Ten years ago, in the cold January winter of 2011, I was shaking with fever in a tiny apartment in the University town of Saarbruecken in south western Germany. I had just returned from India after having visited my sister in Bangalore and celebrated my nephew, Harshit's, first birthday. I got sick with flu just a day before my flight and spent the entire journey in total disarray. I was having fever, couldn't eat anything, and could barely stay awake. I was supposed to land in Dusseldorf at 6pm and then catch a train to Saarbruecken, my place of residence for my doctoral studies. Unfortunately, the flight got delayed and I missed my train. What followed was an even more harrowing ordeal over an extremely cold German night. I managed to first reach Stuttgart, which was rather a detour, at 11pm in the night and then got boarded a night express en route to Paris at 1am. I spent the time in between on the freezing platform and had to buy a few cups of hot water from a vendor to keep myself standing. Unfortunately, the night express had sleeping coaches while I only had a chair seat ticket. I had a hard time finding my seat and an even harder time squeezing in my luggage. The train arrived at the Saarbruecken station at 5:30am in the morning and I finally managed to reach my apartment after what seemed like a neverending journey full of cold and discomfort. Sadly, it took me another excruciating couple of weeks to get over my flu.
Just before visiting my sister in Bangalore, my parents had arranged for me to meet with a girl. Her name was Mansi. The meeting was brief in the midst of a whole bunch of family members, as is typical in India. However, Mansi's mother later called me a few weeks later and put me on the call with her. Mansi shared her number and told me that I can call her. Coming back to Germany, I was mostly in bed trying to recover from the flu. I was hardly eating anything and lying alone all day, sifting through my various conscious and subconscious thoughts, and pitying my sorry state of health and loneliness. Somehow, out of nowhere, I thought of calling Mansi. This was unusual since I had never had much female interaction in my life. More unusual was how her number was carefully stored on my phone. I called her number and waited, but it was not picked. I wondered what could have happened, or what could it mean. I thought for a few moments and then tried again. Still no answer. I thought again and realized that perhaps it was not meant to be. I immediately deleted her number from my phone and gave up on her, a bit rather too soon.
This week in the October of 2021, more than ten years since that cold and harrowing German winter, I was again sick with flu and was in similar discomfort. But this time, there was my beloved wife, Mansi, by my side to take care of me, to feed me with medicine and food, put me in a clean bed, and give me all that love and warmth that I craved for so much a decade ago. I am grateful to God for bringing me together with such a lovely companion who makes every moment of my life worth living and worth remembering. Life for me has come around such a big circle in the last decade that I sometimes smile back at all those cold days and frosty nights. I have also come to feel vulnerable to losing everything, or not doing enough to justify my good fortune, or not being able to give back as much as I got. Yet, I feel lucky to be able to keep going with my dear wife, weaving our paths as we go and creating our own little safe havens of love and wonder and everything that people can wish to see, feel, and cherish in their lives. And all happened because even though I gave up so soon in just two phone calls, something somewhere did not give up on me just so easily!
