Was It A Curse?

This is an incident which occurred in 1994. As I mentioned in my earlier stories, we live in Delhi, the capital of India. My father used to work for the Government of India and we used to live in a government provided flat at a place called R.K. Puram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_Krishna_Puram).

This place is quite akin to community housing found in Russian cities as this place was built in the 1950s when India was keen on following a socialist model of the former USSR. As a result, people who used to live within the housing community were rather closely-knit.

We lived in a corner ground-floor flat and stayed there for a good 19 years. We had a small kitchen garden too! The family which lived right above our flat had two boys, the younger one amongst them was 8 years elder to me. Yet, both the boys were fond of me. The younger one amongst them was an avid cricket follower, in fact, he was quite good at playing too. He was in the Ranji trophy probables for Delhi in one of the years. He was tall, 6'2" and quite well built too.

Early in 1994, a tragedy struck our family. My dad fell ill by suffering a stroke caused by brain hemorrhage. He was hospitalized for 3 weeks and whilst he survived, he lost the ability to use his left hand fully. It took him a full 9 months to recover, and even then the recovery was only partial. During that period he was on bed most of the time.

Around the same time, the guy whom I mentioned above, and who had been recently married (in November 1993 I guess), also met with a very serious car accident. He was lucky to survive but his thigh bone was broken into two. As a result, a promising career in the sport he loved was nipped in the bud. Till today he is not able to walk without a limp. It was sad because he was such a fitness freak and such a dear friend.

Now, what rankles me until today is whether our two houses were under some sort of a curse that tragedy befell on both our families at around the same time. Nobody else in the vicinity of where we stayed was affected. In one of the evenings in June 1994 if I recall correctly I also saw a dead pigeon with blood dripping being left on top of one of our windows. So the cause of these tragedies remain a mystery to me, maybe some of the readers can shed light on what they think could be the cause. Two people who were in very good health - my dad was only 50 years old then with no prior history of bad health, and he was a non-smoker, teetotaler and a pure vegetarian. My dad had no business being struck by a brain hemorrhage. Similarly, this friend of mine, was as good a driver as you could get. He drove carefully, never exceeded speed limits and was recently married, so had a sense of responsibility instilled him in too.

Anyway, we left that house in September 1995 and the family who stayed above us also left around the same time. My father continues to live in frail health and whilst I have lost touch with my friend I know he is doing well in the business which he started thereafter.

Comments are welcome.