The rain had been pelting heavily with howling winds when a truck pulled up to the enterance of the hospital with a lot of commotion. People jumped out and the started carrying four injured into the hospital with a lot of crying and screaming. I was just finishing seeing the last of my patients for the day and ready to stretch muy legs and have a cup of warm tea. I rushed over to the emergency and tried to calm the restless crowed while asssing the seriousness of the four. At a quick glance I realised all four were young men badly wounded and bleeding . All four had been riding ona single two wheeler without wearing helmet and obviously drunk. They had hit a pothole and were thrown on to the road at high speed. One of them was not moving or moaning and so I rushed over to that person and realised he was not breathing. I got busy along with the nurses in trying to revive him We tried desperatly for an hour with no sucess and finally we had to give up

By then the nurses had been struggling with the other three young men. We worked on them one by one suturing their wounds , stabilising their fracture . One had a bad head injury deeply unconcious which we decided will have to be reffered to a more advanced medical centre,By the time the young man with the head injury was stabilised the storm outside had abated and we could transfer him to an ambulance to be taken to a larger centre in the nearest city. The other two young men badly injured but stable. By then I had to arrange for the body of the first young man who died to be transported to his village. There was hardly any crying or wailing all the relatives were stoic and silent. Perhaps the tribal culture accepted death as a fact of life. After all this I could slowly go home. The sun had come out.

My heart was heavy with the sense of loss and the senseless waste of young lives and felt despondent, As I walked home i noticed that many trees were uprooted along the way, many branches broken and a scene of destruction all around just like the young lives which were wasted. The sun had come out and suddenly in the gentle morning I saw butterflies dfluttering about and soon I saw a swarm of them appearing out of no where. As I watched them flutter my heart began to brighten and it was although God was resuuring me that life with spring up again and even though death is always around the corner,new life too will spring up again if only we have the patients, courage and hope.