After my fall down the stairs of the cave in April 2004, I was then finally relieved to have the plaster off my leg. With the assurance of the doctor that I would be fine without any further help, we went home. In the next days I realized how important your limbs are and how much life changes when even only one of them is impaired. My daily life changed quite a lot.
The very first thing that we had to do was to buy a toilet seat. Until now I had an Indian-style toilet in my bathroom for squatting – which was not impossible for me to use with the pain that I had. So Purnendu, as quick as possible, broke that toilet and had a commode seat installed.
The doctor had banned me from doing my daily yoga practice – but to be honest, in the state that I was in, I would never have had the idea to do yoga. Any bigger movement of the leg was painful! Because of this I also had to change my shoes. Until then I had been wearing wooden shoes that I grabbed with the toes. Now I started using slippers with a broad strap so that my foot didn’t have to do extra effort to hold the shoe.
Another thing that changed in my daily life was my rituals. Until that day when I fell down those stairs, I had been doing my daily fire ceremony. I had started that early in my teenage and had kept on doing it every single day. When the cave had been built, we had installed an altar for fire ceremonies in one of the rooms where I could then do my ceremonies while I was in the cave. Even while travelling, I did not stop. Wherever I was, I made it possible to do my fire ritual. Now I could not sit on the floor anymore, I was in pain when moving. I stopped.
What did not stop was the pain. After more than a week I decided that the pain had not reduced. We went back to the doctor in Mathura. When he heard that it had not got better, he was concerned. He had a look again at the leg and told me that this had to be something serious then. He suggested showing it to a doctor in Delhi and having an MRI done.
So off we went to Delhi to see another doctor. He could finally tell me why I had that much pain and what had happened when I fell that day. The ligament in my knee was torn. This was the diagnose and the doctor said there were two ways to deal with this – either I could manage with my knee as it was and the pain would get better with time or I would have to undergo surgery.
What was I supposed to do now? It was only a few days before my flight to Germany! I was in pain, so maybe I should take the surgery? But then I would not be able to go to Germany! And the doctor said it would improve at least a bit with time…
There was another factor: I did not want to miss my program in Germany because it was necessary that I earned some money. There was my family and then there were the students whom we had at the Ashram and who also relied on my work. I was feeding all of them and I had to go abroad for this. In India the only profession that I knew was that of a religious guru, something that I did not want to do anymore. How would it go on if I stayed in India for the surgery?
The doctor had said I could try to cope with the pain and I decided to do exactly that. We thanked him, went back home and I decided not to take any painkillers anymore. I could manage the pain, I was now sure of that and focused on living with the pain. I had got a brace to stabilize the knee a bit and not to strain it more and this is how I took my suitcase a few days later, said goodbye to my family, went to the airport and took my flight to Germany.
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