Here are some thoughts, some light, some not so light. Please feel free to add your own.

• Politeness and manners should never be mistaken for weakness
• Why be difficult, when with a little more effort, you can be impossible
• Loud and abrasive behaviour is not a sign of strength
• A doctor with an iota of compassion is a rare find and worth his weight in gold
• Greed is an offspring of one’s upbringing
• The family is one’s only last bastion
• Repay malice with kindness, it confuses everyone
• A mother-in-law is also a relative
• Information is power
• A friend is someone who accepts you on an as-is-where-is basis and doesn’t try to change you
• Work is a four-letter word and should be removed from a child’s vocabulary
• Bravery is not the absence of fear – that is stupidity
• Education increases one’s capacity to look beyond oneself
• Christmas while being the season of joy contains within it the seeds of Good Friday
• The million dollar question should be ‘is there life after birth?’
• A chameleon doesn’t change its colour, it only does so to blend in with its surroundings
• The only thing regal about a lion is his inertia

The problem with the “rat race” that we all run today is that even if you do emerge a winner, you are still a rat which (with due apologies to the bard) by whatever name you give it, smells just as foul.

I find the above parody on the old quotation, which I unlocked from the vaults of my memory bank, to be tailor made to suit the situation of the stroke victim trying his damndest to travel the road to recovery. Lacks motivation? Sure! But whoever said that providing motivation to recover was part of the deal.

Brother you locate or create your own motivation. No outsider can provide it because no outsider can put himself in your shoes. Yes, you sail along the road or river to recovery on the strength of your breeze or wind.

How you create it is entirely up to you. Today I cannot provide tips to that. And speaking of motivation, the worst is the time you find yourself sitting alone in chasms and ravines of depression. These divots are so large they would make the Grand Canyon appear small and insignificant. No ropes! No grapple hooks! No, sadly there’s nothing at hand to help you climb out of these depths.

But then who said this was going to be a joy ride. “Joy”, I haven’t seen that bird in quite a while;  I have even forgotten what it looks like.

My sister, Vinita, died on the 9^th of April 2008. She was the youngest of us three siblings. I was told that she had gone in for a minor operation and that while she was on the operating table her heart forgot to do what it was supposed to. She was three years younger than I and she died. I reckon she was the lucky one.

Do I sound depressed? Life in a canyon can get quite tiresome. I used to be quite gregarious prior to the stroke. I enjoyed the company of friends and acquaintances and I think they enjoyed my company.

My social behaviour used to be described as  - gay (not in the modern sense of the word) happy go lucky. I was considered to be humourous and very witty. Of course, all that is a feature of the past, best forgotten and swept under the carpet or whatever.

Nowadays, the behaviour of others towards me at social gatherings is deferential, with a lot of concern, there is a strong hint of being condescending even, patronizing and I hate it with a gusto! Meeting people for the first time used to be a joyful adventure, one to be looked forward to with anticipation. This joy and fervour has now changed to apprehensive concern, bordering on naked fear.

Yes, I’ve changed considerably.

I have sometimes thought of taking up teaching assignments in training institutes near where I live. But then the thought of how the students might view a doddering, shuffling, octogenarian. And the fact that I would be providing a laugh to them with a target for ridicule and derision has quickly put an end to such ridiculous unrealistic aspirations, of an ancient wreck who is half lame, half blind with hardly any speech.

As I have said elsewhere, I was to have retired from the services of my company in the year 2005, but was granted two, two-year extensions, which would have meant that I could have continued in my position as Vice Principal of the WelcomGroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration at MAHE University until 2009. I took the first extension but declined the second in the hope of spending some time with my son at my home in Gurgaon, Haryana; which is near New Delhi in India.

            The intention was to start enjoying the life of a gentleman at large. I accept that this portion of my blog is now straying away from the original intent – which was to have been a road map and guide for stroke victims and now this piece takes on the colour and hue of an autobiography. It is personal and entirely subjective. However, it does serve the purpose of letting others know that although we stroke victims may appear to have lost some of our abilities – mental and/or physical – I am sure many of us still feel and think and remember events, pretty much as most people do.

            And, I know it may appear odd to some folk that a father needed to make a conscious decision to spend time with his son. No! We were not estranged, nor at odds with each other, which some people may assume. The truth is that in this day and age parents, increasingly in India too, sometimes have to be separated from their children due to certain circumstances of work. And mine was a case like that.

