Deserted

It is not strange that we find we have someone in our life about whom we have centered ourselves over a considerable period of time that not a day goes by without a line thrown to that person and we believe that under no circumstances will the bond between us break nor erode.

That person may have been someone we totally hated but grew to love, someone we stood far from but cannot grow apart from, a person who put a bitter taste in your mouth once but you grew fond of in time. At times, the person may be someone you simply feel so comfortable with that you would confine your views to what the person gives you and at other times, you would feel so prickly about how the views about the person are so against your own and you feel a need from all over yourself that wants you to break free from the prison you put yourself in.

But people are not easy to shrug off from our lives. We have little success in moving from a person who at some point of our life meant the world to us to a different person or a group of people so that we keep our sanity with little effort. Do we really need to make the switch?

The world has billions of people in it and in big cities, there typically are millions of people. This math simply makes us wonder why we cannot just hop from someone to someone else to find that person with whom we want to try things with. But the math does not consider the difficulties in setting to the task. There are way too many factors involved in this epic search we often don't feel like getting out and doing it. Very often we don't feel like overcoming the pain and hurt and so we simmer under it and take a couple of steps back when we ought to be moving forward.

Along those lines, if that hardship were not there, one could possibly hop from person to person in their lifetime and be gone a long time after having spent brief periods with too many people. But it is merely an obstacle of the mind to place such restrictions on one's own borders.

Meeting people is a good thing. Who knows, perhaps out there is someone more compatible. Or perhaps, it would teach us that someone most compatible had already touched our lives and we need to focus there. If the person we so badly need does not need us as much, it is time to learn to love oneself more and let go. And if convinced beyond doubt that there is no better half or other half out there, perhaps it is time to become whole and touch the skies.

Books

Books are the best friend of a man who wants to improve himself. There are books on a range of subjects - from how primitive life forms survive on the planet to how complex life forms obtain their nutrition, why life exists underwater and the possibility of life in some distant planet on a yet unnamed galaxy, from how to bring stability to a relationship to how to walk out of one, from how to keep an aquarium to how to cook the best sea urchin dishes -the list is quite endless. To a man who is of too few words, there are books on improving the vocabulary. For any shortcoming that you would like to turn into a strength, there exists a book that would help the transformation. There are different kinds of people who write the books too - expert nutritionists write on foods one must consume for a suitable diet, fitness gurus break down complex workouts and your favorite body-model would write on how he or she keeps their body that way.

But books present us with difficulties too. That large tome you bought, the encyclopedia of roses, filled with pictures of pretty flowers, indicating origin of the individual variety, salubrious conditions in which to maintain them, manures to use for getting the award winning flowers and close-up pictures of every individual variety - is so heavy that you bought it, thumbed through every page of the book, albeit lazily, for a couple of times and then left it on your mantel piece to gather dust and possibly, fungus. Or imagine you were going through a coffee-table book, chomping through a sandwich and splosh! that is a bit of ketchup on your book. That book you used to browse through with interest when you were a toddler - now has yellowed pages. Your farher's books from his childhood - are falling apart. The journals your granddad maintained - they are almost dust. The book you forgot to take from your garden when it started to rain - is soggy after the rain and does not feel the same ever after. Or that book you slept over as you were reading it late at night, weary as you were - is dog-eared beyond redemption. Consider the books you bought and stored in your house - they use up a good deal of precious shelf space. When you get new books, you end up wanting to find creative ways to accommodate them in the limited quarters you have for yourself.

What does all that mean? It takes a lot to maintain a book. And the effort you put in to taking care of books could be put to better use - seriously. To dust your library would take a good deal of your lifetime if you were an avid collector of books. Even if you weren't one, you would end up spending considerate invaluable lifetime on keeping them in order. You need to keep them safe from possible spills, fungi, insects and accidents, among other things. On the same line do you need to preserve your newspapers and magazines, though these find a way to be recycled.

