I am having a heart attack

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It was on Tuesday evening that my father, Giani Gurdit Singh, called me and said: “I am having a heart attack.”

Knowing him, I knew he was serious. I had dropped him and his assistant to the Chandigarh Railway Station in the morning of September 12, so that they could catch the Shatabdi train to Delhi. He needed to go to the Capital in order to attend to some pending work of the Sri Guru Granth Vidya Kendra, of which he is the President.

After he disembarked from the train, he felt a pain, but proceeded to the office of the Kendra in Mehrauli — an hour’s drive. Here, too, he found that he was uncomfortable, and that is when he called me. “I think that you need to come over,” he said.

I asked him to show himself to a doctor. He was proceeding to hospital, said he. About 20 minutes later I got a call confirming the heart attack.

I immediately called my friend Dr. Anil Bansal, a cardiologist. He was near enough to reach within a short while and had my father shifted to the Fortis Hospital in Vasant Kunj, where Dr Upendra Kaul performed an angioplasty, and put in a stent in one of the arteries, which was 100 per cent blocked.

By this time it was 8 pm and I was still in Chandigarh. Dr Kaul told me that the operation was successful, and that my 84-year-old father was stable. I rushed to Delhi by car. Started at 5 am, and was in the hospital at Delhi by 9 am.

When I saw him, my father was fine and I was relieved that I could tell my mother, who was holding the fort at Chandigarh, that all was well. Soon, I called my mother and they spoke: “I was at the doorway, but God wants me to do more work,” was what he told her.

He kept up his humour in the hospital. Even though there was only one nurse who spoke Punjabi, he managed to keep the Coronary Care Unit in good cheer. He drove them to despair with his insistence on going to the bathroom when they did not want him to leave the bed…but they said he was a good patient…

On Saturday, Dr Kaul decided to shift him to a ward. The CCU nurses said that the raunak of the CCU would go with their patient leaving them. Prompt came the invitation: “If you want the raunak, you are welcome to visit me in my room, but I need to get out of here!”

It was on Sunday, the 17th when we drove back to Chandigarh after he was discharged. He is in good humour, and has decided that God has kept him to allow him to finish his work in the history of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, a multi-volume project of which two volumes have been published.

Our grateful thanks to God for allowing him to be with us, to the doctors and nurses who looked after him, and friends and family who stood by us. I am posting this message on the Net because of concern from friends from all over, and the need to share that all is well with Giani Gurdit Singh.

He is working on his book, dictating to his typing assistant. I am sure you will join me in praying to God to give him the strength to accomplish his mission.

I have posted the latest photographs of him. We would also like to thank all the people who have been communicating with us in response to my mail and this message. My father is receiving calls now, please feel free to call him at 91-172-2740881 during the day.