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That Beautiful Word, Negative

Ian Fleming once wrote a haiku that went like this: "You only live twice/ Once when you're born/ And once when you look death/ in the face."/

I would like to re-phrase that slightly. The second time is when you've undergone a battery of medical tests on the advice of a grim-faced doctor, and you finally open your report with a trembling hand, and just one word leaps out at you:

"Negative."

Believe me, it's the most beautiful word in the world.

It all started a couple of weeks ago, when I wasn't feeling too well and went for a general check-up. One thing led to another, and another, and another. And then the doctor asked me to get a biopsy done, "just to be on the safe side." Something in the way he said it, seemed a little too casual, a little too reassuring.

From the time they took my sample, I seemed to, in some strange way, divide like an amoeba. One part of me waiting for the results, worrying, fretting; the other part observing, coldly, very coldly, taking notes as it were.

You know, it's funny the thoughts that go through your mind when you are suddenly confronted with your own mortality like this…

I found myself mentally running through all the people I knew -- friends, well-wishers, ill-wishers -- and wondering how each one of them would react to the news of my death. What would he/she say? What would he/she remember me for (if anything at all)?

Curiously, there was no fear of death, itself; merely a fear that the passing would be too slow, too undignified, too unquiet. Also, there was a sense of irritation that other people would be inconvenienced in the whole messy process of my going. I thought, for some reason, of flies being swatted. That is the way to go, I told myself - thwack! -- suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the blue. Could I simulate that in some way?

Stepping in front of a speeding truck? Jumping off a 10-storey building?

I told nobody about the test, nobody at all. But I wrote out two e-mails which I planned to send out to my friends after my result came out. Only after that.

The first one assumed that the result was clear: a joyful, rambling, slightly incoherent e-mail, intended, I suppose, as some kind of self-fulfilling prophesy, and I cannot remember writing anything that has given me so much pleasure, in a long, long time.

The second one was brief and matter-of-fact, informing my friends of the worst.

I carefully composed both of these and filed them away, like two pre-sealed envelopes. (Which of them would I be sending out seventy-two hours from now?)

I sorted out all my papers: legal, insurance, financial. I made a check-list of all the things I would need to take care of. I remembered old prayers, forgotten since childhood.

There was also -- let me confess! -- some thought of how I would play the whole thing, the script I would enact, and I lay awake those nights watching re-runs in my head of dumb tearjerker movies (A Warm December, Anand, Love Story…)

Yes, it all sounds so funny now, ha ha. But somehow it didn't seem very funny back then.

Naturally, to add to the excitement, there was a screw-up at the lab over my test. And, naturally, when I went to finally collect my report, I was told that -- oops, sorry -- they would have to take another sample, and could I please come back again in a couple of days?

By now, a strange sense of calm had taken over. A sense that it was now all in the hands of some higher authority; that this had all been decided a hundred million years before I was born. Whatever I myself did was utterly and completely irrelevant. Yeh to hona hi thha.

That Friday evening, the person who went to the hospital to pick up the report was somehow not me, it was somebody else. I seemed to be there only as a casual observer. Whatever the result was going to be, it had nothing to do with me at all.

Naturally, there was yet another screw-up at the lab, and they couldn't locate my report. There was a flurry of confusion.

No, sorry, the report is not with us.

No, sorry, it seems doctor has taken it with him.

No, sorry, doctor is not here, he may be back any time now, kindly take a seat, would you like a magazine to read?

I sat and read an old copy of Filmfare.

Finally, the doctor returned and I can't remember precisely what happened. Everything seemed to be happening in Fast Forward. All I know for sure is that, somewhere in all that, he mentioned the word Negative.

Negative! Negative! Negative!

I had promised myself right in the beginning that if the result was okay I would go out and celebrate, get smashed, buy myself a present. Instead, I just went home, had a quiet dinner, and went to bed.

Today I have a sense of having gotten a second chance in life; a sense that from now on, all this is just a bonus; a sense, also, that I must use it well. I suspect this phase will last for another few days, before I go back to my old, cynical ways. Already those childhood prayers that came back to me so readily last week are receding.

But, in another script, another life, I know the chemotherapy has already begun….

Anvar Alikhan