Death and Dying

It is approximately 26 days that my father has passed away. His passing away was sudden and hopefully not too painful for him.

I last met my father at home nearly one and a half years ago ... when i was leaving Calcutta and that home for good .... in January 2007. I was so caught with anger and disappointment, that i did not even say good bye to him on my departure.

No, i am not going to talk about my regret about that, for i have none. over the last year and a half, my anger and my disappointment about his behaviour and his lack of "self respect" (at least in my perception) had given way to my understanding and compassion for a person who was pre-occupied in his need for safety and familiarity and it was OK for me that he chose his path the way he did. Just because he was my father, he did not have to be "my father", the way i wanted him to be. He was no hero, he was just a person, as ordinary and as special as i am.

This time, when I landed in the ICU, he looked at me surprised and perhaps even relieved that I had arrived? he even said that he was feeling "Lucky that he met me?" I found that sentence weird in retrospect but at that time I was too caught in giving him some relief and reassurance that things were going to be alright .... that I was there to take care... and that he will be OK.

And three hours later, when i went back again, his eyes were not seeing anything, although he was alive and within half an hour, it was all over.

I had a strange sense of calmness, all i could remember doing then was to inform the people i thought should be informed and chant "Asato Ma Sadgamoyo" in his ears and message his hands and feet and stroke his hair, like he needed reassurance and soothing in his last journey. I did not cry one bit, i did not feel like.

and then the funeral. strange it was that the crematorium had no other dead body waiting there, very unusual .... and that there were a Muslim, a Parsee, a Sikh, a Hindu and Christians around ... unrelated and unplanned. some were there to help and some were there to just watch. But all of these people had assembled together just at that moment and no one else. the entire place was empty otherwise. it was strange, very strange. And it remained empty till we were absolutely finished.

the shraddha ceremony went off very smoothly, rain came and went that day almost orchestrated, as though it knew when to stop and when to start. all people who i called, came.

i did the whole kriya with as much focus and concentration as i could. i felt that my father would have liked the way it was done, although he told me many times earlier that he really did not believe in all these rituals. i still did them because i believed despite what he may have said, internally he was this very traditional, patriarchal male who also hungry for affection and attention and who never knew how to grow up and be responsible, for oneself and for others.

yet, in his death, he seems to have done what he could not do in his life time, he left me with a huge sense of peace and harmony. The anxiety that I had held towards Lawrence and his family (well, most of them) melted away as they came forward and supported without any hesitation. My own family, both from fathers and mothers sides came together almost by design. Rusha suddenly turned into this very adult, anchored, supporting person who was also very caring, compassionate and sensible.

I was quite amazed at the turn of events. like i said, as though what he could not do in his lifetime, he did it through his death. He gave me opportunities for healing and for closure, with him, with Lawrence, with some of past and even some of my present.

Today as i sit here and write this, there are many new ways of looking at this person who was also my biological father. He was this smart, intelligent person who felt completely unloved by his mother and was semi adopted by someone else who was herself a victim. I guess my father never came out of it and remained a unfulfilled promise unto himself all his life. all his potential of sports, magic, acting, good looks and charm just went astray and he spent his life away squandering. He never saved money, was always in debt, could not manage responsibility and just did not know how to be an adult. And he was loving, witty, temperamental, sentimental and very very sharp. He was the proverbial romantic for who life had to be perfect, and if it was not, he would have none of it and while it away.

Having me as a three year old half orphan kid, must have made him sick in the stomach. While he loved his 3 year old daughter, he also did not know what to do with her. His anxiety about her well being never allowed him to remarry and settle down and yet her "enormous" responsibility weighed him down to a helpless victim to others.

It is strange that sometimes we are able to look at the "whole" person only after the person is gone; it is as though a curtain has been lifted from in front of our eyes and we are able to see clearly what is there to see.

Does that mean that in order to "see" the other person in full, we may have to imagine him or her as dead? not in a morbid way, but do the person's physical form, antecedents, habits, and history bar us from experiencing the person in full? Are we all looking at relationships through some kind of curtains that we don't know exist?

