I got a call this morning, a rare phenomena in the age of texts. My friend who called is about two decades older, and we only connect infrequently, when he needs to consult with me about a business he has wanted to get off the ground for all the years I have known him. He is a creative person who invents new things in a workshop he has locally, with a loyal freind and business partner. These inventions help people with limited mobility to enjoy the outdoors, particularly water sports, that act as therapy. He is a veteran himself and has seen enough veterans who suffer long term mobility issues that compromise the quality of their lives, although his early forays as an inventor were inspired to help his ageing father. His father was a well known professor at Cal Tech who passed away several years ago.

Everytime we connected, he would tell me about the progress on building his organization and recruiting someone to help manufactore or market these inventions or funding he might secure through the ongoing efforts. Occasionally, he joined my poetry circle. He is a practicing Buddhist who has memorized many sutras, in English, and could recite these for us. Something about the way he spoke on this monring's call seemed to me to be off, as he seemed to be rambling. He thanked me for the books I had loaned him at various points of time. He was specially inspired by The Infinite Vision, by Pavi Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy, that I had loaned him years ago when we first met. More recently, he had borrowed The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates that was fresh in his memory as he wanted to work with women as he builds his organization. As he talked, I felt maybe I need to ask him what he needed urgently, and promise to call him back if he just needed to talk, as it is a workday for me and with projects waiting for my attention. Yet, I felt I could give him a few more minutes because I was finishing a chore using my hands, which I could do by simply putting the phone on speaker and letting him talk as I completed my chore too. My energy read of his tone was that he just needed to talk, and I could simply listen atleast for the time while I was working with my hands.

Then a few minutes in, the voice changed. It was his business partner and friend on the line, whom I also know. He said to me that our friend just keeps talking of the enterprise, but that is not a real possibility at this time, because our friend is seriously ill, and the top priority now is to get better and recover. Then the details came. He had brain surgery to remove a tumor and had just been sent home. His family was arriving from around the world. Major decisions had to be made about next step of choosing therapies between radiation, chemo and no more therapy because the prognaosis was not good and quality of life may be worth preserving rather than prolonging the diseased state. It was all that one never wishes to hear about a friend, but life is like that - it gives out joys and sorrows to everyone - not favoring anyone or anything.

What struck me at the end of the call was that even as his brain is looping in on things he cared about most -- building his enterprise to offer his inventions to help others -- his brain was also looping in the gratitude mode, as he kept thanking me for the books I had loaned him, that had inspired him and kept him going through times when no one or nothing else was going as he wished it to. I had no idea that loaning him books would mean so much to him. It is such a simple things that many of us do this routinely without ever considering its' impact for others. It was this gratitude loop in his brain that led to the call and made this connection where I am suddenly now a part of the small group of carers who orbit around him as he recovers. When all else is parked on the back burner, his inventions, his enterprise, his usua daily life - be it in the workshop or domestic sphere, only the kindness survives. May his mind be able to hold on to it and know that good wishes are held for him, in many hearts, whatever the next phase of his journey is.