Children of God

'I bent over to pick up a paper plate and all of sudden my sister nudges me, asking to attend to a child who wanted another plate of goodies. I turned back and before I could even notice who it was, the little boy stretched out his hand, wanting to get a bite of that tasty egg puff. Though he was only two years old and the most talkative kid, I couldn't stop myself from the overflowing sympathy that came  after seeing a tube attached to his hand. It was a tube meant for vein location, when in need for extracting blood. He is suffering from blood cancer.'

I entered the 'Pediatrics Oncology Department' inside the RCC. It was one of the most colourful rooms I had seen in a long, long time. One of the walls had been painted over with the four cute characters from Madagascar. There was a huge pineapple cake with my name inscribed on it, looking as delicious as ever. There was even a paper cut out that read 'Happy Bday' stuck on a cupboard. Excitement turned into empathy on seeing a bunch of little kids undergoing cancer treatment, who were seated with their mothers. It is one of those days where I found it to be a life changing experience. It's not the pain or fear of death. Everyone goes through a lot of pain in different ways, right? But what hit me was their indifference towards their situation. They were all too young to realize what pain is, yet most of them were too mature. If I were them, I would have walked up to the birthday girl and given her a piece of my mind for being so stupid to rejoice over turning a year old at a place where celebration is a term seldom felt. But I was the birthday girl, and as I felt heavy hearted celebrating my 23rd year, I felt it was time to behave my age.

I had a rewind and replay session of few sulky moments in my life, where I felt God was being too unreasonable. Forget counting my blessings, I started weighing my life on the basis of these problematic situations, which weren't that bad coming to think of it now. As much as a self-boosting process that day (at the Cancer centre) had been, everyone deserves happiness at any cost. But we belong to an unbalanced universe, where it's the imperfections that complete the viscious circle of life. I understood how hard it was for me to acknowledge the gift of life as a boon, rather than a tally board between who is right and wrong. Rumi was so precise when he said we'll meet in a field beyond right and wrong doings. And here I am, in that field, looking at the unclear shadows of the sunny side of life :)