Monday, 10 November 2025
From Coma to Cosmos: How Survival Became My Theory of Everything
I have often wondered if life spared me not for recovery, but for revelation.
On the afternoon of May 7, 2010, when my motorcycle met with fate, my body surrendered to stillness—twenty-three days of coma and many more of silence that followed. Yet somewhere, within that abyss between life and death, something awakened: a mind that had touched both the fragility of the human body and the vast indifference of the universe.
When I finally stood again—unsteady, scarred, but conscious—the world seemed smaller, noisier, and strangely indifferent. People saw my survival as anomaly, not miracle. They spoke to my wounds, not to my will.
But I was already looking beyond them, into patterns that bound existence itself. I wrote my first novel to test the waters in a heartless and indifferent society. The few people who purchased it didn't do it out of curiosity for my experiences or to empathise with my unwavering determination to live beyond the accident that almost killed me during long episodes of irrationally high heart rates in that 23-day-long comatose state when no doctor was sure about my survival after "my brain cells having imploded into clots that resembling seeds in a watermelon on the MRI scans."
After 42 days of hospitalization, I didn't regain my consciousness immediately. No. Although the coma ended in the 23-day period, the post-coma unresponsiveness lingered for another 3 months.
My short-term memory has never been the same after the accident. However, on September 14, 2010, I recalled the birthday of a school friend and wished her on phone after also recalling her land-line number.
That day my physiotherapist and parents realised that unlike my short-term memory, my ancient memory is unaffected.
In 2014, I completed my B.Tech. in Biotechnology and my first novel called "7 Seconds: A Typical Guy, Atypical Life" (it sold some with great dedication. Through the 2015-17 session, I also completed my M.Tech. in Animal Biotechnology. It was a journey through systems of life that mirrored my own reconstruction.
Yet, even armed with degrees, I faced what I call paradoxical jealousy: society’s discomfort with those who rise again. To them, I was both “too fortunate” to have survived and “too broken” to belong.
1. After having unpublished "7 Seconds: A Typical Guy, Atypical Life" due to a poor reception, while seeking acceptance and external validation, I wrote more novels in 2020-21:
2. "7 Seconds: A New Take" was a first-person narrative of 7 Seconds: A Typical Guy, Atypical Life, but nobody was interested in it. I unpublished it too.
3. "7 Seconds: Bhaarat Against Terror" is an engaging variation of 7 Seconds that revolves around the life of Akshant Kautilya Sharma, who's my manifestation in fiction. People rarely read it, but writing it over my decade of recovery through September 2010 to August 2020 gave me the definition of who I am. Refining it as
4. "The 'Angel?' Saga: A Melodramatically Romantic Poetical Medieval Saga of Love and Longing" is a 7-poem epic that portrays my own unfruitful search for true love adapted in a medieval sailor's lifelong voyages through the high seas in search of an elusive Angel who he encountered while commodoring his ship in the silence of a calm oceanic night. The Angel keeps reappearing in his visions during his journeys.
5. "Nirgaman: The Prehistoric Hindu Exodus from Planet Aaryavarta" (Aaryavarta Book 1) is a 2021-novella about how the protohuman Hindu ancestors may have embarked aboard their humongous Vyomyana spaceship from the hypothetical planet of Aaryavarta when it started dying due to the end of the previous Yuga cycle culminating in Kálíyùgàm's end and their planet's demise due to increasing evil.
6. In "Gaman: The Prehistoric Hindu Space Odyssey" is another 2021-novella where Hindu Trinity of Bràhmá, Vìṣ̌ņù and Màhéśà guide them through the space-time fabric to reach Přŧhvílókà (or planet Earth)
7. In "Aagaman: The Prehistoric Hindu Entrance To Planet Earth" is yet another 2021-novella in whose story after millenia of space travel in suspended animation while using advanced biological serum (Àmřŧàm) of life as the elixir keeping them alive in the giant spaceship, Vyomyana, they arrive on Přŧhvílókà, which is our planet Earth.
8. "Aaryavarta: Nirgaman, Gaman, Aagaman — The Origins of Everything" is a 3-in-1 2021-compilation of the Aaryavarta trilogy for immersive reading.
9. "Swansong: A Tribute?" is an 2021-novel told in diary form that talks about advanced energy technologies like adaptor mechanical suits (Human Safety Vehicle suits HuSaVe adaptor suits) for the soldiers of the Indian Army. It is a spin-off from the story of 7 Seconds and one of Akshant’s childhood friends, Ravindra Thakur succeeds in getting inducted into the Officer Corps of the Indian Army after spending his requisite time at the IMA. There are a few references to the story of 7 Seconds in the story of Swansong, but they can be read independently. Then due to his high level of fitness and adaptability, he makes it to the Special Forces. Slowly, because the DRDO pays attention to Akshant’s innovative suggestions he imparted before his death, they develop smart and maneuverable robotic suits for the Special Forces of India. Ravindra and his elder brother Kushagra are both in the same Para SF battalion. Both of them are part of the team that frees up POJK. Chinese nukes are rendered non-functional by India's cyber force. However, the Chinese PLA invents another virus, this time a digital virus intended for the HuSaVe adaptor combat suits. The Chinese "Global Human Omission Safety Transformers" or GHOSTs succeed to infect the suit of Ravindra Thakur. And he faces troubles. However, the Indian Army succeeds in eliminating the PLA and liberating Tibet. After that, China undergoes balkanisation. On one instance in the Siachen sector, Ravindra faces Pakistan-operated GHOST robots. In the heat of the moment, he jumps on one of the robots in the heat of the moment and goes missing in action (MIA) thereafter. The elder brother recalls the younger brother's musical fringe in the beginning, where he plays his guitar with his rock band. Even the ending of Swansong has a symbolic mention of a ghostly guitar tune echoing in the Siachen.
