Dancing with Life (2 page)

Amidst all these health issues, another problem began to rear its head. I now started having frequent debilitating headaches. I thought perhaps it was time to get my eyesight checked. As my husband was due for his annual medical check-up I felt I should go along and get my eyesight tested. Maybe it was time to get glasses? The results were mind-boggling. While my right eye was fine I was almost completely blind in my left eye. I then asked my ophthalmologist, surgeon Captain V.K. Mohindra, whether he had seen a case like this before, as I had certainly never heard of anyone who had lost vision suddenly and that too only in one eye.

He did not answer but put me through a battery of tests. After the results came back the doctor explained that mine was not a simple case where he could just recommend prescription glasses and be done with it. ‘In some countries doctors recommend laser-based surgeries to treat this kind of a problem,’ Dr Mohindra said. However, he added, he would take a decision only after careful analysis as it was a delicate surgery. He advised me to take it easy for a while and come back for another eye check-up after fifteen days.

It was around this time that I took a leave of absence from my job as a software professional without telling anyone in my office about my health problems. Instead I called my maternal aunt who lived in Mumbai and told her about my eye problems and requested her to come and stay at my home for a few days. She immediately agreed. During her visit my aunt taught me some eye exercises she had learnt from her yoga teacher. I was to do them diligently on a daily basis. I did them all in a sequence as she watched over me but my mind couldn’t stop racing. I kept wondering what was wrong and worried incessantly. Clearly I didn’t know how to take things easy.

While the eye exercises helped keep my vision from deteriorating, I knew I needed to calm my troubled mind and find a way to reign in my overactive imagination. Sometime earlier I had learnt meditation from a lady named Promila Gurtu and had found it an effective way to deal with stress. Promila had learnt chakra meditation from the late Martin Brofman (founder of the Body Mirror System of healing which claims that your body is the mirror of the quality of your consciousness), and was now teaching it to others for their personal development and spiritual growth.

Apart from being a great teacher, Promila was a very inspiring person. She once told me how she had suffered from problems with her vision, and how meditation had cured her completely. Her doctor had prescribed thick eyeglasses but after she started meditating there had been no need for them. I began to attend daily sessions with her. More than just a teacher, she became a dear friend to me within a short period of time. I felt that she was the best person to inspire me to keep working on myself and face my health issues head-on.

Each session with Promila would include a block of meditation and then we would all talk to each other about our lives and share stories and lessons. I started meditating with Promila regularly and tried to motivate myself as much as possible. Yes, there were certain issues I was facing, but they were not as severe as I had probably made them out to be, I realized. I started reading many inspirational books and began to feel better in spirit, if not entirely in the body and mind.

I started meditating with her regularly and tried to motivate myself as much as possible.

Once in a while though Promila would be absent from the meditation centre for a week or so. We soon learned that this was because of weekly visits she made to a local hospital. She never explained the reason and because we all wanted to respect her privacy none of us ever broached the subject. It was only years later that we discovered that during the time she had been teaching us meditation she had also been battling cancer. Her regular visits to the hospital were for chemotherapy sessions. Even in her darkest moments while she herself was drowning instead of retreating into a quiet corner to wallow in self-pity, Promila had kept busy and thrown us all life jackets.

Days passed and I soon settled into a comfortable routine. Every day, I would get up early in the morning, do a bit of meditation followed by the eye exercises my aunt had taught me. Every day, I examined the state of the afflicted eye. It seemed to be healing. Soon fifteen days had passed and I was back in Dr Mohindra’s office.

I was a nervous wreck as all the tests were repeated once again. To my utter delight the results revealed that my eyes were just fine, and that my vision would return to normal within a few days.

I asked Dr Mohindra what I could do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. He told me that it was a very uncommon occurrence and all I could do was to ensure that I did not strain myself or my eyes too much. ‘Stress causes all sorts of problems. Just make sure you are relaxed and take it easy all the time,’ he advised. As I left his office I sent a silent prayer of gratitude to thank him, my aunt and Promila for helping me even as I vowed to start taking better care of my health.

I now started becoming very aware of stress, its symptoms, factors and causes and began to actively work towards minimizing its presence in my life. The first thing I did was ask for flexible timings at my workplace. I also asked to be shifted to a position with less responsibility citing as reason the truth that my children needed more of my time. My employers agreed very kindly and as my schedule opened up I found I had more time to devote to healing myself. I started going for long walks to the beach again, but always in the afternoon when I knew the streets would not be crowded. That way even if I tripped and fell, and made an utter fool of myself in the process, not many people would notice.

Sometimes when I saw people I knew approaching during my walks near the sea, I changed direction or went into a nearby shop, a library or a beauty parlour; anywhere where I could avoid questions about my health. As luck would have it, I kept bumping into acquaintances frequently and had to take refuge quite often at a garment shop which had a seating arrangement. The manager there soon began observing me coming in on a regular basis and as I would not purchase anything began staring at me with undisguised curiosity. With nowhere left to hide I soon stopped going down to the beach and I simply began walking around in the confines of my own home.

