Counting Down to 90 - Week 1550 - The Roller-Coaster of a Week

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

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“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

This week was  a tumultuous week of emotional, social, physical and collective roller-coasters.

A close relative in his mid-70s leads a sedate, retired life. On Monday, he fell on a slippery floor that the servant had left wet after washing, and fractured his left hip. 

A portable X-ray was done within 2 hours of the incident and showed an inter-trochanteric femoral neck fracture. For such fractures, the best outcomes are surgery within 24 hours, not later than 48 hours. He was admitted to a hospital with a great orthopedic team the same evening, worked up the next day, operated on Wednesday, started walking with a walker on Thursday and once he passed stool, discharged on Saturday, home by 8 PM. 

This is how it should be with hip fractures - quick surgery and a fast in-and-out. It is important not to spend a single extra second in any hospital in India, for a variety of reasons, the most important being the high incidence of hospital-acquired infections. 

It was an emotional and physical roller-coaster all this week…for him and his close family.

Wednesday morning, I started a cryoablation procedure around 8.30 AM. These procedures take long and around 9 AM, when we were just standing for 8 mins waiting for the iceball to “thaw”, “P” the cryo engineer said, “it’s so wonderful that India has finally bombed 11 Pakistani terror installations”. I looked at him quizzically…I had no clue…the morning papers had not carried anything and I was so focused on the upcoming procedure that I had tuned out all news and notifications.

“P” told me that the attacks apparently had started after midnight and he had seen the news at 4 AM. Anyway for the past few days, the country had been gearing up for possible war with practice drills and other preparations, so something like this was not a complete surprise.  After the cryo was over, I tried to check X for more news, but there was so much garbage, that I stopped. My Dad at dinner time filled me in, but he too had conflicting news from various WhatsApp groups and TV channels and it was only with the next morning’s papers on Thursday that we had a clearer understanding of the situation and the actions India had taken. 

Most of us can’t do much in such situations except to send our prayers to those on the frontline, wish them well, hope we win and hope they come back home alive. So I did that, as most of us did.

By Friday, things were tense. Pakistan was retaliating. Meetings and concerts were being canceled and there was a possibility this would be drawn out and we would all be affected in multiple ways. So be it…whatever all of us have to go through in such circumstances, we will. 

Saturday was similar…so much news floating around of who had done what to whom, some of it true, some of it fake. Around 6 PM, a friend posted a Times of India item on a WhatsApp group that a ceasefire had been announced and when I checked X, the first tweet that popped up was from President Trump saying he had engineered the ceasefire. Then came news around 9.30 PM that Pakistan had violated the ceasefire. I tried to find the truth but I just kept going down more rabbit-holes on X and Google News and finally just went to sleep and woke up this sunny Sunday morning with a large Express News headline “Ceasefire”.

This is a such a roller-coaster. There is an emotional component…a mix of our feelings on Pahalgam and the need to retaliate and the ever changing news, some fake, some real and not knowing what is true or false…a physical component, if you have friends and family at the border and in the affected cities, and a social and collective roller-coaster that affects all of us living in the country and being part of this situation together.

Today is Sunday. My close relative is back home, fine and will need intense rehab but will slowly get back to normal, unless he slips and falls again. India has given a fitting answer to Pakistan for the Pahalgam attacks…and while the scars remain, we will heal, though slowly…unless there are more terror attacks.

What a roller-coaster of a week…on all fronts!