The deer fighting for its life!

Today's Times Of India published a stunning report of the amazing will to survive of a Sambar in the forests of Tadoba An dhari tiger reserve. The deer thwarted all the attempts of its more powerful and ferocious hunters for a full 24 hours before it surrendered to its fate. It jumped into a shallow lake to ward off the attackers in land only to be caught by two lurking crocodiles. It fought off the crocs, but the injured and exhausted animal fell ultimately prey to its hunters who were waiting patiently in the grass. A battle for survival which lasted nearly 24 hours!
There are many such heroics in human lives too, when a terminally sick person delays the inevitable just being brave armed only with sheer will power. He or she may, ultimately, be felled by the dreadful disease, but not before the patient puts up a great fight.

But there are incidents when misfortunes cascade into the lives of a hapless human being. I recall one such case which was revealed to me during the reunion which took place recently, of our Maharaja's college 1959-62 batch classmates. One of our classmates who was not well off financially when she was a student manage to get a decent job after her studies and also got married to a govt servant. They had two bright boys as sons and life was smoothly going on. Then the first tragedy struck. Her husband dies, I presume in an accident. Somehow, she and her sons managed to get a hold of their lives but then the second and more agonising one strikes- both of her grown-up sons die one after the other within a short span, of diseases the doctors couldn't diagnose yet!
That lady, in her late sixties, already looking like a woman in her 80s, tearfully pleaded us to exclude her from the event. We tried to persuade her telling her to come and meet all of us who'd share her sorrows and, maybe, can give a moral support. She seemed to be a person bereft of all will to survive, eagerly awaiting for the moment to join her family in heaven. We gave up our efforts and returned while all along a pall of gloom persisted around us. Everyone has or had his share of misfortunes in life, but this is one such case of the unlucky sambar.....