My husband’s transfer to Delhi in 2005 meant that I would soon have to leave my job and the city of Mumbai. When news of our departure spread there were a series of invites to social functions, farewell lunches and dinners hosted by the Indian Navy, my husband’s employers. Since these functions were totally unavoidable I took along an extra change of clothing and came up with some convincing excuses when guests invariably asked me why I was lugging around such a huge bag at a formal event. My husband and I were, and are, known as reasonably good singers and would often be asked to sing a duet at parties. We both enjoyed the attention and liked it even better when others would join in as well and the entire room would erupt in song. But during our various send-off parties I limited myself to just a single song as I was afraid that I would not be able to stand in one place for so long. I had started experiencing problems with my sense of balance and the last place I would want to make this public was at a party thrown by my husband’s employers and peers.

It took me some time to get used to New Delhi, not only as a metropolis so different from Mumbai but for an entirely different reason. I knew where all the washrooms were located in the areas I used to frequent in Mumbai, and I had more or less learnt how to handle myself in case I had an emergency in public. Now in Delhi, I had to start the whole process all over again. And on top of this I had to find a job with flexible hours. My friends helped out with the addresses and contact details of some software firms in Delhi-NCR and although I would have liked to continue my career as a software professional, I knew there was no way I would be able to manage with the strict deadlines and high levels of work-related stress. I thought it would be more convenient to work with an NGO or take up freelance writing assignments to keep myself occupied.

At this stage, I began to observe how Delhi treated those citizens who had mobility issues like me or were in some other way physically challenged. While the government of the day had installed facilities that were disabled-friendly at a few public places, most places were completely out of bounds. I also now became aware of how mobility-challenged people, once an invisible minority to me, coped with getting around the city. While some walked unsteadily leaning on a cane or stick, others relied on the kindness of strangers or friends. I started to map the city for disabled-friendly buses, trains and access paths in malls, buildings and my children’s new school. Unconsciously I was preparing for the future for I could foresee that with my case progressively worsening, I would have a difficult time ahead in Delhi.

Now that these issues concerned me on a personal level I started paying particular attention to citizen campaigns that asked the government to make the steps of the state-run buses lower in order to make it easy for the elderly and the physically challenged to get on board. I had never thought the steps of these buses could be made any lower. Now that I too found boarding high-floor buses a challenge, I could clearly understand and resonate with such campaigns. Thank God for concerned citizens and public activism.

I had heard of the Spastics Society of India’s Delhi chapter
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and knew it was working actively in this area and had many success stories to share. I thought perhaps I could apply to work with them. Since it was an organization for those suffering from cerebral palsy (a group of neurological disorders that affect body movement and muscle coordination), I knew the office would be disabled-friendly with proper ramps and even disabled-friendly washrooms. I thought it would be the perfect place to work for a few hours every day and on days I felt too weak to walk I could work from home. I applied for a job and went for a couple of interviews but all they had on offer were full-time jobs and certainly none with flexible timings.

The next best thing besides working at the Spastics Society I thought was taking up writing as a profession. While in Mumbai I had written a couple of articles for the magazine
Life Positive
(published from Mumbai) and had enjoyed the experience of meeting and writing about people whom I found inspiring. I sent an e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief Suma Varughese along with my resume enquiring if there were any job openings in Delhi. Serendipitously, Suma happened to be visiting Delhi the day she received my enquiry. I met Suma and told her that I was looking for a job with flexible timings. She heard me out and said I could work from home and only needed to visit the office once a week for administrative purposes. This arrangement was even better than what I had hoped for and so began my career as a motivational and personal growth reporter.

Looking back, I now realize that life had set me on the path to discovery and healing. Through my job at the magazine I met many inspiring people and got access to several wonderful books and articles. The very people I went to visit and interview began to show me the way to live a fulfilling, stress-free and healthy life.

By now even though my vision had improved I had still not got myself checked for either my issues with incontinence or balance. Foolishly, I started reading the health section of magazines and newspapers to find solutions to my problems rather than making an appointment with a doctor. Instead of going to the source of the problem I was trying to play doctor to myself without really understanding what was happening in my body. Even though I stopped short of self-medicating the fact is that I was living in deep denial.

Besides articles in popular media I also read positive literature and tried to spend some time in daily meditation and attended as many motivational talks that I could. I kept telling myself: ‘This too shall pass’.

I also used to chant regularly. My chanting sessions would include all the prayers I knew, from various religions and faiths; I even followed a set pattern of allocating one day of the week for one particular chant. I did this quietly at night and never let anyone knew how disturbed I was feeling inside. But why, you may ask, did I still shy away from going to a doctor? The honest answer is because I kept hoping against hope that this was just a temporary phase.

My husband was not fooled however. He knew something was wrong and kept asking me to visit a doctor but I kept putting him off with excuses. I was terrified of what the result would be. Would I require hospitalization? How much would it cost? Would I be able to walk again? What would happen to my lovely children Siddart and Samyukta? I would rather not know. The truth was a ticking time-bomb that had the potential to blow all our lives into smithereens.

In 2006 my eldest aunt Vijaya arrived at our house in Delhi for a visit accompanied by her son and daughter-in-law. Vijaya was my favourite aunt. I had spent much time with her in my teenage years either shopping or attending musical concerts or singing; she had even helped me shop for my wedding trousseau. After marriage and motherhood I always looked forward to her visits for with her came rushing back all the happy memories of my youth and childhood.