The miracle worker

Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan
22
“Don’t you read the papers.. It’s all rape, murder, bloodshed.. Bad defeating good everyday in every way. Besides, we’ve started creating clones, we’re unearthing new galaxies and systems… look at you and me. We can identify diseases based on molecular defects even before the child is born. I’m telling you it’s all about human beings evolving.. There isn’t a divine element in all this. ”
I stared at him and the old man sitting behind him, visible from the periphery of my eye.
“How can you say that ?” I asked.
“Dude. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God.” he replied.
I smiled. Cheeky rascal.
“Look, we all insult and blame God , in much the same way we insult Gandhi, but it’s not like God doesn’t exist. It’s just a matter of what you imagine him to be and how please you are with his work.”

The look told me I wasn’t getting through to him. He took up the newspaper on the bed and tossed it to me. “Show me the work of God.”
I looked at the last page, which was lying face up.
“Well, I can see the wonder of God right here.” I said, pointing out Amisha’s two finer assets.
He glared at me.. okay, not in the mood for comedy apparently. ( What is it with atheists that make them behave like religious fanatics when we question their non-acknowledgement of God ? )
“Look, you can’t just toss me an entertainment supplement page and expect me to find God for you. The least you can do is give me the main paper.. like say, that one over there.” I said, pointing to the previous day’s paper.
The old man’s smile escaped the eyes of my friend. He knew I had read the paper. He knew what I was upto. As usual.
My friend gave me the paper.
“You sure I can’t convince you that atleast Gemma Atkinson’s assets are divine ?” I tried, showing him the photo.
“Bet you they’re Silicon implants a.k.a. the work of a doctor.”
“Hmmm…” I pretended as I glanced through the pages, slowing inching towards my destination.
“Let’s see.. Hayden called Bhajji an obnoxious weed and he didn’t react.. No? Not a miracle for you ? Ok, Prince Harry’s been in Afghanistan for 2 montths at the battlefront and noone knew.. wow..one hour massages by discrete bollywood type english speaking decent women.. sounds like heaven to me. Call Mariya.”
“Look. Give up, man. There’s nothing in there…”
“Wait.” I said.
“Now what ?”
“Read this” , I said handing him the article which had caught my imagination the first time I’d heard about it.
He read silently.

It was an article of a pregnant woman on board a train late at night. She went to the bathroom and while using it, went into labour. With the door locked, she fell unconscious and delivered in the bathroom. The newborn, placenta et al, fell through the commode of the running train and onto the tracks. It would be another 30 minutes before her co passengers would come to seek her and find her unconscious in the bathroom, bleeding and with no child.
In those 30 minutes, 2 more trains passed over those rails.
4 hours later, a passerby heard a baby’s weak cries as he passed the tracks. He would find the child, blue from the biting morning chill… but alive.
He took the child to the NICU ( neonatal ICU ) where the child was resuscitated. By the time the story reached the papers, the child’s condition was declared ‘stable.’ And of course, mother and child were reunited.

My friend looked at me.
“Don’t even start.” I said. “You and I have seen enough newborns die of far less than what this child suffered. It fell off a moving train, was run over by 2 trains, height notwithstanding, faced the extreme cold which is incompatible with life for any newborn and is declared ‘stable.’ Nothing less.. stable, man.”
“As you said, the train’s lowest points were to high to touch the child so that hardly matters. The rest.. well, the kid was lucky, that’s all.”
"And the cold ? No newborn has the ability to make up for extremes of temperature."
"Just lucky, I guess."
“If you don’t see the miracle in this story, then there’s really no point in talking further… there is no science that would allow that kid to survive what it did and you damn well know that.”
“That’s one incident.. one incident in a whole paper. The rest is all about minors getting raped, killed etc.”
“Sometimes one incident is enough to make you believe. ” I rallied.
“Yes, and a thousand to disbelieve in him, right ? Whatever, man.” He said as he got up to leave my room. Behind him, I could see the old man shuffling to his feet too, behind him. "I'll see you later." I said.
The doc left first, the scoff in his lips telling me I’d failed to convince him. I turned back to the old man as he too moved towards the door.
“How do you manage it ?” I asked.
He smiled. “Manage what ?”
“Day in and day out, you listen to us insult you, tease you and bitch about you. After all you’ve done , how do you remain cheerful seeing so many people remaining atheists, so many people turning into atheists before your eyes, even as you continue to perform pure miracles ? Basically, how do you not feel like hurling down lightning bolts when you see people like him putting you down ?”
The smile never left his face as he continued. I figured he hadn’t heard me ( wouldn’t be the first time ), but as he reached the door, he turned back and cocked his eyebrow.
“ Dude. I’m God. I don’t believe in atheists.” He said as left the room.
I smiled. Cheeky rascal.

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22Comments

Let me know what you think.

  1. like the new look.

    and no it doesnt convince me either :).

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  2. nice ending doc!

    and i still havent successfully figured out whether u believe in Him or not! so just tell me next time!

