It just didn't happen the way I expected it to

More than a decade ago someone gifted me a book "Miracles on Wheels" by Anatoly Markusha. Now this book was special as it was for all budding engineers, as the author puts it, and it was coming from someone who was a Test pilot for over 20 years; and was closely associated with the Russian space development program.

However, what I learnt was not technical, it was a lesson of life. It was his narration of an incident which I present to you in his words:

...An old friend of mine came to call on me one evening.He was in fairly low spirits. We got talking, and he told me that he had to operate -- my friend was a surgeon --that day on a badly injured thirteen-year-old boy.

"Can you imagine it, he fancied himself as a rocket-builder! He'd put together some sort of three-phase technical wizardary, and filled it with offcuts of photographic film, gunpowder and matchheads. Add some other abomination, and it's all set for lift-off. And the whole caboodle exploded in his hands and cut him badly. We had to amputate three fingers, and I feel sick when I think of the number of stiches he needed!"

"..... the conclusion I come to is that we should teach them, explain things, make them more aware of technical ins and outs. Don't you agree?"

I went to the hospital and met he boy. I said,"What happened? What went wrong?" And the boy barely able to speak replied, " Nothing!!! It just didn't happen the way I expected it to."


What an attitude!!! Kudos what a spirit! The never say die attitude! Hats off to this guy. I salute you!!!

If you had been reading this post carefully you might have thought ...Crap man this is fake and it's apparent!... How can this good for nothing blogger remember each words that he read more than 10 years ago...

Well here is your answer... Years later, only recently I found the book still standing out despite the dust, its hard bound cover partially distroyed by termites. It still had a shine of its purple and grey cover colour kept on a rotting bookshelf in the attic at my outhouse. I greedily took it hoping to reread it. Motivate myself! And there it was at the very first chapter "The three notches of my memory". It was the author's second notch. There was the story... represented as it is except the last paragraph. It couldn't have been possible! the awesome reply had to be there but the story ended. I reread the book hoping to find a reply and reread it again. It was not there. It had never been there...

I smiled, it just didn't happen the way I expected it to be!!!