Sometimes I think the reason I don't post here any more is because I'm recovering. Sometimes I can't bear to examine anything. I'd rather just let things go, let one day do its work and get it over with.
Some days, like the last three weeks, I think I should see a shrink. Or acknowledge that I have never, not even during my divorce, been closer to a mental breakdown. No, perhaps that's not right: there was that one time six year ago when I woke up in the morning and started to cry and couldn't stop and a friend who found I wasn't taking any calls left work early to come and straighten me out.
So this is why I don't post here any more. At least, this is my reason today. Nothing I think makes any sense. Saying it aloud doesn't impose any sense. Things just go round and round in my head and it's a big enough effort to go through each day as if everything were normal.
I really just want to lie low and hope that nothing and no one will know I'm there and some day I can find I've got off the seesaw for good.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
diwali
So this is what the first major festival without looks like.
No waking up at the crack of dawn, none of the usual frenzy before sunrise, no somnolent mid-mornings, no phone calls, no home-made sweets.
It should be - in an appalling way, it is - a relief. We have a ready-made excuse to not celebrate a very exhausting festival.
It is also useless to ask why it makes me feel so terrible when the day has gone exactly like I've wished a thousand times it would be. As if I didn't know why. Instead, I think of how my mother, every year, warned my father a month in advance that she would not be making stuff at home; how, two weeks before he would persuade her to at least make a payasam or therati paal ('for the kid. Paavam, he likes therati paal'). How it would start with that one concession and end with two namkeens, three sweets and a jar of leghiyam that would last a whole year.
It's not that we aren't celebrating stuff because we're not supposed to. We just don't want to. I can see this lack of enthusiasm extending well into the future - I've personally never been a big one for festivals. But my parents had always wanted to do things so that my son at least knew what it was all about. I used to think it was for him; that it would be my son's absence that would take away the enthusiasm. Now I'm wondering if it wasn't my father's craving for the festival specials that made my mother do everything with such dedication year after year; whether, with him gone, she could ever find it in her again to celebrate something like that.
No waking up at the crack of dawn, none of the usual frenzy before sunrise, no somnolent mid-mornings, no phone calls, no home-made sweets.
It should be - in an appalling way, it is - a relief. We have a ready-made excuse to not celebrate a very exhausting festival.
It is also useless to ask why it makes me feel so terrible when the day has gone exactly like I've wished a thousand times it would be. As if I didn't know why. Instead, I think of how my mother, every year, warned my father a month in advance that she would not be making stuff at home; how, two weeks before he would persuade her to at least make a payasam or therati paal ('for the kid. Paavam, he likes therati paal'). How it would start with that one concession and end with two namkeens, three sweets and a jar of leghiyam that would last a whole year.
It's not that we aren't celebrating stuff because we're not supposed to. We just don't want to. I can see this lack of enthusiasm extending well into the future - I've personally never been a big one for festivals. But my parents had always wanted to do things so that my son at least knew what it was all about. I used to think it was for him; that it would be my son's absence that would take away the enthusiasm. Now I'm wondering if it wasn't my father's craving for the festival specials that made my mother do everything with such dedication year after year; whether, with him gone, she could ever find it in her again to celebrate something like that.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Moth
In the early days, we kept a light on in the bedroom downstairs. It was a zero watt bulb we had originally put in for my grandfather when he used to visit because he needed it to see by when he went to the bathroom. We never took it out, though we never used it again until that time.
I have been first down in the morning for some time now, to make the coffee and school lunch. For as long as that zero watt light was on, my eye was drawn to that room first thing in the morning. That was when I would really wake up: with the shock of knowing that the light signified an absence the room didn't yet feel.
On one of those mornings I noticed a moth on the wall just below the light. It was a huge moth, with a large wingspan and touches of purple in the grey-brown. I went to get a broom in which to catch it and let it out.
The broom was a new one, soft and sizeable. I parted it in the middle and reached for the moth. Holding it close, I thought, 'that was easy!' Near the door, I turned to check that I had indeed caught the moth. I hadn't; it was on another wall, half-hidden by the still-drawn curtains. I shook the broom loose of I don't know what and went back. I drew back all the curtains.
If I gave the moth a light whack, it would fall down stunned and I could pick it up gently, I thought. I swiped; the moth fluttered away. I whacked at it; it flew higher. I climbed on the empty bed and hit the wall where the moth was...had been. Its flight grew more frantic and irregular: it smashed itself against the light, the window; it came at me, swerved away. It looked like a small bat in that half-light.
While it was somewhere in the air, I hit at it repeatedly, blindly, hitting myself in the forearm from time to time with the broom's handle. The moth disintegrated. Moth dust flew in the air and I breathed it in because I was breathing hard now and almost sobbing. I no longer wanted only to gather the moth and deliver it to the morning air. I wanted to destroy it.
The moth was nowhere. For something that large, that dark that visible against the walls, it had completely disappeared. I turned all the lights on in the bedroom, the dining room and the kitchen. Even in the bathroom. I looked behind every curtain, shook each one. I checked each wall carefully, section by section, as I would look for a pen in the clutter on my desk, certain it was there but I was just not seeing it. Finally, I started to pull chairs away from the wall to check behind them. I knelt to check under the bed.
There it was. At the very centre under the double bed, the moth lay, smaller than it had been. I lay on the cool floor, warm with exertion and watched it as it made a half-circle and lay still. Then I heard it.
I never knew until that moment that moths make sounds. It was a high squeak, but not like that of bandicoots heard in the dark; not like other night sounds. But it was a sound all the same and it came from under that bed.
