The fall on that Saturday felt surreal.
Everything around me moved with a quiet urgency, yet within me there was only a slight daze. I knew something was not right, but that knowing did not immediately translate into panic. It was more like a soft dissonance—an awareness without clarity.
Perhaps this comes from a place I have long held: a deep respect for the medical profession. A doctor’s role, to relieve pain, feels too honourable to critique. Each doctor brings their own way of seeing, their own way of holding a situation. I have never felt the need to measure one against another.
And yet, over the course of the day when I fell to my Friday 2nd consult, I found myself in three different consultation rooms—each offering not just a diagnosis, but a different experience of care.
My first visit to Sai Ortho grounded me in the physical reality of the fall. Reports—MRI, scan, X-ray—began to define what had happened. The explanation was structured, rooted in what was visible and measurable. It told me where I stood.
But even in that space, something else held me.
In the consultation room of the doctor’s father, my eyes rested on an image of Sri Sathya Sai Baba. I did not analyse it. I simply noticed that it steadied me.
At my diabetologist’s clinic, something familiar was missing—the usual devotional music. And yet, the peace remained. The white of the room felt especially calming that day. Even the guilt I carried seemed to soften as I sat there waiting.
My general and diabetic physician of the past four years, Dr. Harikrishnan understood the situation and gave his advice while instinctively understanding what I need to hear.
He did not soften the truth, but he did not weaponize it either.
He named my condition clearly and spoke of procedures with precision. More importantly, he knew me—he knew that I prefer honesty, but not alarm. When he clearly said it was an emergency I woke up from my daze. Since up until now nothing seemed real for me.
He slowed my panic, let me wait in his office for about twenty-five minutes. What felt like a delay was a conscious pause to receive his advice and recommendation.
Because alongside the injury, another number had entered my awareness: my HbA1c was 11.4.
My mind began to spiral—not just with concern, but with a kind of internal whirl where thinking itself felt unsteady. And yet, the space he held remained calm. His presence did not mirror my anxiety; it steadied it.
The urgency I felt did not come from the doctors. It arose within me—in the space between what was said and how I received it.
He suggested an orthopaedic specialist for a second opinion.
We reached Dr. Vijayakrishnan’s clinic just in time.
The waiting room was crowded, chaotic, and filled with noise that felt jarring. It unsettled me. It was not just sound—it was a misalignment with where I was within.
And then, while waiting, something subtle began to shift.
The room, which had been full, slowly began to empty. Families who had come together moved inward as names were called. The space lightened. There was still a quiet tension in me—an unspoken concern about what the second opinion might bring.
And yet, amidst that unsettled waiting, I sensed something else.
A presence.
As the space opened, light entered more freely. It brightened—not dramatically, but unmistakably.
Within that, there was a sudden spurt of energy.
I tend to notice such moments, not as signs to interpret, but as shifts to receive. I experience the body and the space around it almost as one continuous field.
In that moment, something aligned—the light, the quieting of the room, the stillness within my own restlessness.
It felt as though the answer I needed was already on its way.
Soon after, my name was called.
The consultation room was filled with Ganesha—forms that grounded me instantly. There was a quiet dog laying on the entrance of the clinic gaurding but peaceful, alert but calm, and a stillness that coexisted with movement. The space allowed for gentleness.
When the doctor entered, he carried a kind smile and kind eyes.
Something in me softened.
It felt, quite simply, like I had arrived at the right place.
I held myself together as the consultation continued. He advised an X-ray.
When I was called again after the queued up xray sheet, curiosity arose in me, and I found myself asking about his Ganesha collection. It was a small moment, but a deeply human one—recognition beyond roles.
He looked at the X-ray and said, “It seems the wound is healing well.”
No surgery.
Instead—an injection, a gel, ice packs, and painkillers only when necessary.
After all the internal spiralling, that sentence did not just offer medical clarity. It returned space to me.
In a very human moment, we left without collecting the prescription or paying the doctor, only to realise it a few streets later and return. There was something almost tender about that—after so much intensity, the mind had loosened just enough to forget the practical.
During the injection, I shared my blog—Mascot of the Itinerant Storyteller. He received it warmly, shared his number, and I promised to send him a Ganesha image.
By the time I returned home, my body finally allowed itself to rest.
And in that stillness, another awareness surfaced.
Dr. Srinivasan—my first consultation—remained unacknowledged in the rush of the day. I sent him an apology voice message, not because I had done something wrong, but because I value the time and care he had given.
And yet, alongside that, a quiet clarity remained.
The second opinion had brought me calm.
Not because one doctor was better than another, but because that particular space, that particular presence, met me where I was.
Looking back, I see that each space held something essential.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba in the first.
The familiar quiet white calm of my physician’s room.
Ganesha, stillness, and gentle presence in the third.
And later, outside, on a shop window, both Shirdi Sai Baba and Sri Sathya Sai Baba together in abhaya hasta—the gesture of reassurance.
The presence continued.
It was not confined to clinics. It followed me out, gently, consistently.
This journey was never just about diagnosis or treatment.
It was about how I moved through spaces.
How I received what was said.
How my body responded.
And how, somewhere between medicine and meaning, I found alignment.
Three doctors.
Three ways of seeing.
And somewhere within them,
a way of listening—
to both the world,
and myself.
Credit: Assisted by Mira AI Powered ChatGPT
Itinerant Storyteller 