It was around 01:30 hrs. in the early hours of September 24, 2014, when I had just finished a chapter of the Sustainable Development Course, I was doing via Coursera that I called a day and went to bed. Around 03:00 hrs., I had this urgent need to pee and tried to get myself up to go to the loo, but I just couldn’t. I wondered why! Gave it another go but no. It felt like some heavyweight was on my back as I had fallen asleep on my belly. Tried a few more times but to no avail. I even contemplated just peeing in bed and worrying about cleaning up later. But years of conditioning just do not allow you to do so.
That is when I woke up my wife, Kavitha. Poor girl!! Probably had the scare of her life when she saw me struggling. She got up and called in the kids. Our son, Sanjeev was 17 then and in his 12th grade, while our daughter, Keerthi, was 14 and in her 9th grade came in all panic-stricken. All the time, I am still yelling that I wanted to pee. But no one could help me there. The kids, after a few attempts, got me up, with my legs dangling from the side of the bed. They thought it might be a dip in sugar levels (not that I had /have any sugar issues) that caused ‘a weakness ‘. So, they got some lemonade with honey to try their first aid. But my wife thought differently. She started noticing my speech slurring.