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  3. yeah... "cheeky rascal" had a nice ring to it dude... of course, us bunch of non believers will never be convinced.. i guess we are asking ourselves "what about the other babies who died? why did that one baby have to live? there's a God for that one baby who got stable, but not for the rest that couldn't get away?".. but f*** what i said and u go on doing ur thing else u would have to change the blog name (not to mention ur whole world view).. cheers!

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  4. maxaud... sometimes, it doesnt convince me either

    nags, i believe in him.. I just dont trust him.

    Rejoy, true true.. what abt the other babies, indeed ? part of a bigger plan ?

    aurora, whew.. thank 'god' i passed.

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  5. Love the ending.........

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  6. Yes I read the story about the baby surviving too--It was simply amazing--miraculous.

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  7. read the article too...

    miracles do happen....the baby is saved and indian railways make a huge profit....

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  8. love the new theme?

    hows the laptop btw? waiting for that that post
    ! got mine a couple of weeks back! :)

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  9. hey,when i read the article on yahoo,it said she regained conscious in 2-3minutes n they got the baby back in like 10minutes...
    i like what u said about Believing Him and not trusting..thats dead on the target!!
    i experienced his miracle on 2 occasions...one when i witnessed a live heart beat during a bypass and valve replacement surgery right in front of me and then a baby of a triplet set whose heart stopped beating for 5minutes during angiogram.
    congrats on ur celebrity status!!

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  10. It's not convincing all the time, especially with all the disturbing news we get to know of ever morning ! But yea, it takes belief to hope that there is miracle which keeps life going ! Good one dude !

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  11. nice post once again rosh ... i like the ending .. :) .. i guess we can never convince those who dont believe.

    Cheers,
    Lalith

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  12. prodigy.. my goal is accomplished then, aint it ?

    ps & gazal, miracles do happen, I guess... though i wonder what destiny has for that kid.. will he ever make use of his miracle or....

    lemonade, trust me, this theme is very much inspired from ur own eye-candy theme i so love... and yes, thanx for reminding me, will definitely post one on the laptop and more

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  13. icychips, true.. so many miracles that way too.. atleast ive seen too much to not believe..

    purpleheart, you ever think the big guy's trying to fool us into a false sense that he doesnt exist to see hoiw many of us turn naughty and how many stay nice ...

    lalith, true..

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  14. theres a saying : dont go chasing waterfalls

    wht does tht have to do with this post...perhaps nothing, perhaps everything..

    damn! tht sounded almost profond..

    loving these lil stories u write...

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  15. haha..thanx, tysonice.. I'll let u know when the profoundity sinks in

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  16. thank you for droppin by my space.. it was lovely to read this one and a joy to have read ur blog.. :)
    well, my mum read out the same incident to me from some tamil mag and i was awed by it! my first reaction was, Gosh! How?
    Well i do believe in Him and miracles do happen!

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  17. Hello again, sir!

    I'm much junior to you, inexperienced, and an atheist. Yet, I venture out to put in my two paise.

    What's our criterion for calling something a miracle? In medical science, 'normal' and 'usual' are all about "95 % of the population". Does anything that fall out of that range become a miracle?

    Yes true, 99.9% babies would've died in that cold. But how can we be so sure that had someone got the opportunity to follow the event most closely, we wouldn't have known the reason for the survival? My wild conjecture: The fall onto tracks, the passing of two trains kept the sympathetic system so activated that adequate amount of heat could still be generated. I realize, how weird this sounds, and more so when I'm talking to anesthetist! But is it impossible? Miracle is when impossible happens, not improbable. What were miracles 200 years back are now mundane facts (for instance, you don't know a thing about me, and I can almost look into your 'soul'). 200 years back, flying in an aeroplane would've been deemed as unlikely as this baby surviving.

    I'd turned atheis not because I was disenchanted with the world or had some painful, unfortunate experience which made me angry hate God. One can't hate God and still deny his/her existence, can one? :)

    I don't know how many and what arguments have you read for and against the existence of God, but visit my blog, and there'd be able to get insight into how a few atheists think.

    What arguments could convince an atheist would depend on the reasons they deny God's existence in the first place, and what attributes a theist associates with the God they believe in. For instance, the arguments of your friends in post won't be successful against a Deism.

    Interesting post!

    And one more hypothesis: train's vibrations can induce precipitate labor ;)

    TC.

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  18. Sorry for the typos above. Hope you'd be able to make out what I meant :)

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  19. True.. what were miracles in the past no longer seem so amazing. Thats progress.. still, u find we need to believe that the small coincidences are part of some divine sign to keep the faith. This was just an example of that.

    I too lost faith in the big guy a few years back.. i dont claim I'm fully back with him yet.. as I said above, I believe in him... but I dont trust him entirely anymore.. and definitely not the version of him forced upon us by fanatics.

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  20. I believe the old man is after our experiences doc, we are his/her or it's tool to experience what he/she/or it knows theoretically.

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  21. well, if thats the case, I'm sure he has an infinite amount of experience now of everything ever possible..

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