Dr. Chari’s Diaries: The Diwali Night of Life and Light

Dr. Chari’s Diaries:

The Diwali Night of Life and Light...

Light inside and Life outside..

It was Diwali night. Lights and laughter...

The city outside shimmered with lamps, laughter, fireworks and life.

Inside the St. Joseph's Hospital, the corridors were long, silent, and echoing — time seemed to have stopped still here.

Young Dr. Chari, just a few months into his Postgraduate training, was on night duty.

No visitors, no activity.

Just the hum of fluorescent lights, faint smell of antiseptic, buzzing of a fan, a occasional drone of a lone mosquito. Just a long cold dark night....

Dr Chari was reading through a patient file, a fat Medicine textbook open, when the call came.

“Sir! sir! A young patient gasping… uneasy… sweating profusely!” panic stricken voice of a young nurse...

The words jolted him and galvanised him to action...

He ran along the tiled corridor — white coat flapping, heart pounding faster, brain in panic fuzzy mode.

In the dim light of the ward, lay a young man — eyes rolling, gasping for breath, pulse faint, body cold.

Before thought could catch up, training took over.

“Move back,” Chari said, voice trembling but firm.

Coat thrown back on chair, grasping the body, Dr Chari forced open the mouth and blew air in forcibly...

Then he started CPR — rhythmic, relentless, cyclic, repetitive...

"Hey, doc start oxygen," Dr Chari voice was calm, precise..

The nurse pushed in adrenaline.

Alternating mouth breathing, Oxygen, CPR, and instructing, Dr Chari became a machine orchestrating a symphony...A Symphony of Life...

" Go...go...come on, come on man. Give 20 ml Bicarb....No no push Adrenaline, nurse, faster...injection, injection...Atropine, repeat, repeat....come on, man...come back," Dr Chari's high- pitched instructions reverberated in the cold dark ward....

The ECG monitor was flat — a cold, unbroken line.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Fifteen.

Still no heartbeat.

The world outside was bursting with firecrackers, but inside, time stood still.

Chari’s mind whispered, “Maybe it’s over…”

But his heart — that big instrument of faith — refused.

He pressed on.

Each compression was a prayer.

Each breath a plea.

"Come on, man, fight...you can't go, no no....fight man, fight, won't allow you to go...not now"...Dr Chari pressed on.

He felt sweat pouring down his back, his arms trembling, yet he continued — as if some unseen hand and destiny guided his own.

And then — a faint blip.

A flicker.

A rhythm on the screen.

The young man gagged.

Coughed. Threw up..

Eyes fluttered open.

For a moment, no one moved.

The ward seemed to hold its breath.

Then Chari whispered, voice breaking,

“Thank you… Lord.”

A star of light from outside burst cracker fell on the Idol of Jesus fixed to the wall, magnifying the crucifix...

"We are back....Come on man....Sister suction, doc start fluids, draw blood, we are back man."

A serenade of instruction and symphony of music played..

Outside, another cracker burst — a golden star splitting the dark sky.

The corridor was still empty.

But somewhere between life and death, a new light had been lit.

A Diwali of light....A Diwali of life and faith....

That night, the young lad Dr. Chari did not just save a life.

He was changed, reborn — from being a doctor to becoming Doctor Saar — the one, people would one day call a miracle worker, a healer, a instrument of God . From doctor to Doctor Ayaah, a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly....

And Diwali, from that night on, meant something deeper to him —Not just lamps outside homes,

but the light that flickers back inside a beating heart.

That night, from now on, Diwali lights did not happen outside, it happened inside, inside life....