You won't know it till you experience it

"I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time." I realised one thing through the course of my life so far. You can never teach anyone anything. When people say life is an experience, they are right. Only experiences teach people lessons that they will carry forward with them for the rest of their lives. I guess, until it happens to you, you never know how it feels and no one can ever expect you to either. Everything is emotion or experience related. When we give someone advice to prevent them from getting hurt or doing something that they would probably regret, the advice only become wise words for them. It is not something that they will understand the meaning of. Lately, a lot of people have been reassuring me that they are there for me. I have never gotten the amount of support that I have got in the recent years and I am very grateful for it. But though I know that there are a lot of people I can count on, it doesn't stop me from feeling lonely. It't not the physical feeling of being lonely, its a feeling that I can't explain to anyone. It's a combination of anger, frustration and being upset. I don't want anyone to understand how I feel because for that to happen, they would have to go through similar things themselves and that is something I wouldn't wish for anyone. 

I remember as a child, I used to speak to my parents about how we were a very different family from all the others I knew. For starters, my parents were the coolest people I knew, literally. My mother used to wear hot shorts and a sleeveless top, sunglasses with a beer in her hand and race me up and down the beach in Alibaug. She beat me every single time no matter how old she was. She would scare me at times by saying things that I never thought parents would say to their children especially their daughter who lives in an Indian society. My parents were ahead of their generation and way ahead of the mindset of their counterparts. Both my parents being only children and me also being an only child, were close knit. I still haven't come across a single other family that has family dynamics like mine. To compensate for not having siblings, my mother got me a dog when I was a year and a half old. That dog became my best friend, my companion and my brother. As I grew up, I taught him how to say please, how to climb onto the bed (which he very rarely did) and a few other commands. In return, he taught his four year old companion how to crawl under the bed and how to growl. I was a happy child. I didn't want siblings. Instead, by the time I was six, I had three dogs. After moving to school and college, I used to speak to my mother every day. And her conversations always started with "hi babes" even if she had already spoken to me twice before on the same day. My father and I used to discuss issues that needed to be resolved and put our head together to find the best solution to whatever needed to be addressed. Both my parents taught me what is right and wrong, but never told me exactly what to do. "Make decisions that you know are right for you and the people around you" I was told.

From everything that I have been taught and gone through in life, there is one thing that I have learnt for sure. No matter how difficult things might get or how easy they may seem, the best way to learn anything in life is to experience it. Not to show sympathy to someone or to empathise with someone but to experience everything first hand. It makes you stronger and it makes you hold your head higher. A lot of my friends lately haven't been happy with what they are doing. Either it is because it is something that they didn't expect or there is something else that they would rather do. But most of them have told me instances in which they have learnt something from what is happening around them. It is something they are glad that they now know about and something that has taught them something new. Now that I have finished my MBA, I often wonder why I joined it in the first place. Sometimes, when I think back, the last two years have been a blur. I hardly remember any of the classes or what was taught in them. But the things I do remember is the different people I encountered and made friends with. These two years were an experience that I wouldn't like to trade with any other. From being absolutely against doing an MBA to being thankful I finally did it, is a journey that is a string of experiences - some good, some not so good, but all of them worth my time. There is nothing in this world that beats what first hand experiences can teach. 