I swiped under with the broom but it was just out of reach. I shifted the broom so I was holding only the very edge of it and tried again but only managed to push the moth further away from me. I got up and went to the other side. This time I swept it out. It lay on the floor, tattered but still recognisably a moth. Like the very first time, I parted the broom to scoop it up. The moth heaved itself off the floor and flew with heavy wings - isn't that strange? It had lost so much of its wing, but the flapping was slow and weary, as if the weight of wings was too much for it to bear.
It flew past. I was slow also, and I watched it go. I was ready to just let it be, just die in peace in some corner of the room. It wasn't going to chew the curtains through in its current state. What did I want to kill it for, anyway? Against the growing light outside the window, the room became a little smaller, the lights a little more unnecessary. I turned them off. Room by room, I turned off every light and came back to lie down on the bed. Standing at the foot of the bed, though, I saw, backlit by the window, small bits of moth-wing, still drifting down. I couldn't see it, but the bed must already have been layered with flakes that were no longer brown or purple or any colour at all. I felt the breath rattle in my throat. There were other things to do.
Later, we found the moth under the fridge, still alive. We took it out and left it on the steps. It still made half-hearted half-circles. I could not watch any more. Still later, in my room, I took out Primo Levi's Other People's Trades and read his essay on the butterfly.
What I feel today is still a burden of guilt. In my mind, the moth and the light we kept on to illuminate someone's death are inextricably linked. Why did we do it? Why did I do it?
I have been first down in the morning for some time now, to make the coffee and school lunch. For as long as that zero watt light was on, my eye was drawn to that room first thing in the morning. That was when I would really wake up: with the shock of knowing that the light signified an absence the room didn't yet feel.
On one of those mornings I noticed a moth on the wall just below the light. It was a huge moth, with a large wingspan and touches of purple in the grey-brown. I went to get a broom in which to catch it and let it out.
The broom was a new one, soft and sizeable. I parted it in the middle and reached for the moth. Holding it close, I thought, 'that was easy!' Near the door, I turned to check that I had indeed caught the moth. I hadn't; it was on another wall, half-hidden by the still-drawn curtains. I shook the broom loose of I don't know what and went back. I drew back all the curtains.
If I gave the moth a light whack, it would fall down stunned and I could pick it up gently, I thought. I swiped; the moth fluttered away. I whacked at it; it flew higher. I climbed on the empty bed and hit the wall where the moth was...had been. Its flight grew more frantic and irregular: it smashed itself against the light, the window; it came at me, swerved away. It looked like a small bat in that half-light.
While it was somewhere in the air, I hit at it repeatedly, blindly, hitting myself in the forearm from time to time with the broom's handle. The moth disintegrated. Moth dust flew in the air and I breathed it in because I was breathing hard now and almost sobbing. I no longer wanted only to gather the moth and deliver it to the morning air. I wanted to destroy it.
The moth was nowhere. For something that large, that dark that visible against the walls, it had completely disappeared. I turned all the lights on in the bedroom, the dining room and the kitchen. Even in the bathroom. I looked behind every curtain, shook each one. I checked each wall carefully, section by section, as I would look for a pen in the clutter on my desk, certain it was there but I was just not seeing it. Finally, I started to pull chairs away from the wall to check behind them. I knelt to check under the bed.
There it was. At the very centre under the double bed, the moth lay, smaller than it had been. I lay on the cool floor, warm with exertion and watched it as it made a half-circle and lay still. Then I heard it.
I never knew until that moment that moths make sounds. It was a high squeak, but not like that of bandicoots heard in the dark; not like other night sounds. But it was a sound all the same and it came from under that bed.
I swiped under with the broom but it was just out of reach. I shifted the broom so I was holding only the very edge of it and tried again but only managed to push the moth further away from me. I got up and went to the other side. This time I swept it out. It lay on the floor, tattered but still recognisably a moth. Like the very first time, I parted the broom to scoop it up. The moth heaved itself off the floor and flew with heavy wings - isn't that strange? It had lost so much of its wing, but the flapping was slow and weary, as if the weight of wings was too much for it to bear.
It flew past. I was slow also, and I watched it go. I was ready to just let it be, just die in peace in some corner of the room. It wasn't going to chew the curtains through in its current state. What did I want to kill it for, anyway? Against the growing light outside the window, the room became a little smaller, the lights a little more unnecessary. I turned them off. Room by room, I turned off every light and came back to lie down on the bed. Standing at the foot of the bed, though, I saw, backlit by the window, small bits of moth-wing, still drifting down. I couldn't see it, but the bed must already have been layered with flakes that were no longer brown or purple or any colour at all. I felt the breath rattle in my throat. There were other things to do.
Later, we found the moth under the fridge, still alive. We took it out and left it on the steps. It still made half-hearted half-circles. I could not watch any more. Still later, in my room, I took out Primo Levi's Other People's Trades and read his essay on the butterfly.
What I feel today is still a burden of guilt. In my mind, the moth and the light we kept on to illuminate someone's death are inextricably linked. Why did we do it? Why did I do it?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Much too late for a ban
From today on, cigarette smoking is banned in public places. This includes roads, railways stations, airports, restaurants (that seat less than 30 guests) and pubs.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
My father worked for a cigarette company for 14 years. He moved to Hyderabad in 1970 to take up the job and he stepped across some line then. Suddenly, his life was something he could never have imagined; it must have a been a culture shock but he took it well. He started smoking because cigarettes were, naturally, freely available. When he returned home from work and I buried my head in his neck, it was the cigarette smell that signalled appa.
People like us - the families of those who worked in cigarette companies - were the last to know about the health risks. Perhaps we were just the last to heed it. It was only because my mother and I stood so often on that line that divided us from the rest of the family and wathced life from both sides that we didn't start smoking; so many women in our circle did.
So my father smoked a few then a pack and then two packs a day. There were always ashtrays. I broke one when I was little and its pair is a reminder of the other one. I think the one I broke was a peachy-pink. It was solid glass, oval but pinched in the middle for cigarettes to rest in.
