Menu
Bhai sahib next time your wife wants to wear a saree please learn to hold the pleats or make her wear a skirt! First my mother than your wife and next will be my wife he muttered as I tried to drape a heavy saree around me asking him to help me after the wedding when he came to receive me .
Hey you two love birds ! Don’t fight . I won’t be there to resolve your nonstop non-sense . My job is done and now it’s my turn to get married he announced.
Those were his parting words which still reverberate. We were gathered on the different platforms waiting for two trains to arrive at an almost similar time but headed in two different directions Delhi and Bangalore respectively .We had just been married two days before and the bride’s gang had to return to Delhi and the newlyweds were going to get back to be on duty in their wards . We were both six months into our post -graduation and Prashant was also doing his Post graduation in surgery in Maharashtra. Today he obviously belonged to the Delhi gang.
All of us were so happy and cocooned in love at that moment . Everything was perfect . My inter religious love affair of a decade culminated in holy matrimony and my brother played the perfect devil’s advocate. He always told my parents how rotten I was and how a guy from our community would never marry a girl who dressed indecently, was non vegetarian, smoked once in a while ,drank in pubs and dance with boys.
He had painted such an unworthy picture of me and I am sure if it was not for my love marriage nobody else would have ever liked me. He managed to brainwash my parents slowly enough that they actually believed they were better off marrying me to my husband than look for a suitable match . I knew his game always and he just wanted me to be happy saying “ Chal Aeish kar “. I hugged him tight and waved goodbye.
I just had no realization that was my last I was seeing of him as he waved good bye with that characteristic smile and those gleaming eyes. The trains disappeared in the still of the night leaving the familiar confines of Bhubaneshwar which was just getting sleepy. He also promised my husband the best reception ever on his return with me to our hometown six months later. We did not have much leave and we were going to miss half a dozen usual functions post marriage that would have been ordinarily held.
My mother had collected coins in a big ugly brown box and neat crisp one rupee notes in her cupboard in a purse and the box had become heavier over the years. When enquired she said she was collecting change to throw the coins when my brother would get married and have a “ghudchadi “ in his Baraat. I would be the big sister in law the revered “Nanad” , one of the most valued relations after the mother in law. I imagined myself in the most grand dress and the glitter that would surround me. Some occasions when you want to defy simplicity. Every nook and corner of our house would be decorated with flowers and the brightest lights put by our old electrician Pyaare uncle who saw to the decorations of the house every Diwali. He told my dad to be ready to shell out more money at his wedding for the decorations. Dad agreed and he had his own set of big plans .Overflowing booze , festivities and laughter and that’s how it was supposed to be.
Prashant claimed the biggest room in the newly renovated portion of the house and he had insisted on having few steps to create two levels in the room which opened to a beautiful verandah which welcomed the sunrise. He wanted to have half a dozen kids. He wanted a gym in his room . He wanted to finish his studies and come and serve in the small little smelly town of ours. He wanted to stay with my mother whom he labeled as the “golden hen “ so that he would have to work less and be fed Parathas and buttermilk nonstop.He explained to me many times the advantages of this arrangement and I hated him when he bore that familiar teasing grin and always won my mother’s approval every time. He called me the “ Mombatti “ of the house and he was the “Ghar ka Chiraag” .
He would tease me mercilessly and knew where to hit and I threatened to be really really mean to his wife and kids . We used to laugh so much over half the things and events which hadn’t happened living in our dream world. It was a happy place. He was in love many times and his heart had also been broken . He attended to his heartache at 12 am every day when I would be sleepy and make me forcefully see all his college albums full of good memories. He was outstanding as a male model in his college fashion shows and loved to dress smart. He donated me generously his gifts which were returned by his girlfriend including Ray ban glasses which he never allowed me to touch , an ear ring, a necklace and a tweeting bird. We all consoled him in his moments of “Ranjhahood” and he finally told my father to get him a 36-24-36 wife material rather than the one loaded with medical degrees. He preferred the physical virtues like any other male.
None of those cherished dreams ever materialized. He met with a fatal accident exactly six months later having sustained a severe head injury. He was in a government hospital thousands of miles away where his family could not reach him . He had a tracheostomy done after four hours of his accident with a GCS of 4 and plugged to a beeping ventilator. Wonder where did the common sense and oxygen of the world disappear that day ? The medical details and treatment given to him still makes me very angry .There were things which could have been handled better for example there was no hurry to pronounce him brain dead before a whole hearted attempt was even made. We desperately hoped for a miracle that day. Apart from brainstorming about how to airlift him from Nagpur to Apollo Delhi safely , arranging for all the monetary help needed at that moment we could do nothing except pray. That was my first chanting of Mahamritunjyay mantra ever in my life. I did all the funny rituals as I was told by everybody and I prayed and cried and cried. Apart from witnessing the restlessness and helplessness of my parents I had to take the toughest decision of my life by requesting the Dr to switch off the ventilator which was pumping oxygen in his lifeless body after 3 days . One of the most uncomfortable times of my life. Deciding to let go and let him go peacefully. He was finally braindead and so were we both in the brain and heart for the times to come. The weight of those moments has lasted more than 15 years and I have just about begun to breathe.
We returned with his dead body in a coffin and had the grandest homecoming as promised. A kilometer trail of relatives ,friends ,well -wishers , patients over the years like the whole town was there to witness. More than 400 people in the house. The newly-weds returned with a coffin. My husband had to be a part of the funeral procession. That wailing upsets me even today. It always reminds me of what I had lost.