All this does not cover up the fact that books are made out of precious trees that go into making the paper that comes out as a book. Take a look at the amount of green cover that we lost in the recent couple of centuries owing to the human need for lumber, food, living space and - books. Though we have been exploiting the forests through the generations, it does not make sense that we take over the space that our remaining co-inhabitants of the planet are using for residence to our selfish demands for farmland, penthouses and books. Not to mention that the loss in forest habitation has resulted in the loss or near extinction of several species and intrusion of forest dwellers into our settlements. It is even possible that some small animal or endemic plant species went unnoticed and was never put through the procedures of taxonomy since it went extinct before the experts reached the place.

How do we overcome the labors of safekeeping our books? How do we conserve our forests and the creatures within? How do we ensure we get the pleasure out of reading books without books? After all, we definitely do need books, but they do require a great deal for making and keeping.

Greet the eBook. Or rather, the eBook reader.

It may sound simple, to the tune of stupidity, but the solution to this awful problem of books is as simple as that. Get an eBook reader!

If only the solutions to many of the world's biggest problems were as simple as that.

So, you are reading your book and splosh! A large dollop of sauce drips onto your eBook reader. All you have to do is wipe it clean and voila! It's as good as nothing happened - unless the memory of it weighs heavily on you. Or, think about that huge volume with the entire collection of Agatha Christie's mystery books. How big a space do you reckon the thousands of pages will occupy? Not the entire space you got on your shelf - oh no. It will only be in that one device you will ever need for all your books, ever. Not to mention that you could store all your favorite encyclopedias on that one space - and still not worry about losing room to rows of bookshelves lined with dusty, musty volumes of books that will fall apart some day.

Imagine that you are reading in the park and suddenly, the sky decides it needs to make the earth wet. You will most certainly not forget to pick your eBook reader as you scramble for your stuff and move to the nearest shelter. Even better, you may have a waterproof sleeve for the eBook reader in which you will keep it safe and use it to shield your head from the rain water.

Or on a windy day, when you are walking, reading out of your eBook reader, you need not worry about the gusts blowing the pages away or track of the last spot on the book that you were at.

On your bed, you try to read things through drooping eyes and you end up sleeping, shifting positions and the reader moves from near your face down your chest and somehow, to your feet. When you wake up, you don't have to worry about sadly dog-eared books - your book is right the way it was when you got it, but your reader may be depleted of charge - and that, is easily fixed.

You can leave tabs on the places where you left reading the last time you read the book, highlight passages of interest without physically marking on the books, make notes on pages as you require for your reviews at a later time, and if you have trouble reading the tiny print, you can pinch and zoom to a size that better suits your ophthalmic abilities.

It gets even better - you don't have to step into a shop, browse through rows of shelves, long list books you list, make a short list out of that, and finally, settle on the couple of books you need. All you got to do is visit an online book store (and believe me, many have a fine collection of books on the variety of subjects you would find in a bookstore), select the books you want to buy, make your payments and have them in the cloud. You could pick them from there when you need them. Also, there is no question of final copy, last but damaged copy, not in print, folded page with overprint, missing or damaged pages or other shortcomings that come with a physical book. They are all alike. You can remove the damage analysis phase of your book-picking process at the store.

We always complain our school-going children are burdened under their school bags. If all the years' text books were reduced to a single book sized device (it is smaller than a single book in the higher grades), imagine how light school bags would be. Workbooks and notebooks with one single text book reader in their bags definitely lightens the load on a generation already burdened under the curriculum.

We all love making our personal statements on the books we own - we sign on the first pages, stick some favorite stickers on the books, scribble in fancy ink on select pages we consider lucky(?) - now, all those tasks are reduced to being performed on a single eBook reader or, if you like to keep different sizes for the different things you read (hand books, pocket books, story collections of authors with little time, collections from full-time authors, encyclopedias and world maps), once for each type of eBook reader (a 7" one for smaller books that you carry around, a 10" one for bedtime reading without glasses, maybe a 14" one for poring over coffee table books and encyclopedias and pondering over maps). You could deck your reader with decorations as you like and get colorful sleeves that go with your clothes (maybe your moods too).

