Library
Becoming A Seer
Becoming A Seer
It was on 26th January 1985 that my life changed…
I had given birth to a beautiful baby girl, through caesarean surgery, three days prior, on the afternoon of 23rd January. The surgery was done in an emergency, as the baby’s heartbeat was slowing down and I was exhausted after prolonged labour to push any further. As they rushed me to the emergency operation theatre, they realised that I had eaten a slice of bread in the morning; so giving general anaesthesia was out of the question. I had to be given spinal anaesthesia, which meant that I was effectively awake through the surgery.
Unbeknownst to the surgeon and her team, the blindfold that they had used to shield my eyes from seeing the surgery, had slipped a wee bit and I could see the goings-on reflected on the reflector hanging from the roof on top of me. And no, the sight of blood did not disturb me; on the contrary I was happy to see the baby being taken out, the cord being tied and cut, and the rest of it. The best part of the entire scene was that the little darling had a thatch of jet-black hair, just like mine.
Surgery concluded, blindfold removed, I was taken to the ward with various medicines being pumped into me through a saline bottle attached to my arm. Everything seemed normal and routine thus far.
On the night of 23rd, I developed a fever. It fell within the normal parameters of such surgery, so there was nothing to worry about. Suitable medications were given and I was put to sleep. The next day, there was no fever and all seemed well; pretty much on the path to recovery. But the next day, on 25th, the fever returned on a higher note. Medications were changed and blood samples were taken and things seemed to be in control, or so we thought.
The next day was 26th January and most of the staff was away for Republic day holiday.
Suddenly, my fever returned with vengeance. It kept on increasing; the nurse could measure it only till 107 degrees F, because I pulled out the thermometer out of my mouth and threw it away. I became violent and pulled off the bandages that covered the stitches on my abdomen. There was chaos in the ward, which I shared with three more people.
As I started raving and ranting, my bed was cordoned off by screens, and the doctors were summoned. And no, I was not screaming in pain; I was screaming in anger and confusion. I didn’t know who I was, why I was in the hospital, what were the bandages for…etc. In short, I had lost my memory. On being told that I had delivered a baby, my question was, ‘what is a baby?’ When my husband tried to calm me down, telling me that he was my husband; my query was, ‘what is a husband?’ I was attacking all the doctors who tried to come near me, yanking off their stethoscopes; I even yanked off the attending nurse’s uniform buttons. And the strangest part of all this was that I was yelling and screaming in English; in fact, the patient on one of my neighbouring beds muttered to the others that I was suffering from ‘English Fever’!
In reality, the high fever was due to infection in my blood and had affected my brain. The doctors didn’t seem happy to see this and had told my parents to be prepared for the worst. I had become delirious. I had lost my memory completely for two and a half hours until the doctors forcibly gave me some injections and took me away to another room.
The narrative sounds boring till I apprise you of the twist in the tale. The twist in this entire incident was that I had slipped out of my body and was perched on the ventilator near the roof! From that vantage point I was observing myself carefully; missing no detail or any conversations heated or otherwise. Let me tell you, it was quite a sight! And since it was an aerial view, I saw the things that I possibly couldn’t have seen lying on my bed since it was cordoned off by screens. But from my perch on the ventilator, I could see my father standing in the corridor outside my room consoling my mother, the patient on the bed next to mine listening to my rants in horror from behind the screen and the nurse standing behind my bed to help the doctors. Nothing missed my eyes or ears.
I had calmed down by the time I reached the other room. As I returned back to my physical body, I heard the doctors talking outside the room. They were telling my family not to tell me what had happened to me. It would traumatise me, they said. Ha, what did they know!
The moment my husband entered the room with my mother, I smiled sweetly and apologised for my terrible behaviour in the past hours. They looked stunned. The attending doctor came and I apologised for pulling off his stethoscope and enquired if I had hurt him. He was stunned too. I was enjoying all this, of course. Then I told everyone who had entered the room by that time that I knew how I had behaved and was sincerely sorry for it. The doctors mumbled, ‘But how is this possible? You had lost your memory!’
I just sighed and lay back, exhausted after the ordeal. ‘I was watching myself,’ I said, for all who cared to believe.
Later on, when I described the entire two-and-a-half-hour experience to my family at home, they realised I was telling the truth. They were witness to it themselves and knew that I couldn’t possibly have seen the things that I described from the bed.
What an experience it was! It was one of the life-changing events in my life. I was already born with a certain level of detachment in me, but this out-of-body experience enhanced that detachment to such a degree that even now I watch myself as a ‘seer’ while I am functioning as a ‘doer’ in this journey that we call life.
