The 47th Circle

It’s my birthday today. I’ve just completed 47 circles around the Sun.

There’s a cake somewhere in the kitchen, or so I’ve been told. I haven’t checked. My mind has been occupied with heart-rate readings and oxygen levels.

Five days ago, I got two stents in the main artery that supplies blood to my heart.

Even writing that feels strange, like I’m describing an uncle’s medical history rather than my own.

People who know me, or who’ve been reading me long enough, think of me as someone who lives slowly. I thought I had negotiated a kind of peace with life. If I stayed gentle, life would stay gentle too.

So when the cardiologist pointed at the screen and said, “This left artery is 80-90% closed at two places,” my first reaction wasn’t fear but disbelief.

I almost wanted to tell him he was showing me someone else’s scans. After all, this body, the one I’ve been treating like a temple, wouldn’t do this to me.

The universe doesn’t work on loyalty points, apparently. It works on genetics, silent inflammation, and family history—things I can’t change completely, no matter how healthy I try to be.

I’ve spent years reading about uncertainty, talking about it, and writing about it. Preaching it, even. Along the way, I’ve learned that we barely control anything beyond our responses, and that life moves in its own peculiar rhythm no matter how carefully we arrange our schedules.

This week, that lesson walked into the hospital with me.

During the procedure, I was surprisingly calm. I’m not as brave as I may sound, but something from Indian spirituality had lodged itself in me long ago. I kept repeating to myself: “The doctor is not treating you. He is treating the body you happen to inhabit. I am not the stent or the artery. The body is the patient; I am the witness. Just a custodian, not the owner. Just a custodian, not the owner.”

And strangely, that separation gave me a sort of spacious peace. I could feel fear knocking at the door, but there was also this quiet voice saying, “Let the body be taken care of. You just stay here.”

I realised I had been living the slow life partly as a joy and partly as a shield. But the body follows its own ancient logic, which is older than civilisation and wiser than any lifestyle blog.

There’s a passage in Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore about storms that come from inside you. He writes:

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts…This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it… and walk through it, step by step…

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too.

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

This line kept echoing through my head as I lay there: You won’t be the same person when you come out of the storm.

And I’m not.

I have these tiny metal things inside me now, doing their work quietly. But the bigger upgrade has been the reinforcement of what I’ve always known, which is that we don’t steer nearly as much as we think we do. We participate. That’s all.

It’s like sitting in seat 1A of a plane. You can fasten your belt, choose the less-bad sandwich, read a book, and look out of the window. But the flying was never yours. And oddly, accepting that makes the ride smoother.

So no, I’m not abandoning the slow life. I’m doubling down on it. I want to live slowly because I enjoy living, not because I think it earns me protection.

I feel different, maybe less attached to the illusion that I’m running the show.

If you’d like to wish me a happy birthday, do one small thing for yourself. Loosen your grip a little.

Life isn’t a machine that obeys pressure. It’s more like a river. You walk into it, and it carries you whether you clutch at it or not.

I think I’m finally ready to go cut that cake.

Happy birthday to me. I’m still here. And from where I’m sitting, the view is unexpectedly beautiful.

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