            In addition to his early years at school, which were spent away from us, as I was in the tea gardens and he of necessity had to be sent away to school, he was also away from us during his college years. All this enforced separation meant that my wife and I knew very little about him as a person, especially now that he had grown up to be a man.

            I was very pleasantly surprised by the changes that time had wrought in my little boy. I confess that both my wife and I were nervous at the prospect of sharing a home with a relative stranger. I am sure he too was nervous. And this piece is about the person I have come to know.

            My son Kanishka (hereinafter referred to as Kay, for the sake of writing convenience, as I am now without the secretarial assistance I had during my working life and which had spoilt me rotten) is a young man of 34 years. He is clever, witty, charming – when he wants to be. He is well informed and well read, has good analytical abilities and he operates from a baseline that is ethical. He has a wide circle of friends, both from his professional and social life.

            When he was in school, he couldn’t study three pages of a textbook without flying paper planes, which he held in his hands making them fight imaginary dogfights. He would collapse after working for a mere half an hour. Today he has changed into a man who is bordering on being a workaholic. I have seen him leave for work at 8:00 am one morning and quite cheerfully return to home at 8:00am the next. What’s more he does so cheerfully, without a trace of a complaint and no evidence of flagging energy. In fact he can and has quite happily attended a party at 10:30 in the evening after a gruelling 12-hour workday. Talk about the caterpillar evolving into the beautiful butterfly.

            My son, whom I have got to know and now love more than ever, is good, kind, well mannered, thoughtful and considerate of others, including strangers. He is healthy, robust, slim and figure-conscious. I know I am biased, but to my mind, he is without vice – except for the fact that he smokes, which is pretty bad by itself. For some strange reason, he has fond memories of his childhood, although there must have been some patches that were rough and best forgotten. When reminiscing about the past he seems to recall and recount the pleasant incidents, having expunged the bitterness. This may well be the secret to his present state of well-being.

            I just cannot understand how women of a marriageable age have let him get away so far.

            He is presently single and as far as I can tell has no intention of getting married in the near or not so near future. This makes me wonder whether we, as parents, have failed as role models. However, when talking to me he has expressed his fear of matrimony on account of the number of marriages that he has seen, amongst his peer group, flounder on the rocks. This is the main reason he fears commitment.

            If I am allowed a little advertising on his behalf, here it is. (As if the foregoing has been anything less than a major PR exercise for him!) On the material side he works for a private company that deals with the media and event management. He owns two cars, one a Chevrolet and the other a Honda Civic, draws what I think is a humungous salary and which I keep praying will not corrupt him as a human being. He has a valet, a driver a cook – domestic help that is considered relatively average in an average Indian home.

            The guy who coined the phrase, ‘love is blind’ had it all wrong. Women are blind not Love!

            Earlier in this account I had stated that a man is not measured by the goats he has, nor the bank balance that he possesses, but in the quality and quantity of positive relationships that he has with his relatives, friends and acquaintances. I might add that a man who has the good fortune of having a family unit intact, whose children have escaped the snares of drugs and AIDS, the fall-out that often occurs from broken homes, who were not school or college dropouts, and are gainfully employed, that man is truly blessed, truly blessed and wealthy beyond measure. Anything in addition to this is a bonus. Having spent eleven years in a college dealing with young adults has convinced me of this.

A period of evaluation
Where did one go wrong? Or fall short?
Materially, spiritually and/or emotionally.
Can one make amends?
Does one want/need to make amends?
The final leap draws nearer
Is that a welcome or a fearful thought?
The final count deals with the quantum and quality
of friends/ enemies
one has made during the race.
Friend: one who loves you, in spite of yourself
Enemy: one who loves to hate you.

Love
Is a tug at the heart strings
That makes the knees feel like jelly
But results in
A pleasant warmth just above the rib cage.

Hate
Is a tension that is unpleasant
And begs for an early release.

Indifference
A state of apathy
That tends to alienate
It has an ivory tower syndrome.

Life
A roller-coaster ride that
Must be, must be
Enjoyed
Before it dumps you
On the wayside.

Happiness
Is a state of mind
That prefers not
to be dumped.