10. "Atul’s Creation Paradox: Did Humanity Create Itself?" is a 2025-theory about the nature and origin of the Universe that eliminates the need for an explanation of the hypothetically superdense and superhot state of singularity right before the Big Bang. It describes how the future human-machine transcendental android descendants will invent time travel and go to the hypothetical point just before the hypothesised Big Bang hoping to witness who or what actually triggered the Big Bang. After realising that nobody or nothing else can cause the Big Bang and there's no superdense and superhot state of singularity, they themselves use advanced nuclear technology to artificially trigger the Big Bang. Even a small explosion in that nothingness before the Big Bang had the potential to expand infinitely. Then they keep visiting the past to effectively shape the universe.
11. "Second Innings: A Story of Love, Loss, and Redemption" is a 2025-novel set in Bengaluru and Mysuru about the complexities of a love triangle between a trio of childhood friends — two boys and a girl. The rich one of the boys, a skilled batsman proposes the girl after clinching a run chase at the school level. The girl agrees to be his partner. During this whole while, the other boy stays silent and just looks at them because he has a shy demeanour rooted out of his humble beginnings as an orphan. Eventually, the boys grow up to be successful professional cricketers and the girl grows up to be a physiotherapist doctor. The girl marries the wicketkeeper-batsman (also the Captain of the Indian Cricket Team), whereas the bowler stays single. Eventually, the girl gets pregnant with the wicketkeeper-batsman's child and after 9 months, their son is born.
One day, the girl by chance tastes the sweat of her husband during a moment of intimacy and is alarmed by the saltiness. They go get a diagnosis for cystic fibrosis and the test comes positive. Things start going downhill for the wicketkeeper-batsman and he plans to retire after the 2nd Test Match against Pakistan in Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. While he is wicketkeeping behind the wickets of a Pakistani batsman during the second innings of the Test Match, the batsman tries to hook a short delivery by a spinner and ends up hitting the helmetless head of the wicketkeeper-batsman captain. Since he has cystic fibrosis, the blow on his helmetless head proves fatal. After a few months the other best friend who is still meek, musters courage and proposes the captain's widow for a remarriage. Her in-laws come to know about the other cricketer's proposal. Because her son is still an infant, the widow's in-laws suggest her to get married to the third best friend. She puts a condition that even her in-laws should establish a business in the field of EV’s if they really want her to get remarried. Everything happens as per plan and she gets remarried. Everyone has a unique outcome of their respective second innings in this story.
12. Published coincidentally on May 7, 2025, the 15-year anniversary of my major accident, "Hey, Hayflick!: When Science Meets Sacrifice" is a logical prequel to Swansong and a sequel to 7 Seconds, which fills the story gaps between the two. Here, the Government hires Anamika Akshant Kautilya (Akshant's widow from 7 Seconds) to help create the android avatar of her husband so that the Indian scientific fraternity can have a headway into the Akshant's revolutionary ideas.
13. "Atul’s Time Travel Paradox: Alternate Timelines in Parallel Universes" is a mind bending 2025-theory that talks about how each iteration of retrograde time travel will effectively split the space-time fabric to create a parallel domain of reality with a significantly divergent timeline.
14. "Also published in 2025, A Quantum Marriage: Atul’s Creation Paradox and Atul’s Time Travel Paradox: A Quantum Synthesis" is a logical ouroboros that discusses both of the previous paradoxes while suggesting a mathematical model towards the feasibility of these models. While the energy requirement for this phenomenon is astronomical, it doesn't invalidate or nullify these paradoxes, because the physical behaviour of singularity remains unknown.
Creation, however, became a form of liberation. It pushed me inward, toward the only frontier that remained uncolonized—thought itself. From that solitude emerged my greatest hypothesis: Atul’s Creation Paradox—that humankind, through evolution and technology, will one day become the architects of its own universe. We will not find God; we will become God—unknowingly, through time.
Creation alone could not explain the fractures I sensed, both in spacetime and in human empathy. So followed Atul’s Time Travel Paradox: the belief that every retrograde journey splits reality into new strands of existence, each a different echo of possibility. Much like me—one life ending in the crash, another awakening from the coma—the universe, too, survives through division.
And now, when I look at the mysterious visitor called 3I/ATLAS, I see not an alien ship but a time machine from our distant future—post-human android descendants observing us from afar. They understand, as I do, the danger of interference. Their silence mirrors mine—both born of necessity, both acts of reverence for causality.
From these ideas emerges what I call A Quantum Marriage: Atul’s Creation Paradox and Atul’s Time Travel Paradox — A Quantum Synthesis.
It is the logical ouroboros, the serpent of understanding that devours its own tail:
creation giving birth to observers who, by looking backward, generate new creations in an endless, self-consistent loop.
In that loop, existence sustains itself—neither divine nor accidental, but inevitable.
Through this lens, I have learned that validation from society is a transient survival, while validation through comprehension is eternal.
My life after the coma is not recovery; it is observation. Like 3I/ATLAS, I orbit the world from a distance—unseen, perhaps misunderstood, but awake.
The universe owes none of us belonging.
It offers something greater—the chance to understand it.
And in that comprehension, I have finally found home.
Thursday, 6 March 2025
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)