Challenge Flashback!!!

Once a man dreamt that he was walking along a sea beach with God & scenes from his life flashed across the sky. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. Suddenly he looked back and found that during some challenging & lowest incidents of his life there was only one set of footprints. When asked about this God replied that those were the trial times when God carried him along. Now when I look back and ponder about things that happened to me during last few years, I believe that God has carried me along many times. When challenge as a term comes to me the first incident that comes to mind is the one I describe in the next few lines. Since childhood I had always lived in a very protective atmosphere. The first time I came out of this cocoon was when I secured admission for engineering at Pune. After many search operations I was able to find a paying guest accommodation for myself at Prabhat road. I still vividly remember my first visit to Neurgaokar Aaji’s(grandmother in marathi) place. Her daughter was looking for "well behaved" boys who would live with her mother like her own grandchildren and study simultaneously. We (me & my childhood friend)moved in the house on 19th Feb 2002. As days passed by, problems started creeping in. We had to clean not only our room but the full house as the maid servants had not done their work properly and poor 90 year old aaji was helpless. There were times when there used to be stench of spoilt food in the kitchen with cockroaches floating around everywhere. We were told about aaji’s forgetfulness but gradually we realized that she was bad case of Alzheimer’s. We realized this when we were not told about phonecalls from our families. At times aaji used to yearn for her daughters based in UK to call her, even when she had talked to them few moments back. Many a times we were not let in the house just because she had forgot that somebody was staying with her. But irony is that the same woman would cry when we came home during our mid sem holidays. There were times when maid servants were served tea coffee on regular basis by her and we were suspected of pilfering these things, times when her realtives made phone calls from her place & we were grilled for hefty phone bills. Aaji used to knock at our door at midnight even during our exams & ask about people who she thought were there when she slept but it was only an illusion. One night the knocking dint stop at all. Finally we opened the door only to notice that her forehead and clothes were blood stained. Apparently she felt from her bed & suffered a head injury. Once she was robbed of her jewelry when she was in the porch and we were out. During my final year of Engineering aaji fell from her bed again. This time she had to undergo a hip replacement operation. Luckily her elder daughter had come to stay with us during that period. Her age was against her, the high risk operation was a success but aaji became bed ridden after that. After interviewing few ungainly ladies her daughter’s appointed two very good honest nurses to be with her 24X7. They took our duties & we were given a new duty of keeping a watch on them. As days passed aaji’s health started deteriorating. For an outsider this may seem a cakewalk but only the person who has gone through all this can feel how grim the situation used to be at times. Finally after having lived a bed ridden life for almost three years and struggling with life she finally gave up on the tenacious hold of life and got what all of us think she deserved the most – freedom from life. Living in such a precarious situation has certainly been the most challenging period of my life. But honestly speaking I never regret even a single moment of it. Success for me has always been the journey and not the destination. During this challenging journey I earned many things viz. home away from home, an exceptional academic record, people who respect us the most(her daughter’s) and a new meaning to life.