Sam

She is dead.            The phrase I had uttered without hesitation during my time as the resident doctor in Palliative Medicine were the same words I was trying to avoid saying. She, a middle-aged mother of one, on life-support a few wards away from where I stood, had ceased her struggle with  the virus . Sitting before me, occupying a bed each opposite each other were what was left of the woman’s nuclear family. Her son on one side and her husband on the other side of a Covid general ward. The situation where, amidst a global calamity, entire families were admitted to the hospital, where a Psychiatry resident was called upon to care for medically unwell patients, wearing a dehydrating space-suit seemed something out of a dystopian novel. But the terrible update I was privy to wrung me back to the pages of reality.        The nursing staff and I were in possession of the knowledge that the third member (first?) of this small family...

            Pit against the Almighty yet frequently mistaken for Him is Life. Life is praised beyond words by some and yet cursed with rich verbiage by others, a few intensely meant 'F this's and 'This is S's. Unless asked by a teacher or demanded by a PPT slide, why would anyone attempt to define life? Humans commonly claim to be merely looking for the meaning of life rather than its definition. What good would a definition do? What good would a technical interpretation of life do to the twenty-four-year-old man who was parched beyond description on his way home on the back of a truck? Life bestowed the man with the determination to work as a labourer a thousand kilometres from home and when a global catastrophe struck, life blessed him with a few thousand rupees that bought him standing space on a truck that would take him home. Life in its generosity positioned a friend next to him who refused to leave his friend alone when he was asked to leave the tran...