Prateek Mohanty

Every year, without fail, the beginning of the year always has, and always will (till am alive) start with a happy note – and that would be my birthday. This year I turned 42. My brain twin (JEN) is also born this month (16th) and turned 54 (or thereabouts, I think). We celebrated it together thanks to CHIRS – they have a unique arrangement to get all members to come and enjoy a new culture cuisine every month. I so happened, that they chose to celebrate PONGAL, a harvest festival from South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. We went out to eat a group lunch together at Karaikudi Chettinaad Restaurant in nearby suburb of Scarborough. I ate a plate of Vada and sambhar, chutney and red Podi powder (in oil). I chose to accompany it with Indian masala tea. My friends mostly chose mango lassi along with a meat/veg dish with naan/roti. Needless to say, its a fun hangout with the gang always!
The month hasn’t ended yet, but I have already had a good meeting with a PHD candidate from York University where I had volunteered to participate. The experience was great. They liked my style of presenting my brain injury. I gave them a unique analogy which goes something like this … imagine there is a robber roaming in your community. Lets name him “klebsiella pneumonia”. Every day, all day, he keeps trying to break into any house. ideally, looking for an open door, or window or something unexpected. Today happened to be his lucky day, the day I caught my bacterial meningitis back in Jun/18.
My slack management of diabetes, had likely left my immunity compromised. Klebsiella, who is omnipresent and always keeps trying to break the blood brain barrier, got lucky and managed to enter the villa that was my brain. It ran up the stairs in search of the electric mains, and went cukoo to cut almost any and every wiring!
As a result of this disaster, I see myself as a part-blind, part-deaf, smell blind, taste blind, and largely whatever defines a mentally disabled person for you. No LT memory, terrible ST memory, constant fatigue, sleep issues, balance issues and insulin dependent diabetic person!

Definitely a highlight of the year. Let’s sum the year. What do I recall most about the year that just went by? Well, I got too see Swati n Arya go to India. That left me alone. I made a huge mess of the place, unable to clear up the house in time as the family slowly returned from India. Swati was upset, but what surprized me was that both Kunu and Swati knew about me asking somebody to come by to help me clean up the garage mess. Yes I did, and it did not work out. My new friend actually got to see our dirty unkempt house for the first time. I then called Bishnu to come by to help me. That too didn’t get much happening. It took, Swati the remainder of the year to slowly bring back the house to a sense of normalcy. Through loads of screams and pain (read as marital mini problems) am glad I stuck to my sayings -“Think who am doing it for, what is my goal. and why?” Lest I forget, the answer is, my kids need a dad, ideally someone like who my savior grew up with.

There was CHIRS and BIST to help give me a social circle to work on my hobbies with. Working with 2 PHD grads on interesting brain projects, and then getting myself a video shoot to raise social awareness via CBC. Eagerly awaiting the release of my video clip by early March/24, and then later in the fall is Totonto NIYROAA chapter hosting this coming annual convention.

Highlight of the year, was to see Arya do her ballet performance at winter wonderland, and both parents failing at intro swimming as both girls passed their respective intro classes!

Happy holidays! And much heartfelt thanks to BIST and CHIRS for organizing a lovely evening for our community. Was a bit sad to see no family/friend join me, but well you can’t ask for a lot. Happy to be alive and kicking. Had a fairly busy day, that started with a lunch visit to DT to meet an ex-work colleague and good friend Karan near his work place. Luckily, I happened to bump into another old friend – Michael Lewis (ex-TD) who happened to have just returned from Barabados. Post lunch, I felt like I still had some gas in my tank, and time on my hand, to make a quick run to SMH to grab my medical rec ords, that I intended to share with my PHD contact person who I was helping in understanding “Life as an ABI”. Felt good. Came back home, to pick the girls. Dropped them with my F.I.L and happily went off to the Holiday party place. Songs were sung by Dave from CHIRS (with his guitar) and the crowd has songs pre-written to assist with our participation. Foood was good – loads of Italian stuff. Plus cake to end it all. We then ended the party with a raffle to let everyone go to the gift table and pick whatever they wanted to choose, and was available! I got myself a golf shirt, and was later gifted by my friend Alex, another pair of shirts. I hung out with Diallo and Rosanne and my brain-twin JEN (pic attached).

Hmm… Baby sitting, is a different ball game, when you are an ABI. Guess you all would agree. Kids know that am susceptible to changes in noise…that/s it. Now all they do, is Blackmail :).

Let’s play “the grinch” song. And after listening, liking and ballet dancing, the kids would like to play with the volume. Which is OBVIOUSLY not in my comfort zone. So I stopped Alexa. But they were willing to play this game. And Sisi, always wanting to be a part of any game, screamed “woof woof”. Oh the pain, the unreal pain in my head.

I, in turn, am patient (what else can I do), as I wait till a support cover arrives before my battery completely runs out, forcing me to an instant “shutdown” like sleep! So hail, to my wife and my F.I.L for being there for me.

Yes, it was a Wednesday, a day that has been this Fall/Winter season unfortunately left alone with no extra curricular activties. A breather, before the busy weekend starts from Friday!

BFF Krsna (not in pic), her mom Nilu Aunty, Chitra Maasi, Aja and Aai (not in pic as well).

That’s a lovely question again. I happened to wake up, in many ways very similar to how my daughters came in to this World. They cried and were angry, till their Mother’s touch. It conveyed something very basic and beautiful to my kids. And yes, I too was lucky enough to have been blessed with that touch.

I woke up, at my rehab hospital (Bridgepoint), missing that touch which had touched me, a hand that was strong and delicate and tried to tug me back to life. This must have been persistent and over so many days, to have the perseverance to keep rooting for me and wanting to see me back! I personally am so delighted to be able to convey this story to you all.

That touch, dear Arya and Moksha, conveyed the same information that you sought when you came to this World. You were assured, with that calming touch – “WELCOME – I will take care of you.”

Trust me, I got this message and I have since been slowly and painfully brought back to life, but I trust her to be there for me.

Not that it means anything at all to you, but to me it’s literally the world. To meet JAN at CHIRS, and find out that we had so much in common. Wow! All-in-all she had the same surgery in her brain like I did, and faced same challenges like I did, and was saved and brought back from death, like I had been. It’s an indescribable pleasure to see her jump and get excited as she sees me enter the club. She happens to introduce me to others as “my brain twin” and so do I, happily!

BTW, this pic, if memory serves me right, happens to be at a CHIRS event celebrating the short “blink-n-u-miss” summer – garden party in 2023.

As I see, India the Cricket team, on Nov 19, 2023, lose from it’s biggest modern day rival (6 time CWC winners – AUS), at Narendra Modi cricket stadium in Ahmedabad, India, it gives me a huge sense of joy, to see a mammoth country like India lose – all 1.4 billion pairs of eyes wet, the near 1.3 million in the stadium, all oddly dressed in blue and looking oddly identical in their genuinely SAD faces, and hence finding the missing PURPOSE to stick it out here, literally and geographically as far as I can be, to forget my previous failed attempts, and peacefully, live my life here where I am. I promise hereby to meet my family n friends in India, exactly 14 years from today, by end of year 2037, and let’s then see who is where at that time. You as India the country (currently ranked 5th in the world by GDP as per Forbes) with a goal to get more powerful and strong around the world, possibly to #3 by then or me as me (a TBI, and registered mentally disabled person here in Toronto, Canada) with a goal to get my daughters from childhood to Adulthood.