Say, you are a family and you like to read a lot. You could have a single account on various book vending portals, get your books on the cloud and all of you can access it from the cloud. It is simple as that! And you can accomplish all that with no difficulty.

You want to read at night but your roommates cannot stand having the lights turned on as you go through your book very late into the night - that is easily fixed since your eBook reader is a self-illuminating device and you would disturb no body going over that.

Do you think this increases power consumption overall and still does not contribute adequately for the benefit of mankind? You could make the difference by giving your two pence for using a renewable source of energy to off set at least a fraction of what you consume.

Today, eBooks are a lot cheaper than a regular book - and that means you spend less for more than on a conventional book. Of course, you get more for what you have that way.

Mankind needs the teeny little bits of humanity to work out the kinks and make an overhaul to get things on track for a better planet. It is possible for our next generations to preserve this planet on which we dwell for at least a couple of generations more (life in outer space - we have not had any updates to that any time, have we?) and if we succeed in showing them a way to move from our destruction of other kinds for the fancies of mankind (which is robbing Peter to pay Paul), perhaps we would have succeeded in letting them know not all hope is lost.

A small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind.

Spark

It works in certain ways. One thing leads to another, two people find they like talking to each other and then decide to spend more time with each other. In time, they will make their minds up about how things should go between them and from there, it is a journey with the other person at a distance and pace they choose mutually.

It all started on a very small scale. He is a nondescript guy, but charming. Still, there was something about him I instantly liked. I really wanted to check him out. I reached out to him on the portal and he responded. He seemed interested too. That was good for a start.

But time, in its course, made us focus on our tasks at hand. We were not talking much - just the occasional good morning and good night. It went on like this for a while but I had to do something about it. I wanted to reach out to him and chat him up. On 6 June. we exchanged phone numbers. But he forgot that he had shared his number with me.

Finally, on Saturday, I could not hold it back much longer. I had to call him. I tried calling him once - but he did not take my call. I was unsure if he would take my next call. But call I did. He took it this time and let me know that since he was outside, he could not chat me up but asked if I would call him up after 30 minutes. I was glad he took my call and called him up again after 35 minutes - and boy, was I so glad I had!

We started speaking. It was a catchy start. I was trying to find stuff about him. We figured we were from the same college. It was a shocker for a start and I could not believe he was 2 years senior to me and from my own alma mater. It was a pleasant surprise for me. I loved hearing him talk - he had a dimension to his voice and I simply loved hearing him speak. He spoke sense and that is a huge deal to me. Hearing him made me feel really good about myself. The conversation seemed to have no end. It was so lively, light and kept us both talking, sometimes one of us more than the other, but it was such engaging conversation unlike any I had ever had. I liked hearing about the person on the other end of the line and I wanted to keep hearing him speak.

But time is a humorless friend and sleep came naturally to both of us. We were yawning on the call from the toils of the day and we could not help it. The yawns kept coming and one of us had to stop the conversation. He suggested we go to bed and take it up again from where we left off later.

Initially, I was a little reluctant but I wanted to give in too since I felt very tired and I did not want to be the reason for someone's sleepless night. The next day, when I was doodling about with my Facebook I found him on a friend's friends list. He was cool as I imagined and it appeared that he made short films briefly. I liked the one movie I saw. I mentioned to him that I had looked up his stuff on Facebook which creeped him out. I told him I did not intend it but I helped myself to it since I got the stuff on my screen. We did not chat much since and I let him know that I wanted him to include me in his plans for the next weekend.

I was excited when he said he would. I feel so high that I am looking forward to a weekend where I meet someone who may be my someone special. I am in fact thrilled about it. I am waiting for his call which I hope comes soon.

I am dying to hear him speak again. But will he? How will things move from here?

