Divine Intervention

I met an acquaintance after an extended hiatus. The occasion was social and the atmosphere serene. “How are you?” I asked. “Quiet shaken!” he answered, and went on to narrate yesterday’s events.

            We work with a civil contractor in the capacity of site engineers. Presently we are constructing an industrial shed for a public sector unit. This shed has a roof designed as consecutive slopes and vertical drops of about three feet. The work is challenging and the experience will be handy from a future point of view. We are supposed to maintain a measurement book. The noting upon which, form a basis of weekly fund release. This process is often loosely followed and judgements regarding fund release made by an expert glance upon the work accomplished. However this time the boss, a bureaucrat, insisted upon going through all the details personally and then validating them. We complied. Thus we climbed up on the roof with the help of a ladder. There were three people in all. I and my colleague who are in our mid twenties having what may be called a normal healthy physique. The third person was the boss, who is in his early fifties, slightly rotund as bureaucrats in similar position tend to be. We were suitably engrossed in the work at hand. In the process, we were gingerly negotiating the crests and troughs on top of the roof. After walking nearly up to the center of the shed, we climbed up the slope and gently descended the vertical three feet drop, the boss this time jumped down ignoring our proffered helping hands! As soon as he landed all of us heard that stomach sickening sound of cracking of the freshly laid corrugated asbestos roofing sheets. At that moment the roof gave away and we fell down!

            There was a stunned silence all around, as most incredibly, we found out that I and my colleague were hanging on a beam of the truss structure, our fists clenched with all the might of a body avoiding an impending death! More incredibly the boss was hanging on between us with both hands each grabbing me and my colleague’s collars’! Below us was a sheer fall of thirty five feet into the gaping mouth of an ignited furnace. Our ears were filled with a thunderous sound of the beating of our own hearts. With painstaking effort we willed our minds to come to terms with this highly dangerous predicament we found ourselves in! Inch by inch, one grip after another we somehow, by the grace of god, managed to reach the lateral wall of the shed. From there we descended to ground level with the help of our ladder.

            “And here I am standing before you today!” he said. I was speechless. “Being so close to death, has given me an entirely new perspective on life itself. I can now appreciate the small pleasures of life with a much more sharply defined clarity. Our boss said that never again will he question our integrity in terms of filling up the measurement book. “Today I was unable to even approach the ladder, because of an involuntary uncontrollable shaking of knees.” He said. “Time will definitely heal this knee shaking problem of yours.” I replied.

            As far as the rest of your story is concerned all I can do is look skywards and wonder about the myriad ways in which the Almighty chooses to manifest his miracles.