A few personal updates.
I suffered a pulmonary embolism; a bit of the blood clot in my leg travelled up my vein and lodged itself in my lungs.
I was in the ICU for a few days and at one point, the doctor said I was a “50-50 case”. My folks had to fly back a month early from their first-ever trip to the UK in case the worst happened.
I went through two rounds of intravenous clot-busters before they wheeled the defibrillator out of the ICU, which until then had loomed over me like the sword of Damocles.
While I was playing chess with death, fate was busy making a statement against the religious polarization plaguing India. My life was saved by two doctors, one a Hindu and the other a Muslim, as well as nurses and other medical professionals of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. Fuck your hate, we are one people.
The Bergman reference comes from one of my doctors. After I was moved out of the ICU, he told me the full extent of what I had just gone through. “You played chess with death and won”, he said. I was taken aback and asked him if he had seen The Seventh Seal. He had never heard of the film.
My recovery is going to take at least three to six months. Of course, this is a wake-up call and I need to change my lifestyle completely.
While I do that, I plan to slowly start getting back to work today. What a time to be a freelancer!
Harish Alagappa 