Only time will tell.

Shadows

Weekends - life seems to pass, one weekend at a time. And when 52 weekends are past, a new year arrives.

The joys associated with weekends seem to mellow out with every passing one. Earlier, weekends were the time when one would definitely go about the place - meeting buddies for lunch or treat, going places to see new things, shopping for a wardrobe or a new read, make plans for a birthday - there were plenty of things to do in the 2 days that come after 5 days of baking oneself on an executive seat staring into the depths of an LCD thin screen, weaving one's way through the tasks of the day. Rest was never the first thing on one's mind for the weekend.

But that aspect was set to change. The body, getting weary under the toils of the week, seems to lose a lot of its old self - including patience, resilience and a yearning to burn away the calories that would otherwise stack up on the body. The erosion of the strength is very similar to senility sinking in and makes one wonder if this is how getting old is.

Not to be left behind, the people in your life seem to have a bustling life they are thrilled about - of which you get to hear barely a whisper - people sleep with each other, get interested in someone else and leave someone behind to wallow, get married or have kids, lose a loved one or buy a new house. And the one place where you can see what is going on in someone's life is undoubtedly facebook - this place has ended up being the forum for one's thoughts and feelings ranging in variety from announcing a brand new purchase to a private thought with hidden messages intended for someone who may never glance at it.

Maturity is long forgotten and people tend to forget science and logical thinking. Casuistry and the ability to convince run the world today and there are 3 kinds of people - the people who conjure new logic and state it to the crowd. the people who base their logic on scientific foundations and anyone who would buy a logic that fits like a glove to their perspective on things and help them push their way down the depths of ignorance.

Truth is of no value today. Honesty goes out the window at this point. Everything runs on what people want to believe in or rather, on what the people with truth in their hands prefer to say. Nobody cares about taking a lot of truth to the grave to be silent on it forever. Nobody cares about whether or not they hurt someone's feelings by lying. Nobody would admit to doing wrong. Conscience is dead. Everyone does and says as they deem fit and do not care about the consequence of word nor deed. Nothing really matters. Everything is immaterial and makes very little sense. Everybody hears things, builds their beliefs on things and acts with things in their mind but the things are always baseless things with a strong sense of value attached to them.

The heart is merely an organ of the body and not a spring of emotion in poesy. People make room for nobody there anymore. Everyone is scared of breaking someone's heart but nobody cares about breaking trust. Trust is easily rebuilt - hurt, easily overcome, by choice. Though distrust mounts every time trust is broken and rebuild, the cracks on it don't seem to matter - better a bridge in repair to a known devil than a fine one to an unknown angel.

Friends are not people you can always rely on - they have their weaknesses - and for most, it is the person or thing the slightest sight of which causes a stirring in their groin. Nobody will stand by you. When you need someone the most. the most human touch you can get is from the pet you love. Humans are creatures that love to keep a distance from other humans with whom they tribed. And friends are also the people who stab you behind your back more often than you can blink your eye.

Money is something you will never see much of. Unless you bother to take some out of an ATM or a bank branch for handy expenses. People handle less money personally by the day, which is a good thing. A sore realization is that everyone on the planet is interested in your money. Nobody understands that what you earn and what you do with it is your business - these days, it simply is not. From the daily callers at the bank where you keep your savings account to the guys handing out flyers right in front of your office building, everyone is after your money.

Humor is very shallow. Nobody knows what it is today. Sarcasm is taken over what used to be humor. Satire is a will o' the wisp, cropping up here and there sometimes, but sarcasm is the rule of the day. Everyone is tired of it, but nobody will admit - unless they want to be made an example of.

Encouragement - is a diminutive expression these days.

Even with all the above said, I simply have to say - I am heavily blessed. I got a buddy like no other who lights me up with his selflessness and cares enough about me that I feel no discomfort or hurt when I know he is around. I know he is my friend and I know he is the bestest ever. He puts this grin on my face like I am a sunflower staring into sunshine, even when I am faced with affliction. And my, am I glad for it!

