Tuesday, 12 June 2007

The Hospitality Industry!!!



The oxygen mask is weaving life into my dad who is admitted in Leelavati and I stand helplessly waiting for the doctors to do a fine job. Hospitals have a strange effect on me. I get strange in the strerile atmosphere..almost get philosiphical and usually end up asking the question, " all that running around in life -for this prescription. Not worth it."


Every hospital visit slows me down. It calms me. Tells me to stop the tour bus called "life" and get off so I can breathe a little. But above it all I get filmi, in terms of being dramatic. I think of all the memorable movies from Anand to Kal Ho Na Ho and wonder how it would be if we had to enact a scene that one has seen in movies in real life. Would I try humour as Rajesh Khanna and Shah Rukh tried. Or would I mope. For an answer I will have to wait till i hit the white sheets. (My dad in some way was quite a rock star in the icu i must admit...he moved off the ventilator in one day and the doctors were shocked by his power to fight back).


But sitting there in Leelavati I did give a thought to all my other celebrity filmi friends who have come to the hospital and found themselves covered by the media and hounded to unreal levels. Be it Karan Johar, Shah Rukh, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Gupta when they were here in this same hospital they were never given their space. The shutter bugs got on thier nerves. Sometimes the press bribed the security to get into the ward so they could get exclusive footage (ugh!!!).


The uncertainity of the times, the smell of pain just around the corner, the simulation of hope can be quite tiring and nobody deserves intrusion when they are in hospital fighting the delicate battle between the medicine and the flatline. I just wondered how my freinds tackled all of it and still managed to smile.


Luckily for me I am not a celebrity and I am allowed my privacy. This moment when I sit in the stark white room of the hospital i wish i remain that way...so that i can be myself in hospitals. No cameras, no fake concern, no strangers dropping in to wish speedy recovery...no nothing. Just me, my health, my doctors and my fate- and I am DEAD sure about this.


7 comments:

What's up Iris said...

You make me worry!
And that is no fake consern! I hope you get well soon and that you have got nothing serious.
Just wanted you to know that your are not all alone after all and with the best wishes leave you to yourself and your health.

Iris

Shiekhspear said...

Hey iris,
thank you for your quick response for my hospitality piece..but there is no reason to worry I am fine and healthy. I am in the pink of health. It was my dad who was in hospital..but he is doing well now. when i was with him in the hospital is when I wrote that blog..clogged with all the medical pipes around me. Thank you again for all the good wishes.
Good wishes have a magical way of healing...hope modern medicine can catch it and sell it to us in bottles.

Ashish Raikar said...

apart from knowing your dad is in the hospital and i wish him well, i really do, this is one of the best posts i have read on ur blog, keep writing

Shiekhspear said...

ashish thats because it came straight from the right side of my heart. And when the heart beats faster it usually gets more imaginative and more vivid with words. Specially mine does. Ha ha.

Evelyn said...

Hi Mushtaq,

I can imagine how you felt during that time in hospital. Really, for me it was the worsest time ever as my little baby was more dead than alive after birth because of coming some weeks to early and getting a loung sepsis and every day I didn´t know if it would be the last day, hour, minute, second. I felt very, very helpless. I confess I´m not very religious, but at that time I prayed a lot. The magic of praying and believing worked. Today my son is 15 years old, very healthy and strong. And even I got an internal strength after this time in hospital where I was thinking about life and time you have or maybe not have. And than some things you will see with other eyes and you will start to enjoy life more.

Wish you all the best for you and your family
Evelyn

Evelyn said...

about celebrities... I think it must be painfully to be noticed from the press/media who is searching for any facial expression of the stars. Just to smile as nothing has happened and to hide feelings in situations on which you usually like to bare your soul as every normal human being - terrible imagination. Really, I don´t envy them.

Lotta said...

yeah - getting filmi! I was released from hospital yesterday and am now freshly experienced. To put it short: Eye clinic, eye operation, and what the surgeon said afterwards: "All went well, but you know, we found something very rare - you had stones in your lachrymal glands. They're gone now!"
What??? Cheap gravel??? I was raised and fed on the romantic belief that tears turn to pearls, every single one of them. And besides, don't I go to Bollywood tear-jerkers, because-you-never-know-what-it's-good-for?
Well, there you are: If life's not Prozac, it is prosaic at any rate.
What am I writing here? Must still be side effects surely.
Anyway, best wishes for you and your family,
Dani aka Lotta