Water remains liquid at 99 degrees Celsius. Just 1 degree more and it transforms into vapour.
My friend (unnamed, because he shuns publicity) has given me permission to share this. I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of what he has narrated.
A little about my friend. My friend is a big devotee of Lord Krishna from his childhood. Over the last decade or so, he has been a strong devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba also, having travelled to Shirdi more than once. He also loved travelling. Unfortunately, in 2012, his travelling came to a standstill, because he started getting severe lower back pain periodically. Being a purchase engineer in a government organisation which involves a fair amount of sitting, this caused him heavy discomfort. He visited several doctors but X-rays and other tests did not produce any results. Some doctors blamed muscles, while others blamed deeply embedded, surgically unreachable nerves. Finally, doctors prescribed him pain killers which he took in small doses initially and then as their effectiveness waned, took larger than recommended doses for the same relief. Surprisingly, on some days he experienced absolutely no pain. On other days, sitting itself was extremely painful. Question of other activities such as running, jumping or bending did not arise. On those days, he would not take his car to work, but commute by bus, preferring to travel standing. He spent some more time and money on various medical tests for bone problems, kidney stones etc. which yielded nothing conclusive.
One day, he woke with a severe back pain. As was the routine on such worse days, he asked his wife to call up his office and tell his boss and apply for a half-day casual leave. Then, when the pain abated a bit around 12 noon he ventured out and like he used to do on these ‘more painful’ days, decided to take the public transport. It was a hot, dusty, typical early March day in Maharashtra, India. Luckily the bus stop had a shelter and there were some people waiting there. With one eye on the road for coming buses, he was checking his WhatsApp messages. At this moment he heard a lady pleading with someone near him in a mixture of Hindi and Marathi ‘please can I use your mobile phone? I need to make an urgent call to tell my son that I am here. I have forgotten my phone…’ When the person hesitated, this lady in her quivering voice mentioned that she was willing to pay him for the call.
My friend glanced in that direction. The lady was Muslim, obviously very old and wearing an old worn out black burqah, which looked more dusty brown than black. Her face was full of wrinkles and her spine was bent. To add to all this, she was wearing thick soda glasses. The person to whom the request was made mumbled some excuse about not having any mobile phone balance and moved on. Then she repeated the whole story to the second person. The second person completely ignored her and looked away, assuming she was a beggar. She moved to the next person. Some of them just moved to more inaccessible corners of the bus stop shed, so this lady would not easily reach them.
Then this lady touched my friend and repeated the request. She also produced a wrinkled five rupee note from the insides of her burqah and held it out to him. My friend is a sensible guy and would definitely not lend his mobile phone to a perfect stranger, that too a Muslim lady. God alone knew whom she might call from his mobile. Why get into all these complications? (My friend's thoughts at that time, as he recollects now). My friend is an engineer.
But sometimes highly educated people also do stupid things. Before he knew it, he had lent his phone telling her 'zaldi karo' (make it quick). He regretted it the second he said it, but his mobile phone was already in her old wrinkly hands, which were also dirty, with uncut nails filled with grime. To his further annoyance, she moved a little away from him as if to get some privacy for her phone call. This irritated him more, but being a middle aged man with some sense of decorum, he could not be seen following her. He did not let her out of eyesight though. Around this time, he noticed his bus coming from a distance.
He cursed himself. The public transport bus was approaching and he was just about to shout at the lady to give his phone back, when she returned his phone. She held out the old wrinkled five rupee note. He said ‘no need’ and proceeded towards the bus which was braking. But this lady tapped the side of his arm. With some irritation he turned with a ‘what do you want now’ expression. She only looked at him and murmured something which was lost in the din of the bus arrival. Then, without warning, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her wrinkled face to his cheek. Tears ran down her old, tired eyes. Instinctively, he turned his face in the other direction to avoid the stink of her clothes. Flushing from embarrassment, he untangled himself and ran into the bus, getting in from the rear entrance. Once in the bus he looked behind from the rear windshield glass of the bus. But he could not see her, perhaps partly due to the dust of the moving bus and the dirty windows.
He reached the office anticipating his usual extremely painful day. But from that afternoon of March 2017 when he ran into the bus, till now (in 2019) he has never felt even the slightest pain in his back. He says he feels like he has a brand new back. He once ran into one of his erstwhile doctors in a supermarket. The doctor was happy to hear that his back pain had completely disappeared and said that some deep-seated nerve which might have been pressed earlier would have become ‘unpressed’. Many unopened boxes of painkillers lie unused in his home (some have expired – since few pharmacies in his city are willing to take back medicines 'sold once').
As for me, I think, the universe always gives us that 1 extra degree.
©Staju Jacob, 2019.
Staju Jacob is the author of path-breaking book Karmasutra The Karma of Sex, which deals with the karmic spirituality of consensual sexual actions. This book is available globally on various Amazon sites in Paperback , Kindle, Sony Kobo, Google books, Iphone Ibook etc. He can be contacted on Twitter through @KaRmasutraTKOS
