On fighting chances

I am always up for an adventure, so when I get a call from my friend Vijay and he asks if I’m up for a road trip, I say yes, of course! It’s Saturday, and this road trip is just to the other side of town. He tells me that we’re going to a rescue centre for the non-majestic wild animals. Because I enjoy his company, I don’t ask too many questions. I know it will be a fun drive either way. So, we hop in the car and set off.

As I settle into the seat, I notice there’s a washing machine in the back. By now, I know not to be surprised by quirky things like this with Vijay. Over the years, I’ve realised that some people are just full of surprises, and he’s definitely one of them. He tells me there’s someone near the rescue centre who will take this machine and use it. He wants to make sure the machine, still in pretty good condition, gives another family a lot of value.

We start driving and chatting. We talk about so many things, and before we know it, we’ve crossed the city and reached the other side of town, near Bannerghatta National Park. After we deliver the washing machine to the right person, we continue our journey to meet the folks at the rescue centre, tucked away in a forested area.

This is where I meet Dr Roopa and a few other members of the team who take care of animals. I am still trying to make sense of what is going on around me. I can’t exactly understand why there is a rescue centre and who we are rescuing the animals from.

Through a long conversation, I learn that these beautiful wild animals, from kites to squirrels to snakes to monkeys and more, have all been hurt in one way or another by human activity. Forest and tree cover is reducing, high-tension power lines are popping up everywhere. Humans, with our big egos, need more space than ever: bigger houses, more space for cars, just more space, and it all comes at the cost of that which we don’t understand, an existing ecosystem. Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

In all the textbooks I ever read, I was always told how important it is to give spaces for biological ecosystems to thrive. I wonder whether we as humans ever connect what we have learnt at school with what’s happening in the world around us.

As Dr Roopa walks us around, I start to see beautiful creatures of all shapes and sizes. And I start to get so many questions. How do the animals arrive here? How do you know what they need, what they will eat, or when they are better and can be released? How do you ensure they don’t become dependent on humans, or become domesticated?

Suddenly, I started to notice things I probably hadn’t seen before. Each of the animals, like squirrels, chipmunks, small monkeys, are in their own tiny cages, waiting to pass the time and feel better.

But how do you know what they might or might not eat? The only way to find that out is that the team puts an assortment of nuts, seeds, fruits, and veggies in front of them and observes the animal. Some days the animals eat nuts, other days fruit, other days veggies. I asked how do we know they will eat, and the answer is quite simple: we don’t know. We just have to patiently observe each day, asking ourselves what’s missing. And over a few days, we start to understand what it is that they eat.

Where do we put them? Can all monkeys be kept together? The answer is no. Monkeys come from their own tribes, and we can’t or shouldn’t mix them up. We must help them while ensuring they don’t become overly dependent on humans for survival, because if they do, the possibility of them meeting and mingling with their own tribes one day goes to zero. A monkey without a tribe doesn’t have a lot to survive on and survive with. Their own tribes may attack it.

Nature itself is such a mystery to me.

Dr Roopa and her team answered all of my questions with so much patience. Then I asked the question which I don’t think I was prepared to ask, or prepared to get an answer to.

I asked Dr Roopa, as a doctor, when you see an animal in such a difficult, hopeless condition and they don’t make it, how do you deal with that? How do you handle that?

She took a deep breath and said something that has stayed with me after all these years. She told me that as a doctor who works with these creatures, you realise that the responsibility is to give these animals a fighting chance. It is all about fighting chance, but the healing takes place in a strange, spiritual way where nature takes care of it. A doctor can’t control or influence that; they can only give these animals a fighting chance. Sometimes it means the animal’s pain is reduced in their final moments and they get a space to move on. In other cases, it is by amputating a monkey’s limb so they can survive, and helping them relearn how to be a monkey without one of their limbs. In other cases, it is to help the big bird take shelter, eat good food, and regain strength so they may be able to fly back to the skies one day. But each of these steps is a way to give fighting chance to them.

Fighting chance. That has stayed with me. How insane and liberating it was to hear that.

I have been asking myself a different set of questions since then. What are my duties and responsibilities with the work I do, the people I work with, the humans I meet in my everyday life? What is my responsibility and where does it start and end? Over time, I am learning to define what a fighting chance may be and what it would look like for those whom I serve.

The only goal is to focus all my energy on giving someone or something a fighting chance. That is all I can really control in my own life as well: to do my best at giving things a fighting chance.

Just listening to it, and thinking about it over the years, has felt like a pressure release. Whatever happens after will happen of its own accord. Sometimes the body, sometimes the universe, sometimes unexplainable forces of nature will step in and do what’s written. I don’t need to worry about any of that. I can, of course, be the human I am and hope for outcomes that I would like, but the universe is its own mysterious being. I just have to accept that, in some twisted way, it is always doing what’s right for me. All I have to do is focus all my energy on fighting chances.

Four years since since having met Dr Roopa, I constantly go back to this idea of giving something a fighting chance, whether at work, in matters of the heart, in things I cannot control, or when someone close is withering away because their body is not supporting them anymore. That is it, and that is all I can really control. I am also learning that when I go back to this thought, all the baggage or loops in my head that might pull me back from making the right decisions just go away. They tap out, and I am back to where I can do something about the matter at hand.

Fighting chances. Who knew how simple it would be for her to articulate the answer to so many of my unarticulated questions. When something at work is not working out, when a friend pulls away, or when something so big has happened that my human brain is struggling to comprehend, I just have to give something a fighting chance, and the universe will take care of the rest in its own unique way.

The cycles of Karma are quite long and unfathomable to my human mind, so I also attribute whatever happens in this lifetime for me to randomness. How random it is that Vijay would call me for chai and a washing machine delivery, and I would walk away meeting all of these wonderful animals, Dr Roopa and her team, and an answer to one of life’s biggest questions. Karma, or randomness, or both, I am so grateful.

I hope, when you find yourself in a soup, you are also reminded of giving something a fighting chance, and knowing that what happens next has already been written for you, from a place of love, by the universe.

Love,

Rishi

P.S: Dr Roopa has written a book!