Indecision

There are those times in your life when you make up your mind that some specific people or things belong in a place different from where you kept them that day, week, month, season, year or decade. You may make up that someone needs to be attended to, someone needs less attending to, you need to get back in touch with someone, you have to burn some bridges, repair some and possibly build some as well.

Time - is an enigmatic, invisible, there yet fleeting companion. Time - works in a million different ways. Time - guards you from the past, exposes you in the present and makes you vulnerable to the future. Time - you cannot invest in it, since you cannot save some to put to use at a later time. Time - changes things, makes us realize we need to change, changes us. Time - worst enemy yet best buddy.

My bestest BFF ever had an opportunity to study at Singapore and he had to take it for various reasons. He chose to make a move, and I, ever wanting to be spending time with him, did just that, and in the process, missed out everyone else in my life and devoted every moment to him. I was always thinking about what my life would be like once he left and not for one moment did I prepare myself for the time after his departure.

It happened finally, on July 23 at about 2 am. We met the previous day, at about 7 pm, when it was twilight. I could see the sun's parting rays give way to gloom and him leave me till time knows when and we separated ways then. Around 10 pm, he texted me and asked me to fill his cellphone account for 50 bucks and he called me later at about 11 pm. He was firm in not wanting me to see him off at the airport and I was not willing to throw tantrums and so, I obliged. And when I was asleep, he flew.

From the next day on, it was a different scene altogether. The scenes I skipped when I was engrossed in the quality time I spent with him caught up with me. I was thrown back to the world from which I had taken a break, I was set to face it when I was not even ready to do so. I was vulnerable. I called up the frienemy who tossed me about or kept me close as he felt like treating me and I tried to gain some calm and ground. He was not feeling like chatting up, so I had to close that call and find me my way.

He did not keep the path gated and closed all the time. He did it as he pleased. It was his way with me. He could either feel like talking to me or closing me out. He could choose and feel superior and good about it. I was supposed to have no say to him and follow his intentions without so much as a murmur.

I could not stick to that routine, I am a person - I got my feelings and I needed to be heard. But who was out there to hear me out even when he was hearing me? No one. I did not have anyone in my life who could hear me out if not for him. At least, he would tell me something to think about and get past the now, but what if he did not choose to do that? I would be stuck in the now and ruin myself.

But it was too heavy a load to bear. You cannot put yourself at the mercy of a mechanism like this. It does not work this way. You need something reliable. This is a friendship of convenience - his convenience - and being part of it is ruin to me.

Making up my mind about this is not simple - there are times when he was the only person in my life that I could lean on so I could move forward. I cannot toss him out for what he did back then. But he tosses me around today, so am I justified in showing him the door and locking it behind him?

It's something I will never decide upon firmly, unless I have a solid reason to justify my stance on him.

Moments

There are so many ways in which events affect us through our life and thereby shape us into the people we will be. Some of them good, many of them rational and some others devastating. Everyone of us takes situations the way we think is best to tackle them to various consequences and we perform our analyses on them and reach our conclusions as to what course of action would have yielded favourable results.

It all started some months ago, on the evening of a Saturday following a Friday the 13th. An unfinished conversation - the last words told me on that day were "do what you will, don't ask me any more.". Not once but thrice. That day, my heart was laden heavy. I felt it would burst of the deceit. Yet some corner made a prevailing attempt to calm everything and succeeded in putting the body to rest.

The next day - late in the evening, there was a missed call on my phone. Not certain about how to deal with it, I just sent a text that I had been away and was ready to take a call then. No response. A little restless and uneasy about it, and not wanting to take a step at this stage since the issue was not really with what I had done, and conceding to a defeat this early would have been a really bad move, I reluctantly let it go.