Fears
Silent tears
at best unshed
Cataclysmic fears
not expressed
There is this black hole
in the existence
Of human life
That swallows these whole
Leaving narry a trace.

Sleep, blessed sleep in the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Samuel Taylor Coleridge refers to “sleep” as being blessed from pole to pole and he wasn’t too far off the mark. For a patient recovering from a stroke having lost many of his faculties and abilities, sleep becomes a convenient and happy escape route. It is an anaesthetic and if you are lucky enough to, “sleep, perchance to dream”, there is always the possibility of being transported to another day when you were sound and normal. But, this has a downside too. It is very similar to the sense of elation you would feel if you lay down in an opium field; an overdose could be harmful if not lethal. My personal experience was that at its worst, sleep took you away from your current problems and therefore I did have a tendency to hit the sack whenever I had the opportunity. And so I would encourage all those who suffer to try and curb this tendency and limit indulgence in this ‘loser activity’.

So how do we deal with this?

My own experience in this regard was quite effective and I would recommend it to all post stroke victims. Of course, I cannot give any guarantees but then, in this, day and age who can? A cousin of mine who has a rather religious bent of mind supplied me with a thought from the bible (my own knowledge of scriptures, being very weak to put it mildly). The remedy for desolation should be what is called in psychological terms positive self talk. There is a tendency for the individual to look up to the heavens and ask God the rhetorical question (depending on the individual’s penchant for histrionics) “Dear God! Why me?” This line of thinking will get you nowhere but into more of a desolate spiral.

I say, with all your might, “stay away from this line of thinking.” Instead: look up to the heavens and you might say “Dear God, thank you for keeping me alive! With my mind and my wits intact.” If it isn’t a case of ‘mind and wits intact’ (I am aware that a stroke affects different people to different degrees and that I have been relatively blessed in that my mind and wits are intact, but my mobility is not. Some stroke vicitms I understand lose their ability to formulate words, I believe the term is “aphasia”, but perhaps they are mobile.) Whatever it is, find something to hold on to.

And yes, it sounds trite, but do count your blessings No! I am not being Christianly. Counting one’s blessings is like a bit play to a back foot stroke to a short pitched ball… in cricket. The most effective term I found is, “yes, today, life is dismal and desolate to boot, but ’this too will pass’.

I may not ever be able to look back on these days and laugh at them (the trauma is too big for that). But, at least it clicks on a light at the end of the tunnel. At least one can hope for a brighter tomorrow and isn’t that what “hope” is all about?

Yesterday, I fell in the bathroom. So, what’s the big deal? I know that question must be crossing your mind.Falling in the bathroom or elsewhere is a common – everyday occurence, what is so special about my fall? 

One moment, I was perpendicular, 90 degrees to the ground and the next, I was 180 degrees, horizontal and on the ground. To my mind the descent was in ultra slow motion. So slow, that while falling I had the chance to think. I could see the floor and grab the bar coming up at me at me at me…

I clearly remember on the way down to the floor, fully aware of the dire consequences of a head injury wondering whether to end it all there and then and

1. to hell with the cripple’s existence
2. to hell with the continuous dependence
3. to hell with the mess that my present life and living have become
4. to hell with the wheel chair and crutch
5. to hell with the continuous plea for help and assistance

Whether these thoughts and feelings crossed my mind and being at the conscious or unconscious level, I do not know.All I remember is, that at some point the urge to survive was like a war over all the defeatist feelings and I put my hands out and saved my head from injury.This was the first time I had experienced what is generally referred to as the “survival instinct”.

There is a lot of truth to the adage that states “every dark cloud has a light and luminous edge”. Not to be outdone by other dark clouds, mine also conformed to tradition.

Yes, my cloud was dark, very very dark, but the advantage it afforded me was that since I was incapable of doing much else, I had a lot of time to think and introspect, which is probably the genesis of this piece of writing.

Eventually I came around to the subject of assessing and evaluating my relationships, the outcome of my thinking came as rather an unpleasant piece of news which in turn created within me a resolve to improve myself, drastically in terms of my relationships.

Another thing that appeared on the “asset” side of this self styled balance sheet was the realization that being alone by myself was not as bad as people made it out to be; that, I could, infact live by myself with my thoughts and memories, for better or for worse.