It wasn't until the late '80s that we began to see changes in my father that were definitely linked to smoking. The cough, for one. Mornings would begin with that. During vacations, I would wake up with that hacking cough that came from deep inside, as if his insides were trying to turn themselves out. I would lie rigid in bed, waiting for the fit to pass. (These days, I lie in bed rigid and waiting for a cough that we will never again hear.)
Once, mymother wrote me a letter in college. She began by talking about regular things. I turned a page and she said, "Don't be alarmed but - " Whatever she said to me, it was clear she was not just alarmed, she was very worried. It appeared that my father had, a couple of time, had such bad coughing fits that he couldn't breathe and had fainted. I was frantic with worry. I called my father andhe reassured me, listen to me ranting and promised to quit.
It was a promise he was to make several times in the years that followed. It was from him that I learnt all the vain braggadacio of smokers: I can quit whenever I want. I am not really addicted; I smoke because I enjoy it. I'm smoking much less than I used to. I swear. I smoke only four or five cigarettes a day.
Then the sincere attempt, the withdrawal symptoms, that irritability, the lighters discarded, the ashtrays put away, and inevitably the slide back.
I can't remember when my father stopped smoking in the house. He took his lighter to the terrace/balcony and kept a lighter somewhere where we couldn't see it. It looked as if no one in the house smoked. On rainy days, though, he would stand at the window with his mouth at the grill and blow the smoke out. My mother would fume and fine some excuse to pick a fight with him about something else.
Even after his major illness was diagnosed, he continued to smoke. It wasn't until he was rushed to hospital with internal bleeding caused by excessive coughing a couple of years ago that my father finally stopped smoking. This time it was really permanent. He never smoked another cigarette again. Ironically, it was only after this that his lungs began to get worse and then collapsed.
A few days ago, my mother said she dreamt of appa for the first time since he died. She dreamt he was in hospital, irritable the way he was when he really was there. And he was smoking. Lying in bed in his pink hospital robes, with his thin shoulders on the pillow and his arms attached to tubes and the oxygen tube in his nostrils, he was smoking.
I feel capable of great violence when I think of it.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
My father worked for a cigarette company for 14 years. He moved to Hyderabad in 1970 to take up the job and he stepped across some line then. Suddenly, his life was something he could never have imagined; it must have a been a culture shock but he took it well. He started smoking because cigarettes were, naturally, freely available. When he returned home from work and I buried my head in his neck, it was the cigarette smell that signalled appa.
People like us - the families of those who worked in cigarette companies - were the last to know about the health risks. Perhaps we were just the last to heed it. It was only because my mother and I stood so often on that line that divided us from the rest of the family and wathced life from both sides that we didn't start smoking; so many women in our circle did.
So my father smoked a few then a pack and then two packs a day. There were always ashtrays. I broke one when I was little and its pair is a reminder of the other one. I think the one I broke was a peachy-pink. It was solid glass, oval but pinched in the middle for cigarettes to rest in.
It wasn't until the late '80s that we began to see changes in my father that were definitely linked to smoking. The cough, for one. Mornings would begin with that. During vacations, I would wake up with that hacking cough that came from deep inside, as if his insides were trying to turn themselves out. I would lie rigid in bed, waiting for the fit to pass. (These days, I lie in bed rigid and waiting for a cough that we will never again hear.)
Once, mymother wrote me a letter in college. She began by talking about regular things. I turned a page and she said, "Don't be alarmed but - " Whatever she said to me, it was clear she was not just alarmed, she was very worried. It appeared that my father had, a couple of time, had such bad coughing fits that he couldn't breathe and had fainted. I was frantic with worry. I called my father andhe reassured me, listen to me ranting and promised to quit.
It was a promise he was to make several times in the years that followed. It was from him that I learnt all the vain braggadacio of smokers: I can quit whenever I want. I am not really addicted; I smoke because I enjoy it. I'm smoking much less than I used to. I swear. I smoke only four or five cigarettes a day.
Then the sincere attempt, the withdrawal symptoms, that irritability, the lighters discarded, the ashtrays put away, and inevitably the slide back.
I can't remember when my father stopped smoking in the house. He took his lighter to the terrace/balcony and kept a lighter somewhere where we couldn't see it. It looked as if no one in the house smoked. On rainy days, though, he would stand at the window with his mouth at the grill and blow the smoke out. My mother would fume and fine some excuse to pick a fight with him about something else.
Even after his major illness was diagnosed, he continued to smoke. It wasn't until he was rushed to hospital with internal bleeding caused by excessive coughing a couple of years ago that my father finally stopped smoking. This time it was really permanent. He never smoked another cigarette again. Ironically, it was only after this that his lungs began to get worse and then collapsed.
A few days ago, my mother said she dreamt of appa for the first time since he died. She dreamt he was in hospital, irritable the way he was when he really was there. And he was smoking. Lying in bed in his pink hospital robes, with his thin shoulders on the pillow and his arms attached to tubes and the oxygen tube in his nostrils, he was smoking.
I feel capable of great violence when I think of it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
quarter
Twelve weeks. Next Thursday it will be one quarter of a year.
Death is like a crazy inversion of birth: a mockery of it. I talk about weeks the way I did after my son was born, recording every new sensation at small intervals; everything seems more important. I am more acutely sensitive in the early days and more inured to newness and sensation as the months go by.There's also the feeling that this acuteness of observation must be held on to because it won't happen again like this. Later will be too late.
*
The care that people need soon after birth and as they approach death is the same: the body needs other hands, is not yet or no longer self-sufficient. The more attention you lavish on these bodies, the more you feel loved and the more love you are capable of feeling. The difference is that while such love matures and grows immense as a child grows, the moment a person dies, there is nowhere to put the love you have cultivated through the last days. Sorrow must be love’s sad face.
