The person who saved my father’s life

Father is a person who gives you extraordinary strength to do things which seem impossible to you! 

Image Courtesy: Google Images from the movie, 'The Pursuit of Happyness'

Life is full of co-incidences and some of them are so intriguing that one can’t stop but wonder about them over and over again. Co-incidences are like dots placed in the sheet of life, you join them and you solve the puzzles! As you walk the path of life, the dots become easy to connect and the puzzles which are solved never fail to surprise you. While it may be difficult to solve all the puzzles and join the dots always, sometimes, some puzzles you unveil make you happy to the core. In my case, I was able to join the dots which concerned my father and the person who saved his life after 12 years.

In 1999, my father was suffering from an ailment – Liver Cirrhosis and hence was hospitalised. In advance stages of liver cirrhosis, the only option left is liver transplant. I wouldn’t lie; I just read that on the internet myself. May be there are a lot of cures for cirrhosis now, but I can tell you this, back in 1999, it was comparatively difficult to deal with it. Due to cirrhosis, my father slipped in coma later.

I was just 12-years-old and while I knew that my father wasn’t well and was in the hospital, I didn’t know what exactly went wrong. I was so innocent that when I was told that my father is in coma, I thought ‘coma’ must be some place near ‘Goa’ and my father is over there! Stupid, isn’t it? Well, it helped being stupid at that point of time. For four days, an uncertainty existed about my father’s life. I don’t remember much, but remembering the bits and pieces, I can surely say that it was a testing time for all those who love him. After four days, the miraculous happened; my father came back to life!

Along with the wishes of many loved ones, I have always thought that three people had a major role to play in him coming out of coma; my mother – who maintained her composure and stood strong in spite of having very little support, our family doctor and my uncle – who has always been there for us and Dr Rajat Arora in whose hospital my father was admitted when he suffered from cirrhosis. For years, I was told that Dr Arora was the reason why my father returned to life; it was his perfect diagnosis. I knew nothing about the doctor except his name and yet whenever I told about my father to anybody, I never failed to mention him. I never tried to thank Dr Arora; it just didn’t occur to me until one day when I saw and met him personally by chance for the first time in 12 years!

In June 2011, I joined Nagpur Times, the lifestyle supplement for The Times of India as an intern. I didn’t know back then, that this would change my life and the way I looked at things completely, that’s another story of course. Part of my job at the Nagpur Times is to cover several social events in the city with the photographer for the Page 3 section and report about them. I’m a very social person, so the idea of meeting new people excited me when it was told to me. During one such event which was a doctors’ do, I came across Dr Arora.

As the photographer was clicking pictures of different people at the party, I was going up and talking to them. When he clicked Dr Arora with his wife, I went up to him and introduced myself. The moment he told me his name, I was instantly taken back to the past; the time when my father was in coma. I had the flashback of the last twelve years in a minute and I thought, if this man wouldn’t have saved my father, I would have spent the last 12 years without my father. The feeling was so overwhelming that I was on the verge of crying. I wanted to thank him, but for some unknown reason, I didn’t. I just couldn’t say anything.

Since that day, I have met him at many parties; I have interacted with him formally, but I never thanked him. Sometimes I think; it’s so weird that for him I’m just an acquaintance but he has absolutely no idea that he has made a very big difference to my life! May be someday, I will thank him at last, till then and even after that, I’ll always be thankful to him for giving my father back to me!

 *** P.S. – I have changed the doctor's name as I don’t wish to reveal it, until I thank him.