puja kaura

Got featured in @the_hindu ‘s Sunday Magazine (my piece on World Mental Health Day) epaper.thehindu.com/ccidist-… thehindu.com/opinion/open-pa…

written by a man ❤️

Unrecommend a book! What is the worst book you ever forced yourself to finish?

The Bucket: It is crazy what a body remembers. It is 6.30am. I am at Lalitha Mahal in Mysore. A 100 year old suite. The gentlemen checking me in tells me the legend Rajnikant stayed in this room. I feel bad it’s been downgraded. 6.30am. It is time to get on the road to bengaluru and fly home. A lady and two dogs await. I head to the bathroom and I see a bucket and a mug under the shower…why the hell not…. You do the thing of standing there naked while the hot water fills up too much. Occasionally sticking your hand in and discovering it is too hot while imagining what is happening to your fingers is happening to your testicles. So you wait. Enough hot water now. You switch to cold. A tricky tap dance. You go too far with the cold and you have compromised the entire bucket. It’s perfect. Maybe a little hot but you can fix that. You take the first mug and pour, I go chest first then face. Water hits your eyes and…. Instantly. I’m 17. It is a winter morning in Noida. I am standing naked in a much tinier bathroom. It’s 6.30am. Right outside the bathroom door lie a white shirt, a bottle green tie, a bottle green DPS Noida blazer which has three buttons. I’ve sowed the third one on. Regulation is two. But you do what you can to be different even if it means teachers look at you sideways now and then. There are crisp grey wool trousers that I’ve ironed at 6am. Every part of my body is freezing…so you take another mug…. I’ve failed every pre board exam except for English. Physics, maths, economics, chemistry included. I’m stressed, everyone in my house is too. No one quite knows what is wrong with my brain, you can smell the worry for my future along with the sector 15 Nala and truck smoke wafting in to an open window. Outside the house is a Hero Puch moped that I will drive past Atta bazaar to sector 30 Noida. It’s going to be cold. But there’s a cool moment where you get to drive by all the kids waiting for the bus. Plus there’s a girl…. She’s a year younger. We are both worried about the future too. I leave this year. She stays. She’s a different faith with a conservative family who don’t know about me. Kind of a problem back then, for everyone but us. She is in the hostel at DPS. She meets me every morning at the gate. I park the moped and we hold hands and walk into school. She’s every kind of fire. She’s worried about me, my boards and my future too. Eventually her family will find out, that’s not fun, I will leave school heartbroken and life will do life. But today, I’m trying to get through this Balti bath and to her hand. The bucket is almost at its end. So I pick it up. Do the full empty onto forehead ritual. Grand warmth, and instantly…. I’m in Rajinikanth’s bathroom at the palace. I grab a towel and dry up. There’s a white tee and some oversized cargos I put on while an audiobook on stoic philosophy plays. I get dressed and step out on to the balcony with a cup of tea as the sun comes up. A little worried about the future. Many risks taken this year. I wish there were some woollen pants to press and a puch to drive. Both micro rituals that take your focus off the large. I think about how many people have stood on this balcony stressed about the future for 100 years. And one feels…. A little comforted. Moped kid didn’t have a clue, and neither do you. But it turned out alright for him, and whatever comes next might do for you too. Head down to reception to get on the road to get bengaluru to fly to Mumbai. There’s a girl. Every kind of fire. She’s worried that I’m overworking myself. This life stuff goes quick and I don’t think we get any smarter or clued in. Vehicles change, pants get more crushed, you stay just as clueless, failing all the exams you were never meant to take. Best case you get to avoid being on a crowded bus, and the temperature in your bucket is just right. Keeps you warm. Drive on.

Each boy received oral alprazolam, then intramuscular atropine and ketamine. Wrists were cable-tied behind the back so they could not claw at the gear if they woke. “It could be like I’m euthanizing these boys.” Australian anesthetist Richard Harris said that before approving the rescue plan. What came next was not heroics by children. It was a medical extraction run through a drowned mountain. In June 2018, twelve school footballers and their coach entered Tham Luang in northern Thailand after practice. Heavy rain closed the way out and trapped them inside the cave for nine days. Later, British cave divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton reached Chamber 9 and found all thirteen still alive. The clip of that moment went viral and created hope. Inside the rock, it solved nothing. The way out was an hours-long underwater drag through slits of stone and floodwater the color of coffee. A trained former Thai Navy SEAL, Saman Kunan, had already collapsed on a tank run and died. Officials feared a conscious boy would rip the mask, flood his airway and take the diver down with him. British cave divers asked Thai officials to summon Richard Harris, an Adelaide anesthetist and experienced cave diver. Upon arrival and after studying the situation, he designed a ketamine protocol so the boys would stay unconscious but keep breathing on the way out. The chemistry was precise. Harris chose ketamine because it can drop a child into unconsciousness while leaving spontaneous breathing intact. Alprazolam (Xanax) went first. Atropine dried saliva that could choke them. Preloaded syringes rode with the lead divers. When a body twitched in the dark, another shot went through the wetsuit. Harris thought the first child might emerge dead. He would still have to go back in for the others. Thai officials granted Harris legal protection if a child did not survive the passage. Then they executed the plan. The first boy came out alive. Then another. Over three days in July 2018, all twelve boys and their coach were brought out. The public story is often told as a miracle. The medical plan was narrower. Twelve healthy minors were put under in a cave, bound and moved like cargo because fear itself was the deadliest part of the route.