Just as the navel is a mark of what is lost, death must leave its own scars but on whom and where?
(Grave. Graven. Engraved. Gravestone.)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Sleeve of Care
"You'll find yourself sleeping a lot," a friend said a few weeks ago. "You should just sleep and not feel guilty about it."
My problem was quite the reverse; I couldn't sleep at all and I refused to take sleeping tablets (not that anyone was prescribing them to me officially). So I forgot about what she'd said.
More recently, all I want to do is sleep. I sleep large chunks of the afternoon away and when I miss calls and have to return them, I sheepishly say, "My battery ran out", or "I left my phone in my bag and I couldn't hear it." Last night a friend called at 9.30pm. Not late. But I had already been asleep for an hour an a half, helped along by no electricity at home and a lulling breeze outside.
I look forward to weekends, when I don't have to wake up at 5am, with the eagerness of someone waiting for an advance copy of her book. Traditionally Mondays are supposed to be the worst; for me, it's Wednesday and Thursday (for other reasons as well) because that's when 'returning were as tedious as going o'er'. Then I remember that only one way is always open and that the next minute hour day week and then I can't bear to think any further.
One baby step at a time.
What if I slept it all away and the steps have been taken and I don't have the burden of remembering? That's called sleepwalking. That's what I would like to do, what I am doing but because I know it's what I'm doing as I'm doing it, it's no help at all. It's like the kind of sleep when I know I'm dreaming and I wake up exhausted with the effort of it. In fact, the worst part of falling asleep is the waking up when the Things To Do list act as my alarm clock at odd hours of the night (and in my case, day). When this happens, I jump out of bed because I'm falling behind with the things that need to be done, bump into several things and panic.
Did you ever dream of a day when you could sleep from whenever to whenever, without having to do a single thing you didn't want to? I do. All the time.
My problem was quite the reverse; I couldn't sleep at all and I refused to take sleeping tablets (not that anyone was prescribing them to me officially). So I forgot about what she'd said.
More recently, all I want to do is sleep. I sleep large chunks of the afternoon away and when I miss calls and have to return them, I sheepishly say, "My battery ran out", or "I left my phone in my bag and I couldn't hear it." Last night a friend called at 9.30pm. Not late. But I had already been asleep for an hour an a half, helped along by no electricity at home and a lulling breeze outside.
I look forward to weekends, when I don't have to wake up at 5am, with the eagerness of someone waiting for an advance copy of her book. Traditionally Mondays are supposed to be the worst; for me, it's Wednesday and Thursday (for other reasons as well) because that's when 'returning were as tedious as going o'er'. Then I remember that only one way is always open and that the next minute hour day week and then I can't bear to think any further.
One baby step at a time.
What if I slept it all away and the steps have been taken and I don't have the burden of remembering? That's called sleepwalking. That's what I would like to do, what I am doing but because I know it's what I'm doing as I'm doing it, it's no help at all. It's like the kind of sleep when I know I'm dreaming and I wake up exhausted with the effort of it. In fact, the worst part of falling asleep is the waking up when the Things To Do list act as my alarm clock at odd hours of the night (and in my case, day). When this happens, I jump out of bed because I'm falling behind with the things that need to be done, bump into several things and panic.
Did you ever dream of a day when you could sleep from whenever to whenever, without having to do a single thing you didn't want to? I do. All the time.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Another Word You Know
Like a word that you didn't know, but once you do it follows you everywhere, this one stalks me.
Reginald Shepherd. David Foster Wallace. The 22 (and perhaps more) in Delhi. The poet's daughter who jumped from the eighth floor. I see it everywhere, even - like the man in the ad - when it is only one half of another word: knell, throes, mega, little, sudden.
Reginald Shepherd. David Foster Wallace. The 22 (and perhaps more) in Delhi. The poet's daughter who jumped from the eighth floor. I see it everywhere, even - like the man in the ad - when it is only one half of another word: knell, throes, mega, little, sudden.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
(no subject)
There so much I shouldn't say. There's so much I want to say.
*
Things, for instance. Back when I was married and the house revealed shrines in unexpected places - whole cupboards with a dead man's clothes, suitcases filled with negatives and yellowing scripts (we're talking in plurals here; I'm aware of it), gas and electricity bills that still came in the name of someone who was no longer there - I wondered what this was about. Rain came and they said, "that's Bapu." They were not talking about M.K.Gandhi.
It has taken me a dozen years to come to the understanding of that time. If they discarded every object associated with a beloved one, where are the aids to memory?
Already I remember so little. If I throw away tear up fill up forms in triplicate to request mutations, will I have only a few photographs left to look at? How can I take responsibility for that second erasure?
*
Things, for instance. Back when I was married and the house revealed shrines in unexpected places - whole cupboards with a dead man's clothes, suitcases filled with negatives and yellowing scripts (we're talking in plurals here; I'm aware of it), gas and electricity bills that still came in the name of someone who was no longer there - I wondered what this was about. Rain came and they said, "that's Bapu." They were not talking about M.K.Gandhi.
It has taken me a dozen years to come to the understanding of that time. If they discarded every object associated with a beloved one, where are the aids to memory?
Already I remember so little. If I throw away tear up fill up forms in triplicate to request mutations, will I have only a few photographs left to look at? How can I take responsibility for that second erasure?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
driving tips
I am the champion of driving while crying. I know. I've been doing it for years and I haven't had an accident yet. Which is not to say it won't happen, but there's a skill to it and I have it all figured out.
