PRAYER

The ventilator beeped on, the monitor displaying troughs and peaks rhythmically, a labored breath hissing its way down his throat acknowledged my arrival into the room, the room swathed in a greenish tinge as if the surgeon has left his aura behind, as I peeped in I froze, drinking in the scene, speechless thoughtless. An emotional shiver waved through my body for a second, rendering me light headed.

I was in the ICU of the Neurology Surgical ward of the Sri Sathya Sai Super Specialty Hospital in Bangalore. The hospital is a free hospital that believes in catering to all, and the message of Sathya Sai preaches adherence to once own religion and the respect and belief of all religions. In the age and times where Hindus and Christians and Muslims insecure about their future are converting and killing each other. Here I stood witness to a phenomena way surpassing religion or any ideal. The phenomena of a mother in prayer.

A mother in all her purness praying next to her hissing boy breathing through tubes in his throat who could only hold up his hand to acknowledge that he exists. The beeps and the lights matching the rythm of her shallow chant, she was reciting the quoran to her child. The child operated by man and supported by machines awaits his body to recover from the ordeal of an operation. A tumour removed from the brain of a rank holder who dreams to enter graduation this year. His hopes and his dreams are now hers, her life is meanigless at that moment wothout him she is non-existant. She clings on to the faith her religion stands for, she looses herself in selfless prayer. Her religion forming a gateway to her wishes. She sniffles and cries when she sees the doctor accompanying me. She draws a deep breath and continues her prayer.

And in the same breath elsewhere the fanatics of religions today render so many mothers childless...