Design, Change and Me - A post written for the India Design Project

Design – the word I heard the most as I was growing up. The meaning of the word changed for me multiple times. As a child, it used to be something that my parents spoke about very often, and discussed over dinner, when they weren’t too busy telling me to swallow my food and “get on with it.” It became a topic that I had witnessed several people have arguments about, as I pranced around the corridors of NID as a child. The conversations I used to overhear revolved around juries, assignments, diploma projects, graduate shows and convocations. I used to wander in and out of the Foundation and Exhibition design studios, watching students working on their projects, listening to music and discussing things with their mentors, two of them being my parents, Nilam Iyer and Siddhartha Ghosh. Several students used to tell me that they were petrified of my mom because she was strict and a perfectionist of sorts. I used to wonder what they were talking about until one day I understood what they meant.I was sitting in the Foundation classroom (which had no walls at the time) and doing my homework, while my mother was conducting a class. Her students were working on their assignments and she was walking around checking their work with a magnifying glass and a ruler. One student called out to her saying he had finished. As she was checking his work, she pointed out to a line he had drawn and said, “this is half a centimeter off the centre, do it again” The students sitting around him exchanged glances and started rechecking all their measurements. Sitting in the corner I wondered how many times the students had to work on their assignments if she didn’t approve of them. On the way home, I asked her why she wanted everything to be so perfect and why she couldn’t just let people be.“You can’t make mistakes when it comes to measuring. They are in a design course for heaven’s sake. If they can’t calculate and measure properly, what’s the point?” she said. I had nothing to say. That day, for the first time in my life, I was glad she didn’t teach me.My father had the most amazing handwriting and everyone knew about it. Wherever I went, people used to tell me how they admired his handwriting, and of course, considering I had horrible writing at the time, it annoyed me. His love for calligraphy used to reflect in the different projects he used to undertake, and the things he used to teach me about presentation. Design was a very integral part of both their lives and was something that both of them held very close to their heart. Be it designing the exhibitions at museums for my father or working with leather, wood and making educational toys for my mother, they were both passionate about design and their work. Design and the understanding of it has changed a lot in the last decade. I remember when I was in school and people used to ask me what my parents did. At hearing the phrase, “they are designers” everyone used to assume that it was fashion designing that their profession entailed. These days, people understand that there are more fields in design than just fashion and they are aware that each sector is becoming increasingly important as the times change.NID as an institute has changed over the years in several ways – the aura of the place, the attitudes, some of the infrastructure and certain procedures, but then again so has design. Designers today, from various colleges and coaching centers across the country, understand design in a different way than what the traditionalists taught and were taught by their mentors. It reflects strongly in their work and attitude towards it. From becoming an extremely creative field, I am starting to feel like there are restrictions being created around design. In my own communication design class in college, I am stunned by the kind of things I was being taught. Design elements are important, but so is creativity. Everyone cannot be called a designer if they are doing the exact same thing as everyone else. NID, back in the day, used to have large open classrooms, whereas now, there are temporary walls and cabins that replace those airy classrooms. It is almost like drawing a box and asking one to think inside it and be creative at the same time. I love seeing the displays in NID where so many of their faculty and ex-students are honoured or visiting NIDUS to see what shape design is taking today. Of course, there is a strange and unsettling feeling of not seeing the old familiar faces smiling at you in the long corridors of the building, but everyone changes or goes some day. It’s the legacy that they leave behind that matters. 

Languages, Dialects and Conversations

Travel has become a commonality. Living like a gypsy has become a reality, one that I am finding quite interesting. Of course, needless to say, it gets quite tiring but there are so many things to do when you are travelling - reading a book, listening to music, completing incomplete assignments, listening to what people around are saying and sometimes having conversations of your own. I have started enjoying travelling by flight especially when the aircraft goes through air-pockets or turbulence. It reminds me of the thrill of the uncertainty of life. Recently, as I was travelling from Mumbai to Delhi, there was a lot of turbulence on the way and we had been warned about it from the start. I was sitting by the window looking at the different colours of clouds that we were passing when suddenly a huge flash caught my eye. For a second I thought someone in the flight was taking pictures but then realized soon enough that it was lightening. We were about to go through a thunder storm. I got very excited and took out my phone to take pictures. I started noticing the people sitting around me. They shifted uncomfortably in their seats, quickly fastened their seat belts and sat down with their arms across their chest or holding their children. The gentleman next to me quietly started praying in Bengali. I was probably the only one in the aircraft who was laughing. Not because it was funny but rather because it was thrilling.  

