A few deaths

Some dreams just don’t fade like the reality; they don’t glare in either, but creeps in and freaks you out. Some dreams about a few I knew haunt me. Some are dead, some alive. Some in a trance, some in a deep despair and some like in the dream I dreamt the other day about an elderly- good- woman-friend of him. She was naked and looked pale like a pearly white ghost. Her body glowed like the moon on a starless night. Her breasts were full and looked sagged. Her stomach showed her youth replaced with folds of fat. She looked heavenly with a calmness that only the blessed-dead could have. I felt happy for her, but all the while guilty for having imagined her that way. I wonder why I dreamed her death, for she is the still-healthy living woman.

Deaths have always scared the day lights out of me. I was scared, haunted, rather to an extent possessed by death all through my growing up days. I have more wondered about death, as where people would go after life. How someone who lived all their life could, just disappear to nowhere after death.

The first death I saw was that of my neighbour uncle, who died of a heart-attack, I still remember how shocked and frozen, I was when I saw him first with his head tied with a white cloth and cotton filled in his nostrils. Will that be done to me once when I die? It disturbed me to know that people would be taken to heaven that way. I ran from the place and went to my bedroom and hid under the cot, thinking that I could evade death. I remember how I hid under the blankets on my bed and peeped out of the window to see him been taken to the heavenly abode.

Deaths scared me only, till I hadn’t met it. The first death for which I cried was for Tiger, a faithful dog of mine. She died having lived her life; it was the first stab of pain for a ten year old. I couldn’t understand what it would be then for me, to be a ten year old and to cry and grieve for the loss of a loved one. All I knew then and now was; it hurts. I look back from then till now, I learnt that with every death, a part of me inevitably dies, I bury a part of myself and it creates a vacuum in me. An emptiness that turns to a scar in me, a wound that I wish time heals, knowing otherwise that, Till death do us apart.

As I grew up, I understood one thing; death is a great-leveller of life. It teaches us love and humility, and with every death I have learnt to love more and be more humble. I have learnt to love everyone around for they may not be alive to be loved tomorrow or I may not be alive to hate them today. It has humbled me, for I have learnt the value of life through death. How I wish I could trade in these lessons for the life of a dead-few.

The scene of her lying clad in her angelic white bride wear in her coffin, ever smiling her sweet smile to the world of her loved ones. I wish God could have understood the value of love, if then He wouldn’t have taken her with him, the scene of a middle-aged mother, knowing well that her orphaned-son had no-one to love and to be loved, the death of a grand-father who gave away his old age to the pain of cocktails of radiation and chemotherapy rather than the loving company of his grandchildren, the death of a brother whose youthful life was wasted in drugs. It is the way life is learnt through a few deaths.

Life is when you know that death doesn’t stop things, it doesn’t end a relationship, but how the cursed few learn to carry the life of the dead in them. Life is when it sharply pains at the stab of a twinge of a remembrance of the long-gone-loved one and a tear or two is dropped and you brush it aside with your finger and turn aside, Smile gently and offer the prayer. I Love You.

A letter you will never read

I lay here on the sofa in my drawing room awake to the sense of being alive in the thoughts of my dead mother. There are times, when I wished she was here with me in this very home where we loved to hate each other and lived a life of lies. Lost in the oblivion, I sat looking at the fan in the ceiling, my mind swirls to certain moments in my life, I feel bad to know that I had been worse to her, there is a painful lump in my throat, my heart gnaws in pain at the very thought of those days. I wish I could ease this numbing pain. I wish I can get rid of this guiltiness of nothing and the nothingness of the guilt that this life had for me to offer.

Dear Mom,

Wish I had written this letter a few years ago, when you could have possibly read this to know that your son loves you, no matter what happened between us. Remember the first letter I wrote in my fourth standard summer vacation camp, rather that was the last letter too. I know I have wronged you, I had never been a son to you, never loved you, never let you love me. but honestly you have never known your son. What happened in our life, which made us hate each other in such vehement hostility? Have you ever wondered how difficult it was for me to live under one roof and still pass each other day as strangers?

