THE MIDAS' TOUCH

“I was, I remember, I waited, and…..” she sighed. “….. and what……. Oblivion?” I said. She turned and smiled, “no, I am…….” Her words left me questioning and I added, “Sorry, I couldn’t get you….”.

“It feels as if it’s an eternal, comfortable halt of time, an inseparable part of my being and trust me, I’m okay with it”.
I walked out of the room without a word, with my mind stepping into my subconscious world of reason, all the grief was washed in the flood of her pain. I flashed back to the hours of my ‘hectic’ Sunday morning.

I had woken up with a pile of books over my head and rushed for the breakfast leaving my messy cubbyhole as it had been. On the way I measured, as usual, the pros and cons of life- where I had been ditched, where I had gone wrong, what the future undertakings would be, blah, blah, blah… and that was the time my cell buzzed. It had been an old friend calling up for a coffee together. I too had become nostalgic. “Fine, CCD at 4, sharp!” I had said. But he interrupted, “No, you come to the hospital, we’ll walk to the place”. “Okay”, I had agreed and disconnected the call. A 4:03, I walked up the stairs of the medical giant of the city, ignoring the inevitable truths of life. I geared to his chamber but it was then it happened.

I paused, took a slender tilt, and was spellbound. It was a general ward and a divinely charming face, a heavenly smile that drove me steps into the ward. She gave a sweet smile to the nurse but the busy bee took no notice of that. It seemed rude anyways.
I flicked through her files and shivers rolled down my spine….. age-28, disease- a long biological term I couldn’t even pronounce. “Hello!” she said, “I suppose the nurse has left but I can still feel someone’s presence, may I know who is that, please?”
I drew near, she was blind! I took three steps backwards and cleared my throat that had almost choked. “I am sorry, I was just…”
“It’s okay, people rarely peek into these grave wards,” she cut me in.
“I am getting late, my friend must be waiting.”- I was almost about to say this but my lips virtually paralyzed. There was an obvious inquisitiveness bubbling in me, but her soft words dismantled the guts I had built to uncover the truth. I stood erect as time kept running like water under a bridge. Minutes passed by…
“Are you still here, do you want something?” her voice broke the silence.

My curiosity ruled over my honesty and the truth and I responded, “Actually, I was just on a survey for an interview, may I have one from you?”
“Surely, you may.”
“So, I went through your file, for how long have you been admitted here?” my intonation was not continuous and a shiver ruled it.
“4 years or so,” she replied.
Soon, her affirmation revealed her past. I could extract from her words that her disease was not as simple as blindness; she was suffering from a slow failure of senses, or better say, of the nervous system, when any nerve of her biological circuit could fail anytime. And 6 failures she had already gone through. One being that of the optical nerve, of course and the other major ones were those of smell and touch. This further took me out of my so called senses.
But you always have a cell phone to get back to this world of people.
“Hello, where are you? I have been waiting for the last 10 minutes!”
“Later!” was all that I had said before simply disconnecting the call.
“You can leave, actually. I don’t know why people have to lie when the truth is so simple.”
Her words took me by surprise.
“It’s not that only journalists have the right to explore people…. And people like me who are research objects for the biggest brains of the country are made to be explored.”
I was dumbstruck, but her words cleared the mist of discomfort between us. Finally I summed up enough courage to solve the conundrum for which I had sacrificed my childhood mate’s precious call.
“How did this happen, I mean, the first time you……?”
“It was a conference on green engines on Germany and I was to present papers challenging the ruling green engine…. You remember 1.4ltsi of the giant VW?”
I replied with a nod….. a pause…. And then, “Hmmm…”
“It was then, five minutes before the conference, I couldn’t feel my hold on the papers. That presentation was my midas’ touch,” she sighed.
“The result of 5 years of sheer hard work! So, I neglected the fatal symptom. Soon, I felt I hadn’t put on my clothes, a few steps, and I couldn’t feel the reaction of ground and….”
“And what?”
“The rest is all history, history I care for as much as I cared for the history in my secondary textbooks.”
I could see an abstract grief in her crystal black eyes for missing that presentation.
“So touch was the first sense targeted,” I tried to engage her more on her physical discomfort as I found that it was less painful to her.
“No, it was the sense of not feeling those papers in hand. One hole in the can is enough to spill the milk. Once it’s made, rest makes no big difference.”
“You mean your senses hold lesser importance to you? Now that’s not realistic, sorry to say.”
“Of course, I did not say that. But some things in life, though materialistic, hold great importance and in these 4 years I have turned more meaningful leaves in my life than I did in the years of my Bachelor’s degree! And trust me, losing the sense of touch is a living enlightenment. Although the loss of sight brought a little discomfort, it takes me to my own world of existence, my dimensionless space- a space without photons, without the semi-factual theory of relativity, a world where I don’t have to lie on the fake foundations of axioms to explain my findings…”
She continued with her more meaningful outlook and I listened and listened and listened….
Suddenly, she paused, “I feel it’s been a long time. You should leave….”
“But I want to hear more from you,” I protested.
“Thanks a lot for sharing your time. I have never spoken this much in the last 4 years, but you should return to your ‘world of worlds’.”
“It’s hard to believe how a person can sum up her life in just a smile, remembering each big or small event…” a nudge from a ward boy brought me back to this ‘world of worlds’ as she had said.
I had a day with reason and the next morning was all the same, except…
“Oh! my mobile,” I said as I remembered that I had left it in her ward, on the table.
I rushed to the hospital and soon stepped into the ward.
“May I have my mobile please? I suppose I left it here?”
She smiled in the air with an indication that I was challenging her failed senses by asking for it. I picked my mobile up from the table and “hope we meet again” was all that I could conclude with.
She had an unchained pull that wished to say something, but I thought silence was more comfortable.
On my way down the stairs, my ears raised to a conversation-
“What about ward no.33?”
“I had thought that with 6 senses gone she would die of the mental strain, but after losing her voice last night, she’s still struggling with the wrath of nature… miraculous!”
With so many strokes in just 24 hours, I had virtually lost my senses…
That proposal was not her midas’ touch. It was her fight for existence that lost sense of touch which was emerging each moment, as a midas’ touch for her.