A Cave in the Mountains

In the last one decade this is the second time that I have been laid out with a major surgery. The last time it was a motorcycle accident when I was travelling around Rajasthan with my American friend Thomas Elliot. We had just crossed Jhunjhunun after copious amounts of tea, next stop Delhi. It was late evening and by the time we hit the road, the sky was turning dark. It was a moonless night and for about twenty kilometres I followed a highway taxi, making him the pace setter. Soon, he slowed down. There was a shantytown to our left and I figured he was stopping to disgorge passengers. Little did I know when I started overtaking him that barely at a distance of less than ten feet my life would change forever. The taxi was not stopping to disgorge passengers but to allow a cow to cross the road. But I was already committed and needless to say, I had not seen the cow. By the time I did, much of the less than ten feet had been covered and by the time I stood on my brakes I had smacked headlong into the cow. With a scream of agony that could be heard back in Jhunjhunun a little over twenty kilometres away, I lay on the road writhing in agony till some villagers came by and carried me to the side of the road where I lay for another hour or so trying to figure out what had happened. A taxi was commissioned and writhing in pain and agony I made my way to the Government Hospital back in Jhunjhunun. A doctor was summoned and he along with six or seven ward boys wrestled with poor little me till they could finally straighten my broken leg at the knee. My screams could be heard in Baggar, a little over twenty kilometres away, where the accident had taken place. The otherwise calm of the desert night was shattered by my screams yet again. The wildlife, of which there is plenty, must have wondered at this sudden, unknown, indescribable sound of what they must have thought was the growl of a new predator import.

I stayed in the Government Hospital overnight, got into an ambulance and drove back to Delhi to be operated on the following day. The knee was entirely shattered and the doctors managed to cement it in place and locked their craftsmanship with three screws, each about four inches long. My collar bone had broken too, but that was a minor irritant compared to what had happened to my knee.

About a week later I was back home, bed-bound for the next many weeks. Two months later the second round of agony hit me when physiotherapy started. My knee was a shambles and was irrevocably bent at about a thirty degree angle. The physiotherapist took it as his bounden duty to ensure that he straighten it out. Molten wax was something I got used to. What I did not get used to was the physical torture that I was subjected to by the physiotherapist. He tried for a few weeks and by that time I had decided to spare myself the torture and left the fate of my leg to well ... fate.

While in bed I had made myself three promises. One that I would ride a motorcycle again. Two, that I would visit my Buddhist teacher in Dharamshala. And three, I would visit Ladakh again. These three objectives kept me going and just about when I thought that the walker would be my companion for life, I stood on my own two feet again, without any other external support. And oh, the promises to myself? I kept all three of them within the next one year.

Doctors told me that osteoarthritis had set in due to the accident and the surgery and that I would require a total knee replacement in the next four or five years. Life went on and took on as normal a routine as possible pretty soon. A year later I was again in the hills riding my motorcycle again in an attempt at a new world record that unfortunately had to be aborted due to unseasonal weather patterns. I did have a pronounced limp, my right leg was shorter by about four inches, I had to relearn to walk and I overcame these situations. I started the OTA Survival School. I made almost 200 short films on survival. I relocated to Hyderabad for about a year. I then came back to Delhi. Produced a few corporate audiovisuals. Visited sundry places every once in a while. And managed to keep up my annual tryst with Ladakh.

The days went by as did the weeks and months and years. I was away in Sawai Madhopur shooting an audiovisual when the left ankle gave up on me entirely. I did not remember hurting it in any way, but I just could not walk anymore. X-rays did not show anything. A visit to the doctor and his immediate diagnosis was that it was because of the busted right leg that was putting increasing pressure on my left ankle. And hence the discomfort. Solution? Knee replacement surgery. I knew that I could postpone it by another year or so before walking would become very difficult and took the decision to go in for the surgery immediately. The surgeon was met and the date was fixed for Dec 18, 2013. 

