Strike tomorrow, pocket today

I am a carrom board. Just a piece of wood. Happy to help.

They enjoy playing on me, whenever they can, wherever they can—in the corridor, on the lawn or in a room.

When they are all around me, playing or encouraging the players, you can’t tell the patients from the family.

Of course, if you were around the day I was on the tray table and you found them applauding every feeble strike that just managed to touch a coin, you would have known that they were trying to cheer up the once-brilliant high-school teacher on the bed, who was depressed because now she could not even manage to teach her 10-year old son.

Otherwise, who is patient, whose patient, who is family, whose family—these are all irrelevant questions.

One of my players once described me more philosophically. We are all helpless coins, she said. Every pocket is a state of mind: joy, anger, sorrow, and acceptance. The striker is not in your control, and no one knows where you will land next.

I don’t understand all that. I am a piece of wood, just a game that may help you forget tomorrow and live today. I am just happy to help. 

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Originally written some years ago for the Cipla Palliative Care and Training Centre, Pune.