I never bought that grand dress and I never had that glittery moment . Such was the repulsion to events happening in other people’s life that I just could not but sit and be a part of it in my wholeheartedness. I would drift into my own sulking in one corner . I started avoiding them and definitely I stopped shopping . To what use is the outer covering when inside all is naked and raw and oozy.
Tears would just come at the most inappropriate moments. The pain of this sudden loss which sheers away your soul would not lessen. I spend countless heavy evenings hoping something would change. I cried myself to tears again and again listening to all Jagjit Singh ghazals . I buried myself more into work to forget but the moment I was back in my room reality struck. I just could not run away from my pain. I started living on the most unhealthy diet of Kurkure and Appy juices for energy and skipped my meals. I gifted myself obesity and hypothyroidism in the bargain.
In the house I tried filling his room with hundreds of his photographs which I developed from his childhood till his fashion show moments. I turned his room in a studio. He was there in every corner. None of us were ready to get used to living without him. It went on for years before I decided that I didn’t want him staring at me anymore so dead. That day I packed all those photos in an iron trunk and locked it forever. I have not opened it till now. I do not think I have the heart to open it .Mom stopped putting coins in the tin box and it lies like that in the cupboard. The one rupee notes have got demonetized. The Baarat procession never left the dazzling house and it did not glow the way Pyaare uncle promised. I never got to misbehave and be the TV certified horrid “Nanad”. I missed that . Half a dozen kids never arrived.
The room got converted into a huge Pooja room and the door to the verandah is closed. It waits to be refurnished. Mombattis light up the house still while we do not light Chirag anymore. The hospital where he wanted to practice has been completed the way he wanted it and the golden hen runs it to the best of her capacity. I have taken a U turn in my life and filled up the gaps with the laughter of my children .I do not go to market to buy Rakhis for Rakshabandhan and still prefer connecting to Jagjit Singh of good old days. Sometimes when the hurt is over you still stare at the wound and just caress it just to see if it still aches or is unpleasant. I have learnt not to cry every year but I am unapologetic about my tears. They flow when they have to. Well-wishers have advised to move on /get a grip/ live in the now and all such good sounding things
Where too and how ? No one tells the process . Why limit the grieving ? Let it simmer and then allow it to come out like blebs and then dry .Why pour water ? Why contain it ? How to live without that part that goes away with loved ones ? The sister in me will never stop missing him ever. People say I look for pain but do I ? Really ? Nobody looks or likes the pain but it’s as good a reality as pleasure. While pleasure lives in happy memories and you want it to exemplify you want the pain to diminish and disappear. It is deeply buried in the hollow of one’s bones and the core of the heart which knows nothing but yearning and seeking that love which has been lost . It creates those memories back and relives on the crumbs of it a hundred times. One can never throw it away in the pursuit of positivity ,perkiness and peace. One can never force pain out that way . Gradually one learns to live with it and then a sweet ache remains. As you come into acceptance of misfortunes and unfair moments you learn to forgive and forget .
You start erasing those memories first .
The hospital premises, the ICU confines, the non-stop beeping ventilators every inch of the place that is dark and dingy. The hatred towards the place which just happened to be “Booti bori “ ,the treacherous turn known for being accident prone.The insensitive Police Walla who labels every dead /injured person as drunk in a hurry to fill in the FIRs which have repercussions later. The memory of a lost father who had to go looking for a white char meter cloth to hand it to the mortuary so that the dead body of a son could be wrapped respectfully. The sobs of the mother who never cried again and built one more layer of hard exterior to face the world and live his dreams .
Your own self for not being there at that time . It had to happen that way and there was nothing you could do about it . Delete the mental exercise of it all. The Doctors and that system which could have been better managed ,more prompt and sensitive to an ailing family .The insensitive comments coming from well- wishers in the name of comfort and reassurance . And lastly God with whom we have the longest fight before he grants us peace.
Pain exposes our own misalignment and connects us to our deepest core which we don’t even know exists. It keeps us conscious by raising its ugly head at various inappropriate moments and we learn to control, respond and become resilient. It starts fading slowly at its own pace, taking away anger ,victimhood and as one learns to grow more in acceptance the pain introduces new avenues of perception .I now see my brother everywhere. He has not gone anywhere except the fact I don’t see him . I see him in my the ward boy who runs errands for me endlessly and goes out of the way at times to keep me comfortable. In my eldest cousin who sat for the funeral rites of my father 6 yrs. later replacing Prashant. The NRI cousin who took me to select a dress for him while he tried and paraded multiple sherwanis and Mojris asking everytime did I like it ? My best friend who saw to it that I got the same place as his sister in the wedding mandap because he knew how I felt. The elder cousin whose Ganeshas and Shivas arrive every morning to bless my day every day without fail . My senior resident who saw me through that night and has been my elder brother ever since irrespective of years that have gone by. I see Prashant in my little son on Rakshabandhan when he wears the Tilak on his forehead.
If God took one he filled my world with so many more. Its been 16 yrs since that fateful day and I still ache just to see him one more time, talk to him one more time, hug him one more time and tease him one more time. I also know that the Now where I live in that forgiving and peaceful place has been birthed from the womb of the past and I respect both equally . The most beautiful memory lies etched in my heart that it will live there forever in the emptiness ,in the silence . I