First, keep tissues handy. If no tissues are to hand, be prepared to use your sleeve or anything else that's available. If you wear specs, try not to blink. You're likely to transfer the tears from your lashes to the glass and you won't be able to see. Practice driving with your specs off. You might not see very much, but then you won't see much through tears anyway. At traffic lights, feel free to shed more copious tears than while moving. Merely as a matter of observation, notice how those around you respond. Beggars will move away, cyclists and motorcyclists will avoid squeezing in through the narrow gap between your car and the next one. Nobody will honk. You are allowed to take your time when you least want more of it.
While moving, make good use of your nails to remind yourself that what you are doing is not a good idea. You would avoid it if you could, so show that you're doing what you can.
Learn your way around. Lose your way. It doesn't matter. Drive in the slow lane. Stop. Notice how it doesn't help, because just as the tears stop when you do, so do they start again when the car does. Distract yourself for a while with the connection between tear ducts and ignitions. Smile. Watch pedestrians give you curious glances. Look at yourself in the mirror.
Angle the side view mirror so you can see yourself. Remind yourself of how difficult it is to really laugh while looking at your reflection and hope the tactic works in this situation. When it does, allow yourself some self-pity for how changeable you are, how easily distracted.
Cry. Drive. Repeat.
First, keep tissues handy. If no tissues are to hand, be prepared to use your sleeve or anything else that's available. If you wear specs, try not to blink. You're likely to transfer the tears from your lashes to the glass and you won't be able to see. Practice driving with your specs off. You might not see very much, but then you won't see much through tears anyway. At traffic lights, feel free to shed more copious tears than while moving. Merely as a matter of observation, notice how those around you respond. Beggars will move away, cyclists and motorcyclists will avoid squeezing in through the narrow gap between your car and the next one. Nobody will honk. You are allowed to take your time when you least want more of it.
While moving, make good use of your nails to remind yourself that what you are doing is not a good idea. You would avoid it if you could, so show that you're doing what you can.
Learn your way around. Lose your way. It doesn't matter. Drive in the slow lane. Stop. Notice how it doesn't help, because just as the tears stop when you do, so do they start again when the car does. Distract yourself for a while with the connection between tear ducts and ignitions. Smile. Watch pedestrians give you curious glances. Look at yourself in the mirror.
Angle the side view mirror so you can see yourself. Remind yourself of how difficult it is to really laugh while looking at your reflection and hope the tactic works in this situation. When it does, allow yourself some self-pity for how changeable you are, how easily distracted.
Cry. Drive. Repeat.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Letters to other people
"Was he creative?" my friend asks, looking at the photographs on the wall. There's something strange at work here that I find interesting only now. I 'took' those five photographs of my father that are on the wall. Four of them from fourteen years ago; the last one, where he's holding my son and laughing, head thrown back, seven and a half years ago. All are black and white and though nobody else has noticed, I know that two of them have been flipped. It's easy to tell with the ones where my parents are on the swing: they have their positions reversed.
It's interesting because the printer seems to have looked at the ancient negative from the other side and not even I realised until much later. Looking at those five photographs gives me a strange sense of unease; as if I have deliberately falsified this man in it, said something about him that was true and yet not right. There's been a sleight of hand here.
"Was your father creative?"
I answer by saying other things about him. None of them are offshoots of the word 'creative.'
With a slight sense of panic I realise that there's very little to go on. Very few photographs; none that I can bear to look at from the last three years. And letters to other people.
I left home to go to boarding school when I was 12. That means the father I knew was the one who wrote me letters. When I was 10 and going through a premature adolescence, I locked myself in my room and he slipped letters to me under the door. I don't know what they said, but they must have charmed me out of my sulks.
'Charmed' is the wrong word. My father was more solid than that.
In school, when others got one letter every ten days or so, I got two letters a week. One from my mother and one from my father. I was the object of everyone's envy. Then there were all those other years when I studied in different cities, got married and never returned home except for holidays. All those years of letters and nothing to show for it.
Because I don't keep any letters. I tear them up, sometimes after a few years, but I tear them all up. No exceptions. Especially not letters that came regular as clockwork, spoke of routine things at home with the customary questions. I don't remember if I even answered as frequently as I used to.
When I returned, those letters stopped. Instead, I took on secretarial duties. He would write the letters out longhand and I would type and print them out. "One plus one" he'd say. "Two plus one".
"Why can't you just say you want three copies? What is this 'two plus one'?"
To, The Commissioner, GHMC. Sub:
To, _______, The HMWSSB. Sub:
To, _______, Sub:
Sometime in May, sitting around the table after lunch, one conversation set my father off on some tangent that led him to the airing of some long-nourished grievances. Having worked himself up into a frenzy, he claimed he could show us proof: letters he had hoarded that would demonstrate someone's perfidy. These stories were decades old. My mother and I looked at each other in dismay.
A few days later, my father, unable to do the climb of one flight of stairs, decided to shift his things downstairs. I found him sitting on the floor, tearing up what looked like letters, but came out of a file. He would take one out, read it briefly, tear it up into tiny bits and throw them in a plastic bag.
"These are those letters. I decided not keep them anymore."
One and a half months later, he was gone. There are no diaries, no journals, no private letters. Not even an anniversary or a birthday card. Not even the letter I wrote to him on his 69th birthday, a long one that turned out to be other than the carefully composed manuscript I had been working on because we had had a fight the night before. He read that one early in the morning and cried. As he had the year before, when he read the poem I had written for him, by hand, on a scroll-length piece of paper.
I feel envious. He left nothing except those official letters and numerous small pieces of paper with practical notes pinned on to files.
"Was he creative, your father?"
He wrote like an angel, I should have said. That would be a typical piece of misdirection, like those photographs that are reversed on the wall.
In Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the dead sister's book is received with high praise. She wrote like an angel, people said. But she didn't write any of it; the narrator did. The dead sister kept a diary with brief, cryptic notes, numbers, practical things. Like angels who keep ledgers, marking off who goes where and who deserves what. She wrote like an angel.
