My three years’ old grand child was scribbling something in an old diary with a roll pencil, while sitting on the bed, along the window that faces the garden of a grand hotel cum guest house.
Having found him to be very fond of drawing something or the other on the walls of the house, we just had begun providing him with old but good diaries, so that we could gradually divert him from his ‘hobby of dirtying the walls’, even without denying him of his space for depicting his ideas and also thereby to preserve those “books of drawings” for him, as well as for us, the elders too, to be nostalgic about, when he grows up!
Obviously it was an interim period of transition for him from one medium to another ie from the walls to the books as his “canvas” for ‘drawings’!
Here, the word ‘drawing’ is not inappropriate, as his scribblings deserve to be called so, since it never appeared to be mere child play, but something very noteworthy, as the quality of his ‘play work’ deserved to be identified as a very promising genius painter of the future in the making, with his growth!
So he hadn’t yet left the walls fully as it serves as a kind of ‘canvas play ground’ for him, since long, and by now the walls itself proved very self explanatory!
Yet another wonderful feature we noticed from his scribblings on the walls, is that it forms kind of beautiful caricatures!
The assumed caricatures denote certain features of creatures like camels, elephants, dinosaurs, cats, rats, hens, cows, human and child forms and what not!
Even one could visualise certain vegetables, like pumpkin, bottle gourd, snake gourd, cucumber and also cars, buses, trucks, trains, jeeps, bicycles, motor bikes, police vans, ambulance, helicopters, airplanes etc, clearly!
Also he would read his nursery books and do home work almost regularly, and used to take great interest in glancing through all kinds of above mentioned features, in the books provided for him, and might be obviously because of that assistance, he tries to depict those himself!
He showed great interest in learning all English, Hindi and even certain other vernacular numerals and alphabets, before he joined nursery classes itself!
One more interesting feature that we would observe, was the level of his scribblings on the walls, I mean the height from down the floor to upwards, was very proportional to the gradual gain of his physical height and one could notice it very much from the scribblings so far, although it’s ought to be an obvious feature
He inherits his trait of drawing from his mother’s jeans indeed, as we have been observing the same feature in her too, right from her kid hood!
Although as she used to be hectically busy with her office work in various locations of Mumbai and also while at home, other than the tours that take her to different places in India, she some times finds time to do her favourite hobby of drawing on the walls at home; so beautifully!
Often this little protagonist of our story, would do certain mischievous activities too – like dropping things out through the window etc, just to see our reactions!
One day he mischievously dropped his brand new roll pencil out of the window of our first floor flat and was looking at me for my reaction!
I decided to search for it, and hence went down.
Since I had to walk over the boundary wall, between an electric transformer installed in the narrow compound, and a haphazardly cable ridden electric poll, I accidentally had contact with some uninsulated part of a live wire and as a result of that fell down on the road near the above said neighbouring hotel and our building!
Blood was oozing out profusely from my head and through the skin burnt shoulders!
I still had consciousness and didn’t feel even a bit of pain; But the situation was somewhat terrible for the onlookers!
I was rushed to the nearest Sri Sathya Sai Baba general hospital by son and a few local men, followed by wife.
Though there were no proper facilities for fire accident cases, Baba’s kind doctors, nurses and other required staff etc, provided great first aid and nice dressing; but still we had to find out an hospital that would be exclusively for this particular treatment and our compassionate landlord, an ardent Sai devotee, provided transport and men, within no time, to reach a burn treatment hospital, more than 90+km away.
Everything was fine in the hospital; except, ofcourse, the kind of ointment they used that caused intolerably irritating pain over the skin of the affected parts of body!
Taking a few days treatment over there, at Anantpur, we left for Mumbai by flight, alongwith the super kid’s biological parents, who had rushed back to Puttaparthi, just few days after they had left for Mumbai, hearing about the unfortunate accident!
It was something very strange that I could just escape death, after the serious fire accident, as per the Sathya Saibaba General Hospital doctors!
Back in Mumbai, we could locate the one and only of its kind, “National Burn Hospital” at Iroli, (Thane-Mumbai touching suburb of Navi Mumbai).
Though skyrocketingly costly – still literally reasonable, considering the rarity of such kind of superb burn hospitals in our country as a whole!
I could recover fully within a week or hardly two!
Skin over all the affected parts of my body were wonderfully restored back to the original state.
Even at the worst situation, hardly any burn spot was visible on my body, as the affected parts could easily hide under the cover of shirt!
For sure, it was because of Sri Sathya Sai Baba I am alive now!
Some might ask, as to why then this entire episod happened and couldn’t have it been avoided?
But there is an adage: “Things that have to occur would occur”; without fail!
And there is yet another saying: “Came like a mountain and vanished like a cloud” (Courtsey: our mother the great).
So over this said accident, what is great about Sai, in connection with my life, is, that He saved my life atleast, as my karmas are not yet completed; that’s all!
The story, that ended happily even after kind of upheavals in its real terms, belongs to a humble roll pencil!
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