The Flip Side

Life is amazingly paradoxical. One side of it is dark and intriguing. The other, sparklingly bright and inspiring.

The Naxal ambush on a mine-protected vehicle (MPV) carrying 17 security personnel in Eastern Indian state Orissa's southern district Malkangiri on July 16 was distressful. The Left Wing ultras found a ghastly way of telling the world that Rifle is the only way to bring revolution or change. Everytime, you want to sympathise with them, they surprise you with blood and gore. As if they are the Merchants of Death. Coming to think of it, even a 15 tonne heavily armoured vehicle could not save the policemen from a ghastly end. Howsoever hard one may try, if death has to take you, it will (sounds like Murphy's Law, doesn't it?).

Well, no. Look at 23-year-old Supratim Dutta of Delhi. The HCL executive sat in his car, his body pierced with an angle iron measuring about 5 ft in length and weighing close to 6 kg, waiting for help to arrive. The angle had to be cut - even as he sat for an hour and half inside his car which had rammed into Metro barricade along MG Road - with gas-cutters so that Supratim could be rushed to AIIMS Trauma care. It took the stunned doctors six hours to remove the angle that impaled the youth through the upper part of the body as his heart and spine escaped unhurt. It was probably for the first time that I remained glued to India TV (sic) as the channel kept beaming the videos of the surgery.

Supratim has to live. Some say, it's a second life for him. I believe this is his life. Sometimes, it can dumbfound you with something called hope. I believe you can kill someone but can't possibly take away that flickering hope to live till he finally dies. Why did it not happen with the 17 securitymen is something I can't understand though. May be, it did.

I remember the impeccable Tom Hanks saying in his Oscar winning Forrest Gump: Mama always said dying was a part of life. It probably is.