Perspectives of Before and After

I observed him carefully as he walked to the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

The nano-seconds between each count seemed like they had their own long life. I could hear the whirring of the fan, the sound of the foot-steps coming from the wooden corridor at the far corner from where I was lying, and even the pouring of water from the clay pot that was kept outside my room.

“How is this even possible?” I said to myself. When I can see everyone very clearly, how is it that they are not able to see me trying to call out to them. I had just heard the doctor tell his team “He is no more”. The electronic cardiogram that was buzzing had also stopped making any sound.

“Six, Five, Four, Three, Two…” I could hear conversations that went like “How should we inform his family?”, “His case wasn’t complicated. How did this happen.”, “Maybe he came with a heart ailment and it just got amplified during the course of the treatment.”. One nurse said “I will start finishing the formalities for a Death Certificate to be issued.”

Beep, beep, beep. The electro cardiogram comes to life again. A flush of activity ensues with many footsteps that rush into the room. A nurse rushes out to call the senior doctor. The doctor rushes in with a look of shock on his face. He quickly checks my pulse rate and my breathing. He asks the nurse to hand over some injection, which he injects in my stomach. I do not feel any sensation or pain. A straight jab into my stomach and I do not feel anything? Is it the effect of anesthesia?

“Sir, we forgot to give anesthesia to him.” says a junior doctor. The senior doctor looks at him with cross eyes “I was called into this suddenly. But what were you doing? You should have pointed this out before I put in the injection. It’s good that he is still unconscious. This is nothing less than miraculous. Call the press and turn it into a fabulous story of how I saved this man from the jaws of death by using my skills and my years of experience. It will be beneficial for our hospital as well and the Dean and the Trust will be very happy. A hospital in the middle of two cities is anyway not the most popular hospital. Atleast, this will get us some publicity.”

“But Sir, you had declared him dead. He has come to life on his own.” Chipped in the junior doctor once again. The senior doctor gets livid now and says “This is the problem with you newbies. You do not understand anything of the corporate hospital world and then you wonder that why your career is not going anywhere. Just do as I say and stop putting your brains to everything.”

I do not remember anything after that. I woke up the next morning and there was glucose being given to me intravenously. There was a nurse monitoring my pulse rate. She looked at me and said “Good Morning Mr. Jonathan. How are you feeling now? You are a very lucky man to be alive today.”

I said “Thank You Nancy. I think God wanted that. Dr. Gandhi and his team have done a great job.”

Nancy turned pale. It seemed as if she had seen a ghost. She started stuttering “Uh uh h..hh…how do you know my name, and the names of everyone else? You were brought in unconscious and you only gained consciousness today.”

Now it was my turn to get surprised and shocked. “I don’t know. But I remember all the names that were being discussed in this room while I was being treated.”

Nancy got scared. She kept the medicine tray that she was holding aside and rushed out of the room. ‘What was going on? If I was unconscious, how did I know all the names?’ I tried thinking but I couldn’t figure out a reason. Did I just have a near-death experience? I had read about people going through it, but never believed in it.

I switched on the television set. There he was. Looking smug with the stethoscope, precariously dangling on his white coat. These were his quotes:

“Jonathan was brought in, under a very severe condition. A lot of blood had been lost and he was unconscious. Two hospitals had refused taking him in as it was a police case, but the minute I saw him, without bothering about protocols, I asked my team to bring him into the operation theatre. The operation lasted for six hours. It was a complex operation, but with the help of my team, we were able to save Jonathan and now he is completely out of danger. The only problem is that the accident was so severe that Jonathan’s spinal cord has broken at multiple places and he has been paralysed from waist down, and hence he won’t be able to walk again”

I knew that all of this wasn’t true. I remembered the night quite clearly. I was being driven in his Rolls Royce by my driver on the Jaipur-Delhi highway, when the truck came from the right side. The headlights of the truck at that speed were blinding enough for the driver to just freeze. All I could do was just stare at the headlights rushing towards me. Within seconds, I felt my body being thrown to one side, my spine making a sound of a crack, my head hitting the window and then I think I lost consciousness.