You never had time to think about these things, you had your son, who was the world to you. What did I do in life? what was wrong in a nine-year old boy to expect his dad and mom live together? I don't understand this mom, well for that matter I don't understand anything you did in your life, How can you stand to see dad with another woman? you let him live a life with another woman, when you know very well that he cheated you and walk out of the family abandoning the two kids? And more of that, you and him being that good friends even after divorce. I honestly wonder, did you expect your nine year kid to make sense out of all this and then realize that one plus one, not only makes two, but also something that is not one, but actually two. It took me time to understand things and more importantly to put them in perspectives and understand that my mom and dad are divorced, but still love each other.

I knew mom, you were more understanding with dad, you loved him so much that you didn't really mind him, loving another woman. I was the one who didn't understand you and dad. There were times, when you had plainly ignored me and my pain of being the left-over of the love you shared with him. I understood that he was that good friend for you and the husband who felt it was more important for him to bring down his family to ruins, and then expect his kid to understand that it was man enough on his part to part his family. But mom, where you ever there for me to hold me, to ease my pain, help me grow up, ease my adolescent agonies, help me come up with my teen-aches.

Yet I lived life on my own terms, had a dad for name-sake, who felt it was important for me to have a constant male-companion, he was there in my greater-part of life as an unwanted mute spectator, who felt me as a mere awkward acquaintance, who made it a point to be just there in all occasions. I never had a proper father-son conversation with him in all this years. Let me tell you one thing, I just cannot accept him as my father in my life, knowing very well that he had shattered you and your life by a gross betrayal which I cannot just forget or forgive. Also I found it hard to accept you as a mother who would just willfully accept her husband's decision to live with other woman. I lived in a fuss of constant anger, frustration, despair, solitude and a constant longing for love and a quest to know what made my dad and mom decide to part ways and bring to ruins a decade of wedded bliss.

I remember that august evening, when you were about to leave to delhi. I was late from dad's place. I totally forgot that you had your flight at 1 AM, I came home around 11. The first thing you asked me as usual was whether I had dinner. I answered a usual I-don't-care-a-damn-why-you-bother-me NO. I didn't expect that you would take pain to fix up a dinner for me at the last minute. It rather irritated me, knowing that you still care for me and I just couldn't bring myself either to love you or feel grateful to you. And worst of all, you choosing to make rotis then, When you served rotis to me, you very well understand me, by my mere flinching reaction. And still you decided your luck with idlies and chutney.

I came to the kitchen frustrated, to find you cooking when you were already late for the air-port. I shouted at you for no reason. I was rather wild, came behind the counter and threw the vegetable board down, knowing very well that would make you hurt your fingers with the knife. I saw the blood staining the floor, I took the first-aid kit and got the gauze cloth and cotton to bandage you. I tried to hold your hand and help you, you reluctantly got out of my hold and turned to me with tears welled up in your eyes. When I tried to comfort you, you shrinked away from me and sat down the counter and started crying. You drifted away and sobbed heavily into your lap, I wish I could hold you and make up for every wrong I did. I wished you would take me in your arms and let me drown in your love and ease my life out of the hell I made. But you didn't. Instead You again left me. In a minute you sprang up and left the kitchen. I sat there dumbfounded. I sat there still, watching you move inside the house to get ready for your flight. I heard a distant sound of the screeching of the reversing of the car.

Three days later, I awoke to a phone call from Neethu aunty to know that you passed away in your sleep. It was a massive cardiac-arrest. You appeared calmer and prettier than ever. I couldn't forgive myself for our last day. I still keep asking bo-bo whether you spoke anything about me after you left to delhi. He maintains that You spoke nothing. I wish you had spoken something about me. What did we achieve in our life with all this hatredness? I wish I can shout aloud and tell the world that my mom loves me. Never once in your life, you told me that you loved me or made me feel warm and important. But why mom?

All that I have in memory of our lives is the sight of dad playing with little leila, you in kitchen cooking, either singing or humming a favorite tune of yours, the smell of dad's old spice lotion and the smell of cuticura talcum on you, me sitting in your lap when you read from those tattered books, or when you and dad going for those long walks, me holding each of yours hand. Till Today when ever I see the couch, all I could remember is the sight of you lying dreamily across and reading a book. You're so much in me mom, that I hate to admit that you're no more with us and that I never loved you.

PS ***A Draft of a story that i'm experimenting with***