To You my Friend, I Salute!!!!!

Some people inspire you with their sheer grit and determination…….

Just had a conversation with an old friend, we had been on and off friends, talking to each other once in a blue moon. I was astounded to hear his tale of last one year, how time decided to test his determination and how he held on. A 20 something ambitious guy, who married early to his childhood sweetheart, joined a company and then quit to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. From an outsider’s point of view all was perfect in his life, what more did he want not many are as lucky as him to get all they want. Seemed like for the rest of us who were still struggling to comprehend what we expected from our life, he had already got what he wanted, until the day came when his mother had a heart failure.

He somehow grabbed himself to this news, after all parents are most precious for any child. He got her admitted in a local hospital and after much ado the doc said that she had to be taken to a bigger and better hospital considering the gravity of her ailment. He soon shifted her to a competent hospital in Delhi, whereby the treatment started, with his mom in the serious condition that she was, the doc declared that his mother had to be put on a ventilator whereby her chances of recovery were just 50%. He was speechless but he had to take a decision, he did. No sooner was his mother being treated in the hospital, that his wife started feeling an acute pain in her chest and she had to be admitted. He received the biggest jolt of his life and was shell shocked, "but my wife is just 22 how could this possibly happen to her",he was reasoning with himself. He kept rushing from one room to the other in the hospital, attending his mother at one end and wife at the other, and this time again he took a tough decision, “You need to decide fast, your wife will have just one more month to her”. Petrified by the thought he agreed to an open heart surgery, he hadn’t ever imagined his wife will have to go through at such a young age.

But this wasn’t the end of his woes, with over a month of making errands in the hospital, he was almost at the verge of bankruptcy with a business which had nobody to look after. And once again he decided, he decided to fight, he decided not to give in, he joined a job which compelled him to stay out of town for 20 days a month, far away from his mother whom he loved, and longed to see, away from his beloved, whom he longed to accompany and make her smile so that she doesn’t take life too seriously.

While writing it down, I am wondering how many of us have the power to go on, when the whole universe is testing our ability to carry on the burden it has thrust upon us? how many of us realize that we need to express the affection we hold for our loved ones, and not claim paucity of time, the reason for our indifference? How many of us don’t curse the minor problems we face and claim that life has been unfair to us, Wasn’t life at its unfairest best to him?????  How many of us still have the grit to lead our life with the same zeal and enthusiasm? how many of us could still manage to be optimistic about life? How many of us get bogged down by the simple tests life wants us to undertake, for Ladies and Gentleman, here is a MAN in the true sense of the word who gave it all and still had the courage to stand up and fight back, to which I am reminded of these lines from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, I swore by as a kid.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"  

Hail my friend, of whom I am proud to be associated with, you give strength to many others though unknowingly.

God Bless!!!!