People say travel teaches you a lot. It does. It teaches you how to get along with people you have never met before, how to keep yourself occupied, how to be patient (especially you have co-passengers who you find annoying) and a lot of other things to teach you mostly about yourself. Its amazing to hear the change in languages when you land in a new airport. The happiness of hearing names like Borivili, Kurla, Vashi and Nariman Point when you step out of the aircraft and take in the smell of salt and the humidity of when you land in Bangalore and hear people talking in Kannada asking the cab drivers if they will go to Marathahalli or Koramangala. Going to different place has a different sort of excitement for the person going there. Dehradun, for me, only starts when I see the line of trees lead up to the path going down to my house. I love listening to the different languages that people speak while in transit. Being someone who understands different parts of Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi and English, its interesting to listen to conversations that people have. Most of the time, the conversations revolve around current affairs to do with politics or Bollywood. Interestingly, I have never been travelling to any place where someone around me isn't talking about Modi. In the last two years, every trip that I have embarked on has brought me across people who are talking about the changing landscapes of India and how Modi has politically and economically made such a big change to the country. Its also a lot of fun to notice how people dress at airports, stations and the various cities around the country. Its almost like each of these places has an unsaid dress code. Airports - people are normally very well dressed. A lot of girls will be adorned in accessories, wearing skirts or shorts with a top. Boys will be in shorts, three-fourths or jeans, People travelling for business will be very well dressed in shirts, trousers and probably a blazer or coat. And then, there will be this relatively large population of newly married women who, no matter what time of the day/night it is, are decked up in bangles, earrings, necklaces, payals, heavy make-up and very dressy clothes. Everyone has a different way of behaving with the people they are with or around and that is the most entertaining and interesting part to watch. I guess I have learnt a lot about myself travelling around and its something that I think everyone should take out the time and do.          

Journeys: Part III

My summer internship was at its peak. With only one week left, I was getting ready to start travelling across the country again. I had already utilized some of the weekends during the internship visiting Alibaug and Goa. Dehradun was next on the list. It was time to go home and spend time with the family. I was missing my dogs (I can never go on too long without seeing them) and living in an apartment was making me homesick. It was Sunday morning and I called up my grandmother. As always, we had a funny conversation revolving around her personal helicopter (she doesn’t have one), broomsticks, and when I was planning on coming home.

“Next weekend Nani,” I told her when she asked me for the third time in that conversation.

“Come soon,” she said, “and be good.”

That evening, I decided to check on my father as well. As I called him up, I wondered if he might be sleeping. He wasn’t and picked up the phone on the third ring.

“Hello Boojie” (my father had weird names for me)

“Hi, how are you? I asked.

“Every time you call me, the first thing you always ask is how I am,” he said in a teasing manner. “You don’t have anything else to ask me or what?”

“Acha okay, what are you doing Babu?”

“I’m reading the Bengali Satyajit Ray detective book you gave me for my birthday,” he replied, cheerfully.

I hadn’t heard my father’s voice this cheerful in a really long time. It gave me a feeling of warmth and comfort. ‘Finally, he has started doing something he loves’ I thought to myself. We conversed for another ten minutes as I bought ingredients to make chicken curry for dinner. As I walked back home, swinging my bag, the excitement within me was reaching its brim. I was almost done with a nine-week internship and this break felt deserved. After dinner, my flat mates and I sat around the table talking about the trips we were looking forward to and pulling each other’s leg. We listened to music for a while and then finally retired for the day. The next morning, I woke up early. I lay awake in bed for a while, set my alarm for 9 am and went back to sleep. At 8:45, my phone rang. I felt around for my phone with closed eyes. As I brought the phone closer to my face, I saw the screen flashing with my father’s name and picture. I thought it was a little early for him to be calling but didn’t read too much into it. I answered the phone with a sleepy “hello.”

“Hello, Mita! Saab to zameen pe behosh pade hai,” a panic stricken voice quickly said.

“Kya?!” I almost screamed back and sat up immediately. My flat mates, who were sleeping in the other room, heard me and woke up. Either my maid or her husband (I do not remember who) had probably gone into the house to see why the dogs were not let out and to give them their breakfast. They found my father unconscious instead.

“Ambulance bulao” I said and put the phone down.

I called up my uncle and requested him to please go home to check what had happened. In the same minute, I called the driver to ask him to call the ambulance and to make sure no one told my grandmother anything. I didn’t want her panicking for no reason. I quickly had a bath with my phone on ‘loud’ hoping someone would call and tell me what happened.

I decided to go to office early and finish off the work I was assigned so that incase my father got hospitalized, I could take an afternoon flight back to Dehradun. On the way to the office, while I was in the auto with my classmate, Namratha, also interning in the same agency, my uncle called.

“Mita?”

“Yes, did you take him to the hospital?”

“He passed away.”