I dont know the answer to any of the above. What i am in touch with now, is that in his death, he has perhaps offered me to live my life the way i want to, without the lament that was so associated with him and without the victimhood that engulfed me everytime i looked at myself as his daughter.

civility and me

Rush reached Jammu this morning for a holiday with her friends. She will be going to Jammu, Leh, Srinagar and other places for about 10 to 12 days. Her hosts are her friends parents.

I called the hostess this morning to talk to Rusha and give her some more contact details in Srinagar. During the conversation with the hostess, it occurred to me that i am really not very civil by the given standards of civility in the civilised society. Not that i have never really been cognizant about it, but sometimes it becomes a little too obvious. for instance, i think I should have called up the hostess in advance and thanked them for hosting my daughter and for taking the trouble, etc, etc. However, in my mind, my daughter is 23 plus years old and is an adult and so is her friend. So if between them they have decided to go for a holiday, it is perfectly fine and calling up her friends parents meant, being extra cautious, which i did not see any need for. however, it is Rusha who reminded me to do the thanking and so i did, profusely, a little late in the day, nonetheless!

however, i guess that is not the way everyone will see it. as for me, i keep missing these finer points of civility and propriety from time to time in almost all settings. For instance, saying "thank you" does not come to me very easily, especially if i experience someone doing something very earnestly and sincerely. i think saying "thank you" would be demeaning that gesture, that heartfelt emotion. Saying nothing and accepting what has been offered feels far more gracious to me but i see the point that others may hold; that without articulation, people may not know how one is receiving what is being offered.

my upbringing was in utterly chaotic condition and a fairly mixed culture. one of the households where i spent most of my time during holidays, had this culture of "we are the first among equals" and hence whoever came across to their household, was expected to feel obliged as they were allowed inside and spoken to. No individuation was allowed there, only homage.

the next household where i spent some time, had a laissez faire environment. anyone was welcome and was expected to stay longer, eat, rest, etc. however, neither the guest nor the hosts were allowed any private/public boundaries as everyone was treated with the same overt bonhomie and freedom, which i guess, could trigger off paranoia and claustrophobia in highly private individuals.

the hostel had its strict rules and boundaries but then it was hostel and one was supposed to break rules. so rules and boundaries in hostel were taken in as something that was imposed upon us free beings, and was meant to be broken. Certainly by me as i see in hindsight, not all of the brethren (or sisters as the case may be) shared the same ideology with me.

hostel was fun as it continuously threw up options for defiance and conformity and one had to balance between the two and one could (i guess i certainly did) feel content in the ideation that one was taking that "highly autocratic world" with a pinch of salt in one's stride as independence was just a step away, if only one had wished harder for it!!!

Those were days of freedom of the mind and not of the body. I remember saying to myself (and sometimes to my tormentors both at home and at hostel) " what best will you do? you can kill me, that is all, but you can not imprison my mind"!!! lofty words for a sprightly 11 years old those days.

to come back to what i started this blog with, civility and me are not really a cosy twosome. I am often lost and little in the face of proper civility of the world (and i think i still hold it away from me with a barge pole). My sense of being civil with people is to be familiar, direct and honest, which is not the best route taken, if not the least. Most people in this world would like a bit of cover up, a bit of smile and just a hint of familiarity so that they do not have to wonder what to do next. In this way, the rules of the game is familiar, everyone plays them the same way, no chance of a same side, no chance of a penalty or a free kick, just a little dribbling here and there, no body blows. No sir, there is no place for contact football here.

The world of civility alludes me. I am learning from A, a little bit of it. He has his own idea of civility, which calms people, makes them comfortable and yet not too familiar at the same time. When i watch him in action, i admire the ease with which he makes his moves (no pun intended here) and everything seems to just fall in place.

I, in contrast, is often like a bull in a china shop, or more like a overbearing family dog which is waiting for the guest to come in.

ha, ha, i like that analogy. I find many a similarities between me and dogs. the strongest similarity is dogs need to be trained in manners and so do human lets, and i was not trained in any of the above places i mentioned. they did not even know that i existed as a part of the household, i was always an addendum, an extra, watching the play from the sidelines, who, at best, could have been utilised to take the water into the field during breaks. the coach of the Sansara never really had time for me.

