Reminiscing with an Old Heart

“Half chances are important” he said, turning his face around to look out the only window. There was not much to look out at, except the back wall of the second wing of the hospital. As the day runs out, the grayish wall turns all black melting into the bosom of the pitch coal, beautiful mistress that has inspired many nocturnal souls for eons.

I looked up at him. Lately, I was always afraid to look him in the eye. Perhaps, because I never saw his eyes without his booming voice to go with it. Maybe it was because he tried to hide his pain as much as he could with his eyes slyly betraying him to the full.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Well, that is all that we have. People who win are people who believe and bet on half chances,” he said.

“What’s wrong with being prudent and cautious?” I wondered aloud almost not addressing him.

“Nothing, …nothing wrong with it. Prudence and Caution will keep you safe and warm,” he said with a smile that I could only hear with his face still turned towards the window.

He looked around and did not have to ask, “Is it time?”

I got up from my comfort of a hospital sofa that was lying alongside the bed to give him his dose of medicine. He had two days before his series of tests were to start and in those two weeks strict vigilance was required by the Hospital physicians. Most of the time a Nurse showed up to take care of this except no one had showed up that day.

I gingerly handed him his medicine. No less than 5 tablets, all shapes, sizes and colors. He never had any impression of any kind on his face while taking what was surely a very heavy pother of chemicals for his body. All he did was always drink as much water as he could with them perhaps to help soften the blow.

“Half a chance is what you always have. Always remember that! People, who get something or somewhere, have to play at half chances. A sure thing comes along but once in a lifetime. Sometimes people spend their entire lives waiting for that sure thing,” he said chewing on his tablets. He always chewed on them while taking them. It was an interesting way for him to remember how bad they tasted.

“Would that not constitute some form of gambling,” I said, keeping the conversation up in my pathetic attempt at distracting him from the discussion that usually ensues about how he hates the medicine, the physicians and the hospital environment.

“Yes, it would,” he said quietly.

Handing him the glass of water, I turned to pick up the newspaper. It was a National Daily he liked to read. I read it to him these days since his eyesight was deteriorating quite fast. He liked to stay abreast with the goings-on in the relentlessly hard hitting and perennially shifting, political mise-en-scène.
I looked up after reading through the first few headlines, “Can I ask you something?”

He had his eyes closed, concentrating on what I was reading from the newspaper, not expecting a disruption.

“What did you mean by half chances being important?”

“Just that people must learn to realize that there are times when they have to make choices. Those choices may not appear to have a substantial impact at the time, most times, in fact, no impact at all. But what is important is that we keep making those choices because we keep ourselves and people around us alive by doing that.” His voice got weaker as he spoke and eventually sank into a whisper. He had closed his eyes again after opening them to look at me briefly.

After a moment of silence, as if after gathering enough strength to continue speaking, he said, “You know how we measure life, right?” I did not answer.

“We measure it by looking at events,” he continued. “If you look at any historical figure from anywhere in time, you will see that all analysis is limited to the events that he or she triggered. History may be hearsay but it truthfully conveys one fine point. Human beings have a lot more to do with the shape of history, as we see it, than we give ourselves credit for; and all of the people who made history for the good or the bad, played at half chances.” He finally took a breath.

“But,… and correct me if I am wrong, are we not indulging in worshipping people whose names we know well enough today from our history books, giving them too much credit when we say that all analysis is based on events they triggered. I mean, how can we say that they triggered those or any other events. What happened to being somewhere called the right place at a time which may appear to be the right time in hindsight?” I countered.

He smiled.

“Yes, there are those. But we must give them credit for being there at the right time. What guarantee do we have that anybody else in the same situation would have been able to pull off what they may have done. As a matter of fact if they did not have the required knowledge, or expertise to handle the situation they were in and had ended up in that situation just by what some would call a stroke of magnificent luck then they must be given a lot more credit for doing what they did since they took their chances entirely blindly,” he said.

“How does that fit into the moral issues with gambling? You must admit that there is a similarity here. There is a reason why it is haram (prohibited), right?” I said looking for approval.

“Yes, but you see there is a reason for it to be haram. Religion does not want people to take such serious questions and turn them into trivial pursuits for the sake of entertainment. Life is all about gambling. But if you indulge in it as a pastime, entertainment, you will trivialize it so much so that your attitude about decisions pertaining to your life and that of others around you would become criminally frivolous. That has to be avoided,” he argued.

We sat quietly. I was mulling over his point and perhaps he, content to see the point being driven home by the heavy silence in the room, backed into a painful slumber.

I sat back and read the rest of the paper. The light from the evening sun was beginning to set in to the room.