A week passed. No communication from either side. I got back to my best BFF and he started engaging me on weekends. I came to terms with some unpleasant facts - like I had been so engrossed with someone who never shared the same tastes as me in anything we did, I had tried to do what someone wanted to do for himself and I had neglected myself - I had put someone else above me and by doing so, I had neglected myself. I had needlessly endured for what I had no gain and had struggled to have fun when indeed I had had none. I could not believe I had been a fool of this degree. This seemed a lot of stuff I had to deal with and I concluded that I was not going to let it happen again.

The following weekend, he had plans to visit colonial era places and I had a sudden plan to visit a college during their cultural festival. We went and did not exchange words during this time.

A month passed after that without so much as a whisper or a breath passed from one side to that other.


A fortnight before my birthday, a nice friend of mine called me on a Saturday and asked to gather at a beach - it sounded a nice idea, but the nice element vaporized the moment I heard he would be coming too. I did not want to go. I was asked to call up another friend who confirmed that he would be going and I had to say I would not be able to go because I had the haemorrhoids. I let it go. No words exchanged at this point. I came to know later that the call was for inviting the posse of friends to his brother's wedding. The wedding was on my birthday.

My birthday was coming up - and all my planning to do a visit to Kerala had drawn flak thus far. I was still wanting to do something exciting on that day.I was at a mall with my best BFF when he received a call and his class instructor on it told him that since he would not be able to make it the next day, his class would start 3 hours from that time. My best BFF hung up and then told me that he was free on my birthday. We started making plans and agreed that the next day was ideal for the Pondy trip we had been planning on doing for months. We agreed to have it done and then we travelled to the location of his class. From there, I went my way and later, the plan confirmed.

On my birthday, we went an hour behind in executing the plan, but we were good, since we really did not have much idea on what to do at Pondy. We went on to have a quick lunch and then, we went to a rocky beach. From there, we went on to have a blast that day (a memorable day of my life!).

We were going around the place when another BFF called me and told me that there had been a plan to make a call to me at midnight where he would have also been on conference such that all would speak and he would also have been able to break the ice. I was pleasantly caught by surprise - I would have never expected that gesture from him, after all the time and the way the talk had been when we had put a wedge between us. There was a moment then that made me feel special and good - he had remembered my birthday, had made up his mind to break the ice on my birthday and had even set things up. But my BFF who was to have initiated the call had slept it off at midnight and so, the troop had missed it. I felt great. But I really wanted to clarify that that had indeed happened - I needed someone to pinch and tell me it was real.

Later, my bestest BFF and I were on a bus back to Chennai when people who had missed to call during the day began to call me. I was on conference with many people and we were chatting up and talking through. Finally, he called - to break the ice. It was a heartmelting moment. I was so glad I was feeling all jumpy inside. He said he had a headache multiple times during the call but he kept on at it.


That was just one brief moment, one brought from re-union, that made us feel so nice and good inside. In that moment, the past had been forgotten, the events in the unshared timeline left buried under time, a resolve taken to ensure a slippage akin to this does not happen anytime and a feeling of being back home after a tiresome exploration that neither liked. All that was just in one brief moment - but whether the mended wares lasted till eternity is another story.

Alive!

It is a sad beginning to the new year. On the day after New Year, my mobile phone, dear to me, was stolen. It was taken a couple of hours before my departure from my hometown to my place of domicile and I worked through the paperwork to get my SIM card blocked and apply for a duplicate SIM card simultaneously so that I could take on my mobile number and still salvage the relationships maintained over my mobile phone. The number itself is a fragment of my identity and losing it is as severe on me as losing a limb. So, the task had to be done and immediately to prevent abuse of the lost device.

In the process of the work on the task at hand late in the day and too close to the departure, other activities missed the attention their needed, packing being on top of that list. And in the last minute hustle bustle, the first item on my must-have list did not make it into my luggage.

A delayed, disappointed departure from home on the backseat of my bro's bike, we had to shop for a mobile phone en route to the railway station and then proceed. I reached the station and boarded the train 10 minutes before departure, called up my parents on my alternate phone, checked if the duplicate SIM had been activated (which it had not) and proceeded to put back the alternate SIM card, set an alarm and attempted to sleep.