That was still more than a month away and I decided to spend that time in Goa learning scuba diving. So I went off to Goa. And that was another story altogether. Spent the first day in the pool learning to breathe under water. Kind of figured that out after a while but could not get used to not getting air through my nose. Managed to stay underwater for sometime, panicked and resurfaced. Much to the chagrin of the instructor, I managed it enough for him to  invite me over the next day for a stint out in the sea. I was apprehensive throughout the boat ride and ultimately gathered enough courage to sit on the side of the boat, gear and all, to be pushed overboard into the sea. Took me almost half an hour to gather the courage to go more than a foot or so under water. The panic was a bit much. And the sea water, of which I drank plenty, was awful. Anyway, managed to go down about seven or eight metres to the bottom, did some of the mandatory things before I sprang back to the surface again.

There was to be a second dive and I just did not manage that. Try as I might, my mind had given up completely and refused to even try breathing under water. The instructor too gave up on me and we decided to spend another day at the pool overcoming my fear and panic.

And then it happened. On my way to the centre the next day I fell down on the road, slipping on some gravel and broke my busted knee again. Somehow I managed to get back home and visited the doctor in the evening. A wonderful doctor, he took a look at the X-ray and decided there was no fracture. He put a knee brace and told me to get back to Delhi. Which I did a few days later. I had already fixed my appointment with the surgeon from Goa itself and on reaching Delhi was relieved to hear from the doctor that this recent accident would not in any way postpone my slated surgery and that I could prepone it if I so desired. Not that I was going anywhere. The leg hurt bad and I was back on a walker. A date was fixed for Dec 1, 2013 to get admitted for surgery the following day. 

I believe that knee replacement surgeries normally take less than an hour ... mine took over two hours. I would wake up in the middle of the surgery and yap with the anaesthetist who was standing at my head. I could hear the chiselling and hammering going on and knew what was happening from all the videos I had seen on the subject on YouTube. Ooooops. But it did not hurt one bit thanks to the copious amounts of anaesthetics I was on. Out of surgery and into the ICU for a night which was spent yapping with the nurse into the wee hours of the night. 

Physiotherapy started in the hospital the next day and I learnt about the fracture that did not show up on the X-ray. Of the three screws from the previous surgery, one had to be kept inside the knee to take care of the fracture. Nevertheless the tortuous physiotherapists happened once again in my life but I must say, this time around it was far less painful.

And less than a week after my surgery I was back home. Lots of medicines, lots of painkillers and lots of pain followed. A physiotherapist came home everyday showing me the exercises and making his best effort to make me scream out in agony. But again, this time it was much easier than the last time around. The physiotherapist came once a day and every day he made me promise that I would continue the exercises at least five times each day. Never happened. Never did I get to do the exercises five times. Four is the maximum number I have managed.

And then one day the medicines stopped. And the pain started. Constant and nagging. It was as if someone had my knee in a vice and would not let go. In fact, s/he would twist it every now and then. So what, said the physiotherapist, no pain no gain. I wonder if he ever had to undergo the kind of pain I was being subjected to. And the additional fracture was not helping any. Moreover, my muscles had gone into hibernation over the last eight years and had to be goaded to come back to life. I had lived with a lower leg bent at the knee and below and now that the leg had been straightened, I had to relearn this new sensation. The walker gave way to a stick, the stitches were removed, the bandages found their way into the waste bin, and I continued to endure the pain. A pain so bad that I could not sleep at night. I would wake up groaning and moaning.

One thing that being in bed for extended periods with nothing to do, results in one thing – you get to do a lot of thinking. The last time I had in front of me three promises I had made myself. I wanted to go down that same road once again. But try as I might, no worthwhile promises made sense. I am eight years older and a look at the last few years and the years to come do not bring about any particular things that make much sense. All one can do is harp back at the past and the fruitlessness of an unknown future. And that is a bad combination. I know that I need something to look forward to, but just cannot seem to think of anything. It is as if my life has had its day and the future is kind of dark, bleak and pointless. A look further back into my life, prior to the accident, and another bunch of negative thoughts floods my brain. A childhood that left my parents wanting, a school life that could have been more academically inclined, a failure as an executive, a bigger failure as an entrepreneur, a sorry figure of a husband, just a little bit better as a father, a failed adventurer and now at a little over 50, a failed life to look back on, without a beacon blinking at me from the future.

My grandfather was some kind of astrologer and he had made me an almanac when I was still a toddler. He prophesied that one day I would become a mendicant. Maybe it is time for me to renounce the world and find myself a cave in the mountains.