear, and i couldn't bear to leave him alone in the hospital. both geetha and i watched him day and night, and the antibiotics seemed to work. but on the third day, dr sukumaran came in on his routine check and found that the swelling inflamation did not abate completely. he ordered a scan. hari had to be drugged, and i had to watch my little boy struggle with the pricking of the needle and then going under.
geetha and i waited anxiously outside the scanning room. when the doctor came out, he said that he would have to book the operation theatre for wednesday, the very next day, and call in the e.n.t. and the brain surgeon. i slipped into the control room and gazed at the computer screens that showed hari's head. it was quite obvious. there was something that was pushing out from behind his left eye!.
was i in a scene that i had often seen in movies when parents learn of the terrible truth? fear and numbness gripped my insides. i was filled with helplessness. the technician who did the scan then said that she would do the scanning again, just to be sure. and as hari was coming out of the stupor, he had to be given another dose.
the second scan showed the same thing.
my little boy clung to me as geetha watched helplessly. my poor child filled with fear and me not knowing what to do for him. in the late evening, the brain surgeon came to hari's bed, and introduced himself to us. he said that he had not seen the scans yet but before he did he would prime us on the challenges that lay ahead of us if he had to perform surgery! he said that when an operation had to be done so close to the eye and the brain, there were many risks of damage. i listened in amazement to this man who droned on and on. i realise now that he wanted me to be certain that he should not be blamed afterwards for any negative consequences of the operation. my mind and my heart was racked, and i was almost breathless.
he then took out the scans from the envelope, took one look, and announced that his presence was not necessary!!! my relief was flushed with anger; why didn't he look at the scans first, instead of giving us such a terrible scare?
but still, hari had to be operated upon. i sent out word to swamiji about hari's condition, and i was told that everyone was already praying for hari.
the next morning, chandra came to the hospital with vibhuti and a black kasi string for hari. from swamiji. he tied the string on hari's wrist and told me that swamiji said everything would be alright. i told geetha that i wanted to go home for a short while, bring some things from the house, get a shower... just a short break.
i wanted to go home and in the quiet of the house, rail and scream at shivananda in the pooja room. but when i got there, all i could do was kneel in front of him and said, with pain and tears, that i accepted all that he was giving me - the torture of seeing my child suffer like that.
two weeks earlier, during a short discussion with swamiji in tfa, i had noticed that swamiji was staring at hari with great interest. he was having his coffee and watching hari scamper about among us. hari was barely two years old. i noticed that swamiji was glaring at hari in a curious way. it was as if he saw something that we couldn't. then swamiji called hari, and strangely, gave him some of the coffee he was drinking. hari lapped it up. i was sure that swamiji was blessing him in some way. all of us in that room were sure that it was so. but i could understand this only much later. after hari's ordeal in the hospital.
dr sukumaran told us that he did not need the brain surgeon but would require the presence of the e.n.t. specialist. hari was prepared for the operation theatre, and geetha and i sat. and waited. it seemed that our lives were hanging in the balance. our little boy, so sweet and cute and loving, to go through something like this at such a young age. one part of me knew that things would turn out well... yet another part of me had never experienced something like this before. three hours. of eternity.
a nurse came out and called out hari's name. geetha and i jumped up but were told that only one of us could go in. geetha nodded to me, and so i went in. my little boy had a white bandage over his eye and he was still groggy from the drugging. he was calling out to me in a gruff voice and i quickly held him close. so close. i was given back my child. already his face had lightened. the pain had gone. "papa's here, hari, papa's here..." he grabbed me close and clung tightly to me. dr sukumaran remarked that for someone so small there was a lot of stuff to be drained from the sac that had collected behind his left eye. i am sure i was thoroughly relieved but yet, now i only remember the pain.
leaving the hospital, with hari well on the road to recovery, geetha and i were happy to be home. but something else awaited me at work. the manager empathised with me over my son's ordeal at the hospital but nevertheless told me that they couldn't keep me anymore as business was not good. i was shocked but then, a voice in me said "shivananda wants you to change your lifestyle". i smiled at them and went home. made a call to an ex-boss, got a new position as consultant in her firm, and realised that when a door closes, a window opens.
i called swamiji in madras and told him of the state of affairs. he said, "ket, don't work for people who don't want you!" i told him i had already found another position.
two weeks later, in annalakshmi, para told me that hari's ordeal was his own sacrifice for me! that if not for my son taking on some of my karma, i would have lost an arm or a leg. i knew that this revelation had come from swamiji himself. it was then that i remember swamiji's talk to me about how the masters deal with karma for those who surrender to them, how in a group of devotees, people who love each other, through someone kind and compassionate could lighten the karmic burden of one individual among them.
could it be that this child of mine has such a loving soul that he would go through pain and torture for me? god knows that i was almost mad with the pain in my heart and my head watching him suffer.
then i remembered swamiji giving hari a sip of his coffee weeks earlier. then it struck me that he had seen what was to come to this little boy, and perhaps, for his bravery, for his deep love for his own father, swamiji blessed him, gave him strength, gave him the boost to withstand the onslaught of a father's karma.
then i began to understand a little of swamiji's deeply profound and mystical influence on our lives.
i bow my head in gratitude and humility.
this is how i remember his love. my swamiji who loves me.
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