He wrote like an angel.
It's interesting because the printer seems to have looked at the ancient negative from the other side and not even I realised until much later. Looking at those five photographs gives me a strange sense of unease; as if I have deliberately falsified this man in it, said something about him that was true and yet not right. There's been a sleight of hand here.
"Was your father creative?"
I answer by saying other things about him. None of them are offshoots of the word 'creative.'
With a slight sense of panic I realise that there's very little to go on. Very few photographs; none that I can bear to look at from the last three years. And letters to other people.
I left home to go to boarding school when I was 12. That means the father I knew was the one who wrote me letters. When I was 10 and going through a premature adolescence, I locked myself in my room and he slipped letters to me under the door. I don't know what they said, but they must have charmed me out of my sulks.
'Charmed' is the wrong word. My father was more solid than that.
In school, when others got one letter every ten days or so, I got two letters a week. One from my mother and one from my father. I was the object of everyone's envy. Then there were all those other years when I studied in different cities, got married and never returned home except for holidays. All those years of letters and nothing to show for it.
Because I don't keep any letters. I tear them up, sometimes after a few years, but I tear them all up. No exceptions. Especially not letters that came regular as clockwork, spoke of routine things at home with the customary questions. I don't remember if I even answered as frequently as I used to.
When I returned, those letters stopped. Instead, I took on secretarial duties. He would write the letters out longhand and I would type and print them out. "One plus one" he'd say. "Two plus one".
"Why can't you just say you want three copies? What is this 'two plus one'?"
To, The Commissioner, GHMC. Sub:
To, _______, The HMWSSB. Sub:
To, _______, Sub:
Sometime in May, sitting around the table after lunch, one conversation set my father off on some tangent that led him to the airing of some long-nourished grievances. Having worked himself up into a frenzy, he claimed he could show us proof: letters he had hoarded that would demonstrate someone's perfidy. These stories were decades old. My mother and I looked at each other in dismay.
A few days later, my father, unable to do the climb of one flight of stairs, decided to shift his things downstairs. I found him sitting on the floor, tearing up what looked like letters, but came out of a file. He would take one out, read it briefly, tear it up into tiny bits and throw them in a plastic bag.
"These are those letters. I decided not keep them anymore."
One and a half months later, he was gone. There are no diaries, no journals, no private letters. Not even an anniversary or a birthday card. Not even the letter I wrote to him on his 69th birthday, a long one that turned out to be other than the carefully composed manuscript I had been working on because we had had a fight the night before. He read that one early in the morning and cried. As he had the year before, when he read the poem I had written for him, by hand, on a scroll-length piece of paper.
I feel envious. He left nothing except those official letters and numerous small pieces of paper with practical notes pinned on to files.
"Was he creative, your father?"
He wrote like an angel, I should have said. That would be a typical piece of misdirection, like those photographs that are reversed on the wall.
In Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the dead sister's book is received with high praise. She wrote like an angel, people said. But she didn't write any of it; the narrator did. The dead sister kept a diary with brief, cryptic notes, numbers, practical things. Like angels who keep ledgers, marking off who goes where and who deserves what. She wrote like an angel.
He wrote like an angel.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Status: Widow
This is what happens:
__ You look at all your silk saris, those gorgeous weaves and colours that you picked out so carefully, and wonder if you'll ever go to a wedding again.
__ It's Varalakshmi Puja, and kolu is only a matter of weeks away. There has been, so far, one invitation from a lady who believes she is radical for having issued it. The others have one year in which to redeem themselves.
__ You never liked that colour that is like watered down kaavi or perhaps chandanam with a touch of kaavi. Now you see it everywhere.
__ The girl's basket has a high spiral of jasmine. You automatically take out ten ruppes as you come out of the vegetable shop and then you stand, looking stricken. When you come back to the car, I ask what happened. "It's become more expensive. I'm not buying malli at that price," you say. I don't look at you in the rearview mirror.
__ At night the bed feels too heavy on one side. No wonder you don't sleep well.
__ Your grandson says:
I Nani is a widow.
Yes.
D Pati is a widow.
Yes.
Periya Nani is a widow?
Yes.
Dadi also.
Yes.
And now you're a widow.
(beat) Yes.
__ You look at all your silk saris, those gorgeous weaves and colours that you picked out so carefully, and wonder if you'll ever go to a wedding again.
__ It's Varalakshmi Puja, and kolu is only a matter of weeks away. There has been, so far, one invitation from a lady who believes she is radical for having issued it. The others have one year in which to redeem themselves.
__ You never liked that colour that is like watered down kaavi or perhaps chandanam with a touch of kaavi. Now you see it everywhere.
__ The girl's basket has a high spiral of jasmine. You automatically take out ten ruppes as you come out of the vegetable shop and then you stand, looking stricken. When you come back to the car, I ask what happened. "It's become more expensive. I'm not buying malli at that price," you say. I don't look at you in the rearview mirror.
__ At night the bed feels too heavy on one side. No wonder you don't sleep well.
__ Your grandson says:
I Nani is a widow.
Yes.
D Pati is a widow.
Yes.
Periya Nani is a widow?
Yes.
Dadi also.
Yes.
And now you're a widow.
(beat) Yes.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Grief Is A Long Distance Runner
At the crematorium.
My son says, why can’t he be buried? Why do we have to burn his body? I will never ever see him again. If we bury him, we can look at him when we want to. He thinks dead bodies are preserved by the earth and we can take them out once in a while to remind ourselves of what they looked like.
My grandmother says before we leave, when they put the body in, say agni swaha, pavan swaha. I think, she said the body.
