Today I woke up to this message in one of my WhatsApp groups:

Dear all,
Important, 4 kidneys available.         
Due to death of Mr Sudhir and his wife (my service colleagues) who met with an accident yesterday, doctor has declared them brain dead. Mr.Sudhir is B+ and his wife O+. His family wants to donate their kidneys for humanity .plz circulate.                                   
Contact xxxxxxxxxx
Forward to another group,  it could help someone…

Now, I am someone who usually doesn’t believe in commenting upon the forwarded posts in such groups. But this one provoked me to not only respond on the group but also to write this post, especially when the Zonal Transplant Co-ordination Centre, Mumbai is celebrating its 19th  anniversary this month.
Friends, organ donations do not happen like this. There is a strict procedure before a person is declared brain dead which includes apnea test conducted twice, six hours apart and that too after the ancillary tests confirm the loss of brainstem function. 
There is a comprehensive waiting list of recipients in need of organs maintained at the national, regional and state level by NOTTO, ROTTO and SOTTO respectively. The registered transplant hospitals send the information of the patients requiring cadaver organ in the prescribed form for listing. On confirmation of availability of an organ, the ZTCC Co-ordinators contact Hospital Co-ordinators about the availability of the organ. The Hospital Co-ordinators then connect with the patients.
How do I know all this? Well, because I have signed one such form. It was the most difficult form to fill but then it had to be done not only out of a sense of duty but also because of my own selfish reasons.
Abhay, wanted to live for five hundred years because he had a lot to give to the society and donating his organs was the only way to ensure that he lives on beyond life. He was always available for people in life and was around to give even after death. Today he is seeing the world through his eyes, feeling things through his skin, can still enjoy his favourite sweets because his liver is at work somewhere, his kidneys are also functional but his heart doesn’t beat and lungs do not breathe for they could not be donated.
The hospital management had forwarded me a thank you letter from a mother whose daughter was the recipient of one of his kidneys. My loss can never be replaced but she got her daughter back from the brink of death.
Perhaps, one meaning of life is to continue living, even after death!