I have had my heart broken several times, have you?
Oh don’t get me wrong, no guy has left me for another girl,
or dumped me as I hopelessly continued to fall in love with him every single
day (unrequited, one-sided love, uff!)
But I have had my heart broken, oh yes!
I was in a local train, on my way to meet friends; we were
going to celebrate something insignificant which wouldn’t matter in a few
months by spending an unnecessary amount of money on food and a movie. I was
fidgeting on my seat when I saw a man in his seventies, waddling towards my
bogie. He had soiled clothes, wrinkled skin, and bags under his eyes which
spoke of his struggle. He was selling ball point pens worth Rupees Ten. You
could see that he was a strong, well-built man in his youth, but old age had
withered him and there was a resignation in his eyes, which showed his
reluctance to carry on. He had given up on life, but life was not ready to give
up on him yet. He was supposed to be in a cozy home, where he could put up his
feet, lay his head to take short naps on a lazy afternoon, while his grand
children played in the veranda and periodically played juvenile pranks on him,
which never offended him but only made his eyes crinkle as he playfully scoffed
at them. But here he was on a local train, holding a shivering hand full of
pens, looking pleadingly at people who averted their eyes when they saw him. I
paid him for the pen, and he continued ahead with his burdened shoulders and
varicose legs. That was the first time my heart broke.
I was in an auto-rickshaw and we had halted at a traffic
signal. I saw a little girl fluttering from vehicle to vehicle with her hand
outstretched, a bored expression on her face. It was clear she did not care
whether her hands were filled with pennies or not, this was just something she
had to do, and so she did it with mechanical obedience. When she reached my
vehicle she beamed with excitement, I realised her eyes were on my bag. There
was a badge pinned to it which somehow caught her eye, she told me she loved it
and continued to tread on. I traced my eyes along her steps and took in what I
saw. This was not a six year old girl with pigtails who could giggle with her
friends, and play house. This was a girl who walked barefoot on concrete roads
every day, with an empty stomach, but yet complimenting strangers on things she
knew she could never have. Her brown eyes had seen pain, but they did not
reflect pain. They were eager eyes, hungry for life. That was the second time
my heart broke.
I was in the hospital OPD and a lady who was in her early
thirties came for an examination, she had a cancerous lesion in her mouth, and
to confirm, I called the senior doctor to examine it. The doctor told me in
words she wouldn’t understand that it looks like it is cancer, but make sure
you do tests to confirm it and do not let her know before we have the test
results. However, patients are not half as ignorant as we think they are, she
knew something was wrong. She kept searching my eyes for clues, and told me she
has a kid and there’s nobody else who can take care of him. She told me how she
did not even have enough money to pay this visit, and she would never be able
to make enough money for an expensive treatment. She kept giving me reasons for
why I should tell her she’s perfectly okay, and that she can go home without
worrying about a thing. As if I could change her fate, and take back the inevitable.
With whatever words I had to offer, I tried to comfort her, but the blank look
on her face told me she was not even listening. She was only thinking about her
toddler back home, about whether she will be able to make ends meet. But we
just sent her away for further examinations, and started tending to another
patient. This was a job for us after all, and how she was devastated and
grief-stricken was not going to stand in the way of anything. That was the
third time my heart broke.
I was home, sprawled on the sofa watching a movie, when my
door bell rang. I opened the door to see that my dad had come back from work. I
turned my back and went back to watching the movie. I did not notice the droopy
eyes, or the tired stride. My father has this habit of going for a walk every evening;
it has always been a part of his schedule. When he didn’t leave for his walk at
the self-designated time, I asked him why so? He told me he’s too tired today.
It was a casual statement, spoken in a matter of fact way, but it made me leave
everything and ponder on what he had just said. That is when I noticed the crow’s
feet around his eyes, how he sometimes winced when arching his back, how he
didn’t lift anything heavy from his left hand because his elbow ached. Life
warns and prepares you for a lot of things, but it never prepares you to watch
your parents grow old; it only leaves you in denial. That is the fourth time my
heart broke.
I know I’m going to get my heart broken aplenty. I even know
it will get worse and some incidents I may never even recover from. But what is
life really, if you don’t feel deeply? You can cover yourself in armour, you
can go hide inside a hole, but these heartbreaks will find you, and they will
wreck you, but it will also toughen you up with compassion for others. And if
there is compassion, one day there will be peace. If there is peace, there will
be more love to nurse these heartbreaks. Rumi said, “The wound is the place
where the light enters you”. I hope we have enough light in us to fill these
wounds of others.