It was a slow period between that and falling asleep. I read a book as people around me ate and talked. Later, we arranged the berths and fell asleep. I was woken up by mice squeaking on my berth when I touched the essentials compartment of my knapsack to feel for the asthma medicine I am expected to have on me especially during travel. Sadly, they were not in there and that sent a jolt through my body. To console myself and keep composure, I told myself it would be all right.

Sadly, I was wrong. When the train reached Villupuram, I woke to find I had a slight wheezing. I made up my mind that I would get down at the next station if the situation took a turn for the worse or stay on till I reached the destination if I could handle things.

On reaching Chengalpet, I tried to make an effort to move - and I found it very hard to. I was gasping for breath and I was not able to take the tidal volume with any amount of ease. I freaked out and I felt doomed. I was not able to move much either and I felt I was getting myself into bad soup. At this point, getting off the train seemed a bad idea since I would be getting myself into uncharted territory and so, I made up my mind to get to Tambaram, my destination. In my fear, I wanted to let the world know what had happened to me in case I died - I sent a text to my BFF that I was having an asthma attack and that it was turning severe.

The train pulled out of Chengalpet. I got out of my full-sleeved t-shirt and put on a more comfortable t-shirt. Then, I opened the window to give myself a whiff of air and tried really hard to soothe myself. I began to pray desparately, for dear life since I really felt I was walking treacherously close to death and that I could possibly die in the event I did not get help in time. I was really doing all I could from waking everyone around me and asking them if they carried medicine for my condition.

The ordeal endured for 40 minutes. Once the train pulled in at Tambaram I mustered all my strength and lugged myself off the train. Then I walked on the platform towards the stairs. Once I reached them, it dawned on me that I would have a tough time climbing them. Finding no way out, I decided to take the climb and I began it. It was really agonizing. There were moments I felt I would rather pass out and die than climb the stairs, but I tried hard to focus on the landing at the top of the stairs and reached it after much effort. I was breathless. I could not breathe well at all. I managed to walk to a quiet place on the landing, dropped my luggage and bent over, panting, trying really hard to catch my breath. I stood there, bent over, panting for 10 minutes and I decided to take an Auto-Rickshaw to my place, even if the guy were to charge me Rs 300 for the trip.

Once I reached the bottom of the flight of stairs I quickly walked to the auto-stand and asked a driver to take me to my place with a stoppage at a pharmacy on the way. He quickly pulled up another guy who quickly informed me that it would cost me Rs 300 for the trip. I agreed with haste and I got in my ride.

The guy started the engines and we were on the road shortly. He checked with me if there was any room to omit the pharmacy part and when I told him it was not possible at all, he tried to reason with me that nobody opened shop at 5 15 in the morning. I told him my troubles and he instantly agreed to check at pharmacies in hospitals. I reminded him that my standing was so bad he had better accompany me to prevent any untoward incidents. He agreed with me.

We took a detour and reached a hospital and rushed inside. A sweeper on our way told us the pharmacy was open and the driver called out to the nurse and woke her. She asked me what I wanted and I said "Ventorlin" and she said they did not stock it. I asked for "Asthalin" and she gave me the inhaler. I immediately paid her and walked towards the exit. The driver caught up with me and asked me to use the inhaler. I quickly tore through the packaging and took out the elixir in my hands - I was gasping terribly at that point - and I took a shot from the inhaler. It was a short but long instant before I came back to my senses again. And soon, I was normal again.

The thought that I had been helpless for many moments before a stranger took an effort to find me medicine that restored me is cast on my mind now. I wonder what I would have done had things gone worse. I really cannot imagine how things would have followed had I passed out on that staircase. I am not sure if I will be alive to say 'hi' to everyone around me. All I am, I am grateful for it and all I did, I have no regrets about it - in the end, only that matters.