They lift the rails. The gates open. I don’t say anything but I am shaken by such violent emotion that I can understand how people throw themselves on the pyre. Not to die with the dead, but to pull them out, say, ‘nobody can stand so much heat’. Outside, I watch the smoke from the crematorium chimney. That’s my father rising up in the air.
To my son I explain that the body is like a flower whose loss we don’t mourn. That it is in the nature of bodies to perish. My explanation feels both right and extremely wrong. We have no unfinished business with flowers.
When he is alive we stay silent or uncommunicative; we fight because we believe there will be a tomorrow in which to erase unpleasant memories. Right now, though, he is alive and I am angry and I show it.
Tomorrow comes and in place of the person there’s a legacy of guilt. He knew I didn’t mean it, we say, with the same kind of certainty with which we say, ‘he would have wanted me to go on that holiday’. How conveniently well we know the minds of the dead had they been alive.
[incomplete entry]
Thursday, August 21, 2008
8
8
If someone had said you passed away
this evening at 8, when my watch was still
an hour behind, on a few minutes to seven,
I'd be around for rituals with your loved ones.
We'd sip the last of your lemon tea, taking
turns to embrace you with private words.
Some would simply freeze you
with that wholly unsayable look of love.
In the quickening, we'd fold away your clothes,
close the curtains over the awful pouring
light, but couldn't do a thing for the beep
& brake of cars, the low hum of a fast
travelling bus as we'd help you to the awkward
angle of your bed, how you'd be found,
then we'd hold back for the aweful way you'd rise
to the almighty challenge of your punctual
heart-stop.
Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming To Dover! Tranquebar Press. 2008*.
*
It's been seven weeks. 49 days. I can see myself getting used to marking the weeks but not tearing myself up over their arrival and departure. I can see myself looking into the room, at the bed and not feel a lurch of the heart.
Heart-stop. It happens. Get over it.
*Daljit Nagra's book was published by Faber and Faber in 2007 in England. This Edition is for sale in India only. The word 'aweful' in the poem is sic.
If someone had said you passed away
this evening at 8, when my watch was still
an hour behind, on a few minutes to seven,
I'd be around for rituals with your loved ones.
We'd sip the last of your lemon tea, taking
turns to embrace you with private words.
Some would simply freeze you
with that wholly unsayable look of love.
In the quickening, we'd fold away your clothes,
close the curtains over the awful pouring
light, but couldn't do a thing for the beep
& brake of cars, the low hum of a fast
travelling bus as we'd help you to the awkward
angle of your bed, how you'd be found,
then we'd hold back for the aweful way you'd rise
to the almighty challenge of your punctual
heart-stop.
Making our journeys homewe were back in time
strangely prepared
when someone said
you passed away
this evening at 8.
Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming To Dover! Tranquebar Press. 2008*.
*
It's been seven weeks. 49 days. I can see myself getting used to marking the weeks but not tearing myself up over their arrival and departure. I can see myself looking into the room, at the bed and not feel a lurch of the heart.
Heart-stop. It happens. Get over it.
*Daljit Nagra's book was published by Faber and Faber in 2007 in England. This Edition is for sale in India only. The word 'aweful' in the poem is sic.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Prepared
I’ve been asking myself if one can ever ‘be prepared’ for the death of someone close. Rationally, it only needs some effort to get used to the idea that everyone is always dying, that the process is as inevitable as it is undesired. When is a good time to allow the mind to consider the possibility that a living, breathing body will one day be unable to respond to even a direct light shone in the eyes?
For the first part of this year, I had been doing precisely that: forbidding the thought of what should have been – was – obvious to me. As far back as this X-ray, I knew that my father had not got very long. And yet, in the last six weeks of his life, when he began to need four hours, then ten, eighteen and finally 24 hours oxygen support, I kept at bay the thought that whatever road was left open for him at this point, it was not one that lead to recovery.
We’re told warm tales of the power of positive thinking. The idea that fervent wishing can make things happen the way one wants them to be is seductive. But consider: just because we’re capable of blocking certain thoughts it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The moment you say, ‘I will not think of death and dying; he’s going to get better’, you’ve admitted the thought in and you have to live with it whether you want it to or not.
In early June, when my father was in hospital for the second time, the doctor called me to his office while my father was taken away for a very painful procedure.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you and not your mother.’
‘You can tell us the worst, doctor. We’ve been mentally prepared for some time now.’
I lied, of course. Just because I had to face the possibility of my father’s death, it didn’t mean that I was ready to submit to it. After all, what could the doctor have said? With what degree of certainty could he have said, he has two weeks or four or eighteen?
The reason, I am coming to realise, that our ‘preparedness’ for death is at all possible is that we do not know precisely when it will happen, even though we know that death is near. If we knew, we could not continue with our own lives because we would be waiting for that moment. Death deserves our total attention and we would not miss it if we could. We never miss it but that irony escapes us in our living moments.
When the moment arrives, when you realise that the person on the bed with his mouth slightly open, in an attitude of unnatural stillness, will never again change position or clear his throat – will never again be a person, but only a body – you find that you are not, after all, surprised. You find that those thoughts in your mind that did battle one against the other, did after all, prepare you for this moment. You are not surprised that hands can still be warm, hair can spring back from the forehead like it always did; you’re not even surprised when, if you accidentally bump into the legs that stick out of the bed, there is no reaction.
The only reaction is in you. You instinctively apologise and then catch the futility of that apology with bitterness and dawning grief. Once again your mind has admitted the impossibility of death.
And so it goes.
But death is not a matter of belief; it’s a fact, as hard and inalterable as birth. Perhaps what those who are left behind need is not the ability to live with it. Perhaps what we need is the ability to die to it.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
What makes you depressed?
It's a question this blog will ask often.
