Mannya's Musings

I always thought of a paediatric ward as a place with only babies, toddlers, and children up to 10 years. It didn’t occur to me that there will be children up to 17 years of age in that ward. That soon changed the first time I went to the paediatric ward at St. John’s, where I spoke to a 17-year-old boy.  This time, I spoke to a 14-year-old girl. She was such a lively and happy girl that she raised the spirits of anyone who talked to her. She was in the hospital for dengue, and thus had missed school for a couple of weeks. She was one of the few children I’ve met, who was waiting to go back to school. English and Mathematics were her favourite subjects, so we started discussing how easy it was to study for an English exam as it didn’t involve any studying. We also bonded over our mutual love of Mathematics and discussed a bit about Highest Common Factor (HCF) and Least Common Multiple (LCM). I was grumbling saying how much I missed learning Mathematics, especially since my cu...

The experience this week was different from last week. The ward was a bit quiet as many of the children were asleep. I went up to a boy as he was about to start a game of snakes and ladders, and asked him if I could join him. He agreed and we ended up playing a fun game with everyone getting eaten by really long snakes and starting right at the bottom.  Next, I met two kids, who made all of laugh so hard. The first one was a boy, who had a smile that was permanently fixed on his face. His smile was so infectious, that I ended up smiling by just looking at him. He spoke Kannada, so I tried conversing with him and his father using what Kannada I knew. I used a lot of sign language, and also slipped in some Malayalam. The thing I loved the most was, all through our conversation the child did not stop smiling for even a second.  The second child was a girl who was really shy in the beginning. She would look at us and smile, but didn’t reply to anything we asked. While I ...

We gathered at St. John’s Medical College on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. All of us got our faces painted with bright colours of red, blue, green and pink. Before we went inside, we formed a gratitude circle and each said one thing which we were grateful for.  I was very excited to be visiting the paediatric ward because I love kids, but the moment I saw the words “PAEDIATRIC WARD” on the hospital wall, I froze for a moment. It suddenly dawned on me that the children we were going to be seeing were kids who were suffering and in pain. That initial shock quickly wore off as I entered the ward. The first child I interacted with was a four year old boy who had cancer. While playing with him, I unintentionally touched his tumour. At that moment I shook a bit as I realised the seriousness of his situation. The fact that a four year old boy, who was running around and playing, was suffering from cancer, broke my heart. It made the situation so real to me.  Wh...