Copyright@kamleshsujata1
By Kamlesh Tripathi
By Kamlesh Tripathi
STATE OF PLAY: I was once faced with an ominous lifetime situation where my younger
child was diagnosed of ‘Brain Cancer’ when he was two-an-a-half-years old. And,
what followed was a long battle of nerves, emotions, brawn and brain in the
thick and thin of our intelligence-emotional quotient. Although, at the end
of it we lost the battle, because we couldn’t save him; but not before
fighting up to the last straw.
I then had a very demanding corporate job, and during that phase of our
lives we were located in various metro cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, and
Delhi –NCR where we did not have any day-to-day support from our extended
family nor friends. Nevertheless, we had to survive under the circumstances.
Caring colleagues and friendly neighbours were the only tangible support we had.
And I used to feel quite fatigued, even when I was working for some big
corporate names, who could have taken care of my tiring circumstances, but
I still had to continuously perform to keep my stalk and career ambitions alive.
My wife, who too was qualified in a profession, had to abandon her career
because she had to stay put at home to take care of the child. And, then there
were immense financial and emotional insecurities to deal with in terms of
expensive treatment, physical stress and fear of ultimate cure, even when my company
was magnanimous.
We were then around late thirties when this calamity had struck us, and
were not quite clear if we should go for a third child when the second was in
peril. And boy! It was an extremely challenging situation, where even the
Indian economy was not doing well and lot of companies were issuing pink slips;
and so there were continuous job insecurities around that time, when every
month our medical cost was spiraling up to around 60-70K.
But in all of this we had to work and survive, and so we charted out an
omnipotent methodology to de-stress ourselves. It was a seamless combination of
ideas, thoughts, mythology and even physical exercises that took us through the
ordeal. And, as we were coming close to the child’s end the intensity of stress
was increasing exponentially and in those circumstances this is how we
de-stressed ourselves:
1. CHAIN OF STRONG
THOUGHTS:
Everything, in one’s life starts from the mind. Mind is your biggest
problem, your biggest enemy but also your biggest friend, your solution
provider and the leveler. And, so we kind of decided to tackle our minds by drafting and
conditioning ourselves, into a particular kind of mind set by:
- Deciding to do away with all negative emotions for the time being.
- Nothing is permanent so why worry. Just keep doing what you are supposed to do under the circumstances.
- PUSH (Pray until something happens) Pray and pray.
- Don’t plan much, and take life one day at a time.
- No matter how bad things are, they could be worse.
- At any given point of time in your life there is something going right and something wrong and this balance life; for in life not everything will go wrong nor everything will go right in one go, as a law of nature.
- Life is a very sturdy boat, so just keep moving and don’t stop. For what life is to movement, stillness is to death.
- Whatever, you can do for the child do within your means, and don’t get intimidated by what others tell you to do if it is beyond your means.
- Our child may leave the world soon, but even I have to go some day or the other; and at the end of it we all have to go. No one can fight the law of nature. So why worry.
- Don’t try to run the universe yourself and leave few things for God, your child could be one.
- Human beings are blind. They can’t even see the next moment, so how can they see far off moments and predict the time of anyone’s death.
- There is something called the destiny; try and believe in it.
- When the child was very critical, towards the end days, is when I started believing in miracles even when it did not happen with us but it kept me charged under the circumstances.
- I started taking my work more passionately- Remember your daily routine could be one of the biggest stress busters.
- Just dress up and show up for work, and never sulk in those negative emotions.
- After, a bad day there is always a good day, but one really doesn’t know, which is that bad day; and which is a good day.
- Only get dismayed by situations you have created for yourself and not situations that God has created for you; for he only will correct it. ‘Brain Cancer’ was created by God.
- Be on guard when there is a change of surroundings, location, friends and colleagues as every situation has something new to offer; some new energies float around you. Life is all about positive and negative energies.
- Life is an esoteric journey and for every new situation you’ll have some new company who would leave you when that part of the journey is over. So nothing is permanent.
- We started thinking this child has a short life and he is here to spread a message. So don’t just feel morose and help the cause.
- In those firefighting days we had created our own little Gods, and anything that helped our circumstances was like a God to us. And then there were two worlds, one with cancer meant for us and the other without cancer meant for the lucky ones.
- We never discussed the child’s health to look for sympathies. Believe in your own self was thought of times.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES
- I took up to regular walking and Golf. It is a great stress buster.
- Deep breathing became a regular activity that helped in restoring freshness and rejuvenate our lives even though momentarily in those scary nights when we couldn’t sleep.
- I got hooked to one of the soap operas suiting my time for deflecting my tired mind.
- We kept our home ambience alive; for we didn’t want to give advance invitation to death. And, in that we looked for micro positivity of life.
- Whatever the child wanted we provided. We were proud of him and never negative.
- I got into a hobby that continues even now, to divert my barren mind.
MYTHOLOGY A GREAT LEVELER
- Even Gods had to leave their mortal bodies and so do human beings.
- The biggest unknown boon of life is a smooth exit and dignified death. Mythology combined with our circumstances taught us that.
These thoughts are from the book: “GLOOM BEHIND THE SMILE” now
catalogued in many libraries including LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON DC, AMES LIBRARY
OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, LIBRARIES AND
ARCHIVES OF CANADA AND LIBRARY OF CANCER AID AND RESEARCH FOUNDATION MUMBAI.
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