When I really paused for a while and said, "Oh Life!"

For the last three days I spent hours after hours reading the newspaper of my country. I was not reading the death news, rather I carefully read news of the person, who have almost returned from the door death. I salute them for their courage and inner strength for survival and who have took the risk of their lives and helped others. One such story was published in the Daily Star, a popular English daily newspaper of Bangladesh. This is the life story of Rikta! She has shown tremendous courage. I cannot do anything for Rikta. I may not meet her in my life time. But she has taken a place in my heart. My thoughts are with her. I reproduce the story of Rikta in my blog. This is the first time I reproduce a piece from another source. It is a way of showing my respect and salute to Rikta.  The struggle of Rikta will always remain with me, specially at a time, when I want to give up, when I do not see any meaning of life...There are many more Rikta, who wait for you and me!

                                                                  (The photo of Rikta)
Time was running out for Rikta. She was hungry and thirsty and drained. Two days had passed since she was trapped inside Rana Plaza. Nobody came.
So when somebody came yesterday morning, about 45 hours after the collapse, she first thought: “Am I still alive?”
But to remain alive she would have to suffer more: It was a group of civil rescuers who found her around 5:30am yesterday under the rubble on the third floor of the nine-storey building. Her right hand was trapped under a sewing machine.
The rescuers tried all means they could think of to pull her out. All attempts failed. So they had to improvise.
They brought a hand saw, tied both her legs and hands, held her tightly so that she could not move and then cut off her hand from above the elbow.
“I somehow managed to bear the pain when they were cutting my flesh. But when it reached my bone … I don’t know how to describe the pain,” she told The Daily Star at Enam Medical College Hospital in Savar, and then fainted.
A sewing operator, the 25-year-old was working on the third floor when the building crumbled like a pack of cards on Wednesday morning.
“It was around 8:20am. I just started sewing. Power went off and the building collapsed in no time. My right hand was trapped.”
Her battle to hold on to life began. With the entire building almost sandwiched and thick dust all around, she was suffocating. “But it was all right in the first few hours.”
But as the day wore on, she thought her heart would stop for want of oxygen. There was no air.
With time she grew hungrier and thirstier still. “I could not take it any more. So at one stage I drank my urine,” she said.
The mother of a nine-year-old son thanked the rescuers for bringing her back to her son and husband, a car driver.
According to her, it was their immediate bosses who forced them to work in the risky building. She alleged she had been even forced to work till late night every day without any weekly holiday over the past one month.
In the garment factory where she worked, she used to earn Tk 4,700 a month. But with one of her hands now gone, how she would support her family is a thought she cannot bear to think.

Whom do we belong!

I went for the Easter Vigil Mass rather late this year. Due to many unavoidable reasons, I have had a heavy day. The church was full by the time I entered into the Church. I was tired and was desperately looking for a chair. After some abortive attempts of searching for a chair, I decided to stand near the main door of the church.

The beginning part of the liturgy was rather sober. I tried to concentrate on the mystery that was being celebrated. But I was often distracted. As the readings were being read, I looked at the huge Crucifix which was placed at one corner of the Church. Looking at the Crucifix I thought of Jesus. Being a person with Divine and human nature, Jesus is hanged on the Cross alone. He could have easily avoided all his sufferings.  His twelve disciples, with whom he shared his life, left him when he was arrested. He did not complain. He accepted the will of his Father. He detached everything of this world and finally he was attached to his Father, God. What a beautiful message of detachment he showed on the Cross!

In life we sometimes tend to attach to something or someone. But can we really belong to someone or something. I do agree that we can be attached to something or someone for sometimes. All our earthly attachment will pass. Our loving parents, beloved friends, and expensive material things will not have everlasting place in our lives. We will have to be alone. We will have to detach everything. This will lead us to a unique attachment- that is our attachment to God. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of this detachment. His earthly detachment led him to an everlasting attachment to God.

Do we want to have this attachment- an attachment of God? Then let us detach ourselves from this world!