Of Life & Loss

There are days when you can sit under the winter sun and see your whole life flash across your eyes; when the distant bustle of moving traffic, the chirp of the birds or the whistle of the trees add a strange melancholy to the universe.

It is surprising how there can be so much grief and sadness everywhere you look and yet life never slows down. It will march ahead at the same unrelenting pace and you’ll have no option but to keep pace with it.

But above all, it’s surprising how it will knock you down harder than you thought possible, and with the same breath show you the strength to rise up again.

Death of someone you’ve loved unconditionally your whole life is a powerful learning experience. It is humbling, and it helps you realize things nothing else ever would. It tells you the greatest human gift is the ability to adjust to almost anything, to accept the worst and to embrace it. It teaches you that Death is the hardest thing; not for those who have passed, but for those who are left behind. You’d never understand the inexhaustible ability of time to fix everything till you walk into a familiar room once again and do not feel weird at the strange unfamiliarity to it. You don’t realize how uncertain, unpredictable and astonishingly terrible life can be until you get that call in the middle of a meeting or the middle of the night and just like that, every thing around you dissolves in smoke and the world goes blank.

But above all, it tells you Life is never ending and transient; death but a negligible incident and that it shouldn’t ever mean the end.

I lost my Dadi- or Maa, as every one called her- on 28^th January, 2018. I lost my Nanajee on 3^rd February, 2018. It’s been one long never-ending day with no concept of time and space. If I look back, I’ll never know where it started and I don’t know how it will end. I have breathed and I’ve soldiered on, but I don’t remember the last time I lived.

My Nani- or Chachi as everyone has ever called her- died on 1^st June 2015. I was 21 back then, and I still remember that day clear as ever. Nanajee, at 91, was frail and not in the best of health but had nonetheless made the journey to the hospital just so that he could meet her once again. I was never as heartbroken as I was that day when I saw him slump in the chair next to her, hold her and sob, ‘Tu chali gayi. Ab mera kya hoga paro?’ It gives me immense satisfaction that after almost 3 long years of Separation, the grand old man will meet Chachi again, only in a better place. Nanajee worried about everything and everyone his entire life; and it is reassuring how for the first time in probably 75 years he is free from that tension he carried everywhere.

Maa and Dadaji had a love marriage; and by definition a 64-year long love affair. Once, not long ago when we asked her to tell us how it started, she said, ‘Humare zamane mein, Chajhe mein se maine inhe dekha; chajhe mein se inhone mujhe dekha. Aur bas, pyaar ho gaya.’

And so all Dadaji does now is sit on his bed and think. I remember him saying ‘Ab ye toh chali gayi. Jee nahi lagta,’ two days after she left us and it breaks my heart. He’s the only one now. My last connection to a phase of life that very few are blessed to experience over such a long period of time.

It’s going to take time before I can walk into their rooms again and not notice they aren’t there anymore. It’ll take time before I get used to not looking at their face, or talking to them. It’ll take time before I stop regretting how I didn’t meet them enough; or get used to the realization that I’ll never meet them again.

And while it’ll change life as I know it, Death will never affect that old life I’ve lived with them. That will remain untouched; unchanged. I’d still talk of them like I’ve always had, as easily as ever; the household name they always have been. Life is unbroken. Life is continuity. And just because they aren’t here anymore doesn’t mean they cannot be a part of it.

All is well.

I love you.