Volume 3 Issue 7 July, 2013
Symbol of hope
Few of my contemporaries may remember this long time inmate in the female ward of pavilion 3. She was in her thirties and was always found moving around carrying a bundle wrapped in a cloth. She held it on the left side of her waist hugging it with the left arm carefully as though carrying a child. She was never seen without it and I don’t think anyone knew what was there in it. In addition she hardly spoke to others. However I was able to take her help in the ward as a resident. She would take the case files from me to the nurses’ room or bring files from them. She would get me the patient I wanted to examine. She would do it without uttering a word and with her emotionless face. Once I requested her to lift a few case files to nurses’ room. She was trying to lift the files with her free right hand and was finding it difficult. So I suggested her that she could leave her bundle on my table and carry them. Suddenly she left the files there, moved away a little and stared at me as though I had offended her in some way. After a moment gave me a smile and gestured shaking her head as well as with the thumb of the free right hand like a child to indicate she will not do it. Even today, after almost three decades, I remember with amusement that gesture of hers and the way she walked away from the room. I keep wondering if that bundle gave a special personal meaning without which she could not live or was it symbolic of some hope she still had about life.
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