The Gift of Hands

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, is so true. We never value the things we already have, running after the ones we don’t, we realize their value only when they are taken away from us by some freak twist of fate. “Ghar ki moorgi dal barabar”, you know. 

Each one of us is in that mad race for money, fame, success, that overdue promotion, that pay hike, that latest state-of-the art sleek car, that designer diamond necklace and so on and so forth. Wants, wants and more wants. Mahatma Gandhi once wisely said, “There is enough in the world for man’s need, but not his greed”. But in the midst of this insane rat race how many of us pause to think about what we already have? How many of us express our gratitude towards God for all that he has already given us. I didn’t till a few days back.

Like any normal person I too wanted this, dreamt of becoming that etc. etc. All I thought of was what I didn’t have and cribbed about it. I worked too hard to prove myself, to climb up the corporate ladder and have a meteoric career graph. I worked till my limit’s end and then went on to stretch those limits. I worked 9 – 12 hours a day regularly, even weekends sometimes. Sounds normal I know, because most people do that now-a-days. Nothing could stop me, after one achievement there was always the next rung to aim for. Suffering from constant neck and shoulder pains was routine, nothing that Iodex or a pain-relieving spray couldn’t cure. “I’ll worry about it later, I’m too young to suffer from anything serious”, I mulled. 

Then suddenly out of the blue, my left upper arm started aching beyond normal proportions. Typical of today’s fire-brand, stop-at-nothing, always on the move generation that has grown up looking for the fastest solutions, I gulped down some pain-killers and as usual did 'Iodex maliye kaam pe chaliye'. All was hunky-dory for a while and then the pain re-surfaced. This time much more aggravated. I did the same thing till my body decided it had had enough and broke into a mutiny.

I hardly slept that night, twisting and turning from one side to another as shots of blinding pain crippled by arm and shoulder. A visit to the doctor the next day revealed an appalling story of cervical spondylosis, bone degeneration, oesteopenia, muscular spasm and possible injury. Terms meant for the aged, as I’d not so long ago thought. I couldn’t lift up my hand by even an inch, its movement completely restricted by the sudden spasms of pain. I was confined to my house, had to miss work for 10 days, and could pretty much do nothing else that didn’t classify as killing time, except writing. There’s only so much you can do when you’re denied the use of the faculty of one of your hands. One hand, such a small, simple thing mundane even, that brought my life to a standstill. All my life I took my hands for granted, never thanking God once that He gave me two normal, natural, strong, beautiful hands. I was so much luckier than the unfortunate ones who are born with defects, crippled, or lose their hands in accidents.

Now I realize that one should always count one’s blessings, the very fact that we breathe is by God’s grace, but do we thank Him for that? If we don’t then it’s time to take a long, hard pause and do now.