A tear rolled down my cheek on realizing that I won’t be able to walk again. My entire life till date flashed before my eyes – growing up in the bylanes of Sultanpur, a small village in Delhi, doing odd jobs to help my family make ends meet, attending night school to get educated and get out of this misery, my first job as a waiter, working hard and rising through the ranks to the manager level, taking a hefty loan to buy my first small hotel to setting up a chain of hotels to now having establishing the hotel chain globally.

Life had been a roller coaster ride for me and today, it seemed as if the roller coaster is turning upside down and all that I had accumulated so far was falling to the ground.

My hunger for success was so huge that I had committed all my life to become more and more successful. My job was my passion. So much so that I never found the time to find love, to get married or to have kids. Today, as I heard those words ring in his ears “He won’t be able to walk again”, I wanted someone’s shoulder to cry on, someone’s hand to hold. I hadn’t felt lonelier in my life than today. I did not want this to happen to me. I had not bargained for this. I had not worked so hard to reach this stage. Why was life being so unfair to me? What will I do now?

This was the moment when I felt that I could either let my hotel empire wither away or turn this empire into something that generations would remember me for. I had to have a purpose in life. In an instant, I knew what I will do. I will make my hotel chain the ‘Best Hotel Chain for the Disabled’.

It was an eye-opener for me when I started visiting my own properties on a wheel chair after a few months. I realized that the hotel properties that I was so proud of were not user friendly for the disabled at all. We did not have proper ramps across the property; we did not have assistance in the rooms and bathrooms so that the disabled could do their tasks properly and without any help. Some of our restaurants had a few steps to climb, making them completely inaccessible to the disabled. We identified 41 different issues that needed to be fixed across all my properties and it took six months and a lot of money to get these issues fixed as some of them meant reconstruction and changes in layout. I had to convince the Board to see the value behind these expenses. I remember that while the Board understood my own personal condition, they were still debating the merit of carrying out all these changes. I sealed the decision in my favour when I reminded all of them that if our ethos was all about giving the best service to our guests, then there were no reason for us to distinguish our guests. There shouldn’t be a guest who comes to our hotel and feels like he was not taken care of.

While we kept making changes to our layout to make it more comfortable and friendly for the disabled, people did not notice these changes for a while. Our moment of truth came when we had renowned physicist Professor Stephen Hawking visiting India and staying at one of our hotel properties. He and his entire team were amazed with the attention to detail that we had given to every possible problem that a disabled person faces. In one of the interviews that Professor Hawking gave to the media, he mentioned that how he has traveled the world but no other hotel property comes close to the one where he stayed in India when it comes to taking care of all the needs of a disabled person.

I couldn’t have got a bigger endorsement than this. It just proved to me that we are doing something right. There was no stopping after that and our list of guests who were disabled just shot up significantly. It was not that these people were not travelling or not staying in hotels, but till then they would just stay in any hotel as all the hotel chains had the same problems. But now, they knew that there was one hotel chain that would take care of them. With more and more guests, word of mouth of the hotel started increasing further and it has reached a stage where we are operating with 95% occupancy for most part of the year. We now have a policy where we always prioritise and accommodate guests who are disabled over other guests as we understand that other guests can go and stay in some other hotel as well. We do not like to refuse to any of our guests, but when a choice has to be made, we know who will get the first preference.

I spend most of my time in one or the other of my property and when guests come and meet me personally and thank me, I feel a sense of accomplishment and success that I had never felt before. When they see me on a wheel-chair, they realize how I am able to empathize their predicament and hence offer services like no other hotel. I believe that God had a plan for me and he wanted me to go through this so that I can improve the lives of so many others.

With this, Jonathan ended his speech that he was giving on receiving the award of ‘Best Hotel Chain of India’ and he got a rousing, standing ovation from each and every one present there.