Sometimes, though, the answers might help to punctuate the gloom here. Such as Zizek's answer to the question:
Sometimes, though, the answers might help to punctuate the gloom here. Such as Zizek's answer to the question:
What makes you depressed?
Seeing stupid people happy.
Monday, August 11, 2008
3
I dream of doctors. Not just any doctor, but that one, the one we knew for six years. Though the reason we visited him at all is now gone, I still have to go to the hospital, wait two hours and see him. I do not find it strange that after all this time, all I know of him is contained in his presence. He is the thin edge of the life he carries behind him like the beam of a torch that he shields just by being there. I ask him how his hand is. The last time I saw it it was in a bandage that he took off in the hospital room where three assistants stood to attention but one was slyly checking me out, and the one nurse had an old-fashioned examination pad in hand and a file under her armpit. But he is talking about schools.
My father's dead but the doctor wants to see me tomorrow and the file is incomplete, with the originals sent off and the xeroxes lying around in a plastic bag somewhere and what is there to say and why do I have to go there again?
My father's dead but the doctor wants to see me tomorrow and the file is incomplete, with the originals sent off and the xeroxes lying around in a plastic bag somewhere and what is there to say and why do I have to go there again?
Friday, August 8, 2008
Say A Little Prayer For Me
It was clear from the minute I turned the lights on that he'd gone. And yet, certainty battled with hope and we touched him, felt for his pulse, put our hands over his heart, looking for signs of life.
I knew, though and I took out the prongs from his nostrils and turned the oxygen cylinder off. We called his doctor, who said that because the death had taken place at home, there was no need to bring him back to the hospital. A family doctor would examine my father and give a Death Certificate, which would suffice at the crematorium.
We called a doctor we'd known for years. I suppose we could call him a family doctor, but we remembered his reluctance to put himself out in any way. Surprisingly enough, he agreed to come and take a look but he recommended that we go to the hospital. Only the hospital can give a Death Certificate he told us.
Later it occurred to me to wonder if his reluctance to put his name to anything official sprang from his not actually being a registered medical practitioner, a circumstance he had carefully concealed from all his patients all these years. I am capable of being uncharitable even in the most difficult circumstances.
So they came, the doctor and his wife. Meanwhile, my grandmother was certain she could detect a pulse. It's your own agitated pulse beating off his skin, I told her. We sat around, not knowing what to do.
He came, stethoscope and all, and a short examination confirmed what we already knew. Some slight changes in position were made and Aunty N gave my mother a sympathetic hug. She said to Dr. R in a hushed undervoice, let us pray.
With Dr. R at the head, Aunty N at the side, me at the foot of the bed and my mother and grandmother somewhere out of the line of my vision, we stood.
And the good doctor prayed, not for the soul of my father to be taken into the Lord, but he prayed that everything should go well for those of us who remained, in the getting of our Death Certificate. In all the paper work that would follow, Oh, Lord, let there be no trouble.
I was glad that I could not catch my mother's eye. Laughter over a newly dead body would be unseemly. Next to me, Aunty N shifted a little uncomfortably. Would that she had the directing of the prayer. I wondered what my grandmother was making of this. In a little while, the news that there would be no rituals or ceremonies would grieve her more. For now, the Amens were probably causing her some moments of discomfort.
Prayers said, the doctor and his wife left, not having given us a certificate that we could take to the crematorium. That was left to a friend of mine, an old school mate, to do.
I knew, though and I took out the prongs from his nostrils and turned the oxygen cylinder off. We called his doctor, who said that because the death had taken place at home, there was no need to bring him back to the hospital. A family doctor would examine my father and give a Death Certificate, which would suffice at the crematorium.
We called a doctor we'd known for years. I suppose we could call him a family doctor, but we remembered his reluctance to put himself out in any way. Surprisingly enough, he agreed to come and take a look but he recommended that we go to the hospital. Only the hospital can give a Death Certificate he told us.
Later it occurred to me to wonder if his reluctance to put his name to anything official sprang from his not actually being a registered medical practitioner, a circumstance he had carefully concealed from all his patients all these years. I am capable of being uncharitable even in the most difficult circumstances.
So they came, the doctor and his wife. Meanwhile, my grandmother was certain she could detect a pulse. It's your own agitated pulse beating off his skin, I told her. We sat around, not knowing what to do.
He came, stethoscope and all, and a short examination confirmed what we already knew. Some slight changes in position were made and Aunty N gave my mother a sympathetic hug. She said to Dr. R in a hushed undervoice, let us pray.
With Dr. R at the head, Aunty N at the side, me at the foot of the bed and my mother and grandmother somewhere out of the line of my vision, we stood.
And the good doctor prayed, not for the soul of my father to be taken into the Lord, but he prayed that everything should go well for those of us who remained, in the getting of our Death Certificate. In all the paper work that would follow, Oh, Lord, let there be no trouble.
I was glad that I could not catch my mother's eye. Laughter over a newly dead body would be unseemly. Next to me, Aunty N shifted a little uncomfortably. Would that she had the directing of the prayer. I wondered what my grandmother was making of this. In a little while, the news that there would be no rituals or ceremonies would grieve her more. For now, the Amens were probably causing her some moments of discomfort.
Prayers said, the doctor and his wife left, not having given us a certificate that we could take to the crematorium. That was left to a friend of mine, an old school mate, to do.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Solomon Grundy*
Five weeks today since my father died. While trying hard to avoid symmetries and anniversaries and neat lines of days, I can't but admit that it is fitting that I start this blog (properly) today.
My father had said all year that he might not make it past this one. Don't ask how he knew. In his mind, his birthday was a marker and if he made it past it, he might survive.
He didn't. He died on the 3rd of July. Would have turned 71 on the 4th and have been married for 40 years on the 5th.
Neatness must be genetic.
* Everyone knows the rhyme, right?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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