Today as i await entering the half century of my life, i look back in amazement and in gratefulness of what all life has offered me, in all its splendours and glory and in its utter ugliness and horror. All of them contributed to making the me of today, someone who is still a little lost, different and of course, still gloriously, uncivilised!

calory, camera and cholesterol

Calorie, camera and cholesterol! If somebody were to ask A about these three, he would say, now a days his life revolves around these three. He of course is aptly joined by Rusha who conjoined these three together to begin with. Between the two of them, I have become the butt of the joke at home.

It is true that i have been chasing them all over home with my new found love for my newly bought camera and poor things when photographed, look as though they have been stalked day and night. really hurried and irritated at times! ha, ha, i am having a really good time though!!

and of course, i have been counting the calories and the cholesterol, both for me and A - and boy, is he going nuts! But he is also loving it, for if i don't keep a check on his eating, etc, he would quickly ask me why was not i checking on him. so it is fun both ways for me!!

Whenever Rusha or Arjun or better still both are at home, A gets this major chance of ganging up against me and mockly complain about how much i was torturing him about his food, how little he gets to eat, etc, etc, etc. and we all have fun!! lots of laughter and fun at home.

we are also doing lots of eating out, watching theatre, shopping, veggie and fish and meat shopping, drinking chai and eating samosa at the Gupshup, planning for more eating out, planning for holidays in the coming months, watching IPL together, and just chlling at home doing absolutely nothing.

Life is blissful. Thank you God.

disconnecting - Loss and fear of it

Death ...



such an ominous word. most are scared of it, it is unknown, full of fantasy and visions. so much has been written, talked about, discoursed with ....



i have been with this word for a while. ever since my divorce proceedings started actually.



Divorce, as per dictionary meaning is



-to separate; cut off

-a judicial declaration dissolving a marriage in whole or in part

-total separation; disunion

-to break the marriage contract between oneself and (one's spouse)



synonyms are dissociate, divide, disconnect, split, disjoin ....



i experienced "real" death for the first time in my divorce proceedings. I have experienced many many physical death before but the experience of what death actually feels like was like a bullet that gets lodged.

It was not simply dissolving the marriage between two people. I was initiating the processing of discontinuing the history of 30 years between two people that was held in a certain way. the disjointing of relationships tween them, around them, in the immediate family, the extended familial structure, the social circle, everything.



it was to put a full stop to something that has been in process .... for many years ....

yes, separating from someone or something is like a death experience. although people remain, the places remain, the memories remain, but not the relationship. Not the way each individual held it in his/her mind.

Sometimes i think for me at least, fear of death, is really fear of separation. fear of divorce, this time from life, from aliveness, from all senses .... unto who knows where.

and strangely enough, i am not really scared of my death, but of death of dear ones.

Death, i feel will take them away for ever, never to come back and they will then just fade into memory, sepia coloured ones.

and i have experienced death many times in my life, through death of near and dear ones, starting at age 3, but never been so anxious about it before.

what does it mean to disjoint from the other? are we ever joined?

and in all these, life, the pulsating life, kicking, alive, screaming, is perhaps slipping through the moments ... tick tock tick tock .....

i am alive, and so are the others, right at this moment. celebrate this moment!

went to my dentist today. he was in a chatty mood. he chatted about his holiday, how being with his happy family gave him a unprecedented sense of contentment that he never experienced before. how he believes today that God may have given him more that he thinks he deserves!

while i was listening to him, a portion of Mahabharata came to mind. there was this question-answer session that happened between Dharamraja and Yudhishthira. one of the questions was "what is the strangest thing in the world'? and Yudhishthira's answer was "every day crores of beings are dying in this world, but the rest of the world continues to behave as though they are going to live for ever".

There is such a truth in this line. I read it many times before, but this time it struck me quite forcefully.

Death! a word that i have been with for a while ......

bell rings ... guests have arrived. will have to write about this some other time.

bye for now!