Kuldeep146;s inner eye

Isolation Room I, Sixth Floor, AIIMS. There lies Kuldeep Singh, a bus driver who may never drive a bus again. He may never have walked. Or s...

Isolation Room I, Sixth Floor, AIIMS. There lies Kuldeep Singh, a bus driver who may never drive a bus again. He may never have walked. Or seen. He may not even have been alive. But shout a question 8212; he8217;s deaf in one ear 8212; as to what made him risk his life to save those of his passengers and the answer is very matter of fact: 8220;If I didn8217;t throw the bomb, the six cylinders in the bus would have burst and killed many more people.8221;

Yes, but what about you 8212; didn8217;t you think about your wife, your family? 8220;At that point, no, I didn8217;t think about anyone. There was this bomb and something told me to get rid of it.8221; Who8217;s that something? You could have died, I say. 8220;If I had left it in the bus, I would have died anyway. But along with me, lots of other people would have died.8221;

A sense of regret? 8220;Not at all,8221; he smiles 8212; almost laughs at me. 8220;It was God8217;s work I did. And through Him I8217;m getting the good wishes of so many people.8221; I can sense his eyes twinkling, except that the left eye needs replacement and the right one has been stitched closed for repair.

What pushes people to such life-defying acts of courage? What made Mukesh Kumar of Doda J038;K, then 13, fight terrorists who had killed his mother, sisters and brother, kill two of them and get the Bharat Award? What made the Meghalaya-based Hanboklang Nongsiej, also 13, rush into a house on fire and save a nine-month old child?

It surely is not the mind. The body, yes, but only in terms of following a direction that comes from elsewhere. As Nongsiej says: 8220;I love him very much so I thought I had to get him out, or he would be burnt.8221; Love, and so a race to death? As Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama said in Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life 2002: 8220;As a matter of fact, we are constantly racing toward our death without stopping even for a moment.8221;

Kuldeep didn8217;t think about this. He just acted, followed an inner urge. His world is dark today but he says with a faith, deep, strong and certain, 8220;Light will definitely come.8221; Such faith cannot exist without its fruition. It partly has 8212; he wants to name his newly-born son Deepak or Chirag.