On a warm lazy afternoon, in the corridors of a Delhi hospital that had just received a fresh coat of phenol-water, which had unfortunately attracted more flies than repelled them, against the wishes of the very meticulous jamadarni doing her infinite rounds of pochas, a bright young surgeon looked at me and said, not at all unkindly "Eventually all cancer treatments come down to this, efficient pain management. If we can keep the patient comfortable, then...."
"And what if you can not do even that? " He probably had not had much experience talking to relatives and this was perhaps as new to him as it was to me. He looked over at the flies buzzing over a speck of dirt, shrugged his shoulders and looked away. It is in real bad taste to ask people questions you already know the answers to. He must have been a nice man, because he turned back, he turned back, looked me in the eyes and said " We can not even cure the common cold. Medicine is a shot in the dark. We cannot do anything. What do you want us to do about that?"
"I want you to stop being angry at me." But I did not say that. I realized that he was not angry with me. He was angry at himself, at medicine, or something. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. That was the day I understood, that there were degrees to helplessness. That it was possible that he understood mine but I was not even close to getting his.That even though we were not in the same boat, our boats were in the same waters. My journey was about to end, his was only beginning.
I will never forget the look on his face. Yes, there definitely are, degrees to helplessness.
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