IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 101- OPERATION THEATRE Brig PS Gothra (Retd)

 You know, I’m the kind of chap who can’t walk past a broken-down car without peering inside the bonnet to see what’s wrong — not to help, mind you, just to know.

So imagine my frustration — lying on the OT table, wide awake, and not allowed to see what the doctors were doing in my pelvic area. The anesthesia was in the spine, below kidney level, so my brain was alert but my legs were numb. All I had in front of me was this green curtain standing on my chest like a stubborn wall. I tried to see if there was a mirror on the walls so that I could see what is going on.

Then the oxygen mask slipped… and gifted me an itch on the nose. And believe me, a nose itch when your hands can’t reach is pure cruelty. It’s the same helplessness you feel when you’re standing in sawdhan or salami shastr on the drill parade and a fly decides your nose is prime real estate.

To keep my sanity, I started counting the beep-beep of the monitor. Nice and steady. “All is well,” I thought.

Then I heard a faint, calm voice: “Fire laser.”

Ah, target acquired. Straightaway, my mind flashed back to counter-terrorist operations. You surround a house on hard intelligence, and the owner says: “Gaon mein chhe mahine se koi aatankwadi nahi aaya.” (No terrorist has been in this village for six months.) Still, you keep the cordon, get the family out, and wait.

I was the patient type — announcing repeatedly on the loudhailer: “Bahar aa jao, dono haath hawa mein!” (Come out with both hands in the air!) Hours pass, nothing moves. You start doubting if the guy’s even inside.

Meanwhile, Brigade HQ keeps calling every 15 minutes: “Ki hoya?” (What happened?) And some bright fellow says: “Sir, commander keh rahe hain, kuch karo.” (Sir, the commander says do something.)

And then — bang! — either the terrorist fires or your boy spots a weapon. That rush… unmatched.

Back in the OT, the laser went thud-thud for ten whole minutes. I felt oddly proud — clearly, I had produced a tagda pathar (one solid kidney stone). “Bas, kaam khatam,” I thought.

But no. They kept at it. Somewhere in between, an old OT joke from the Emergency days popped into my head, and I must have been grinning because the anaesthesiologist bent over and asked, “Sir, are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said.

He must have thought, poor fellow’s drifting into lunacy.

The joke goes like this — back in the Emergency days, a father of four was being wheeled in for a vasectomy. Halfway to the theatre, he grabbed the doctor’s hand, eyes full of pleading, and said:

“Doctor saab, jaida chhota na kar deo.” (Doctor, please don’t make it too small.)

My doctor peered and said, “we are done and he dangled a plastic packet with small fragments of the stone and tied it to my hand.

While I was being wheeled out the intern on duty said, “How were you so cool on the operation table sir.”

Note:- I will write the answer in the next episode.