I could not hold it back any longer. I burst into tears in the auto. The driver looked at me in his mirror wondering what had suddenly happened. Namratha hugged me. As I entered office five minutes later, I composed myself, wiped away my tears and signed into the entry book. I walked up to the second floor where I was assigned a seat, went to the computer and started booking my tickets. All the students interning in the agency from my class gathered around me. They got all the formalities for me leaving the internship, abruptly, done so quickly that I didn’t even need to think about it. I had an evening flight to Delhi followed by a taxi drive to Dehradun. My roommate, Ishani, booked herself on a flight from Mumbai to Delhi while my boyfriend, Kritarth, flew with me from Bangalore. The flight was long and my head was spinning thinking about various things. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I watched the skyline as we neared Delhi and realized we were caught in a storm. The lightening outside the aircraft window looked beautiful but my mind was occupied with other things. At around 10 pm, Ishani, my father’s student from NID– Sudha , Kritarth and I left Delhi in the taxi. Somewhere halfway, we stopped at a dhaba to eat. It was difficult to digest the rice, dal and mixed vegetable. I could feel the lump in my throat getting bigger. As we approached Dehradun, a feeling of being scared took over me. I don’t know what I was scared of – seeing my father in a condition that I never thought I would or being alone from now on. As the taxi entered the lane leading up to my house, I could feel my heart racing and not in a good kind of way. I could feel myself tremble and fight back tears. A sudden chill ran up my spine as I neared the gate to my house and saw my dogs sitting at the front porch. My uncle had told me not to go to my house until daybreak. I asked the taxi driver to drop us to my grandmother’s house. As the front door opened, I went to my grandmother and hugged her tight.

She gave me a kiss on my cheek. “You’re a very brave girl.”

We sat in the verandah. This entire thing felt too familiar for my comfort. I knew exactly how the day was going to proceed and I was dreading it. After finishing our tea, I insisted that I wanted to go home. Nani said, “Okay, but come back soon.” I promised her I would be back in fifteen minutes and started walking towards the house. As I entered the gate, the dogs ran to greet me. I hugged all three of them. I felt horrible for having left them out in the garden all night. I hated the thought of how they would have reacted when my father had collapsed. As I reached the door of the house, Sebastian, the driver came out and held my hand. He took me into the house that smelled uneasy and full of the smoke of incense sticks. My house had never reeked like this before. Nothing was registering in my brain. It was like I had left my conscience on one of the trees I passed by while coming home. I felt like I was walking around, dead inside. As I climbed the same flight of steps I carried my mother down, I saw a white sheet completely covering my father’s body in the middle of the living room. There was ice, melting away slowly beneath him. I felt numb. I looked at him for a few seconds and then walked out into the balcony. Sebastian took me back into the living room and told me how he was discovered, pointing out to the locations in the dining room.

“Unka sir is side tha aur bahot khoon nikal raha tha sir ke peeche se,” he pointed to the floor and said.

I could see the blood stains on the black mosaic floor. I looked at it for a while and then turned to walk out of the house. I stole a glance at my father. His head was facing me and I could see the huge blood stain on the sheet. The lump in my throat was back. I went out of the house, patted my dogs on the head and started walking back to Nani’s house. I told everyone to sleep if they wanted. It was only 5 am and everyone was tired. Somehow, I couldn’t convince myself to even lie down. I decided to go and have a bath and get ready. As I was getting ready, I started wondering what rituals I would have to do. I remembered my father telling me, “When I’m gone, you’ll have to do the last rites.” We were supposed to leave the house at 9 am. At 8:30, I could feel myself starting to tremble again. I had no appetite and no desire to do anything. I walked towards the house and found a large gathering of people, most of whom I recognized. As I entered the gate, I saw all of them turn to look at me. I didn’t know how to react. I smiled. The hearse was parked in the driveway and my dogs were howling from one of the rooms they were put into while everyone was around.

“It’s time” my uncle said to me.

“Mamu, can I do the rituals today? I promised Babu that I would.

He looked at me for a long time and then smiled. Just before the body was to be transferred from the ice onto the stretcher, one of the helpers said, “Mita, aage aa jao.” I stepped ahead towards my father. The man gave me a small box with pieces of metal inside.

“Saab ke muh mein sona daalo.”

My father’s body was covered the entire time. For this ritual to happen, his face needed to be uncovered. As my uncle gently uncovered my father’s face, I gave a loud, shocked gasp and moved swiftly into the other room, being held by Ishani and Kritarth. I started trembling again. His face was dark green. And twice the size it should have been. I calmed down and walked back into the living room. My uncle had put the sona and covered my father’s face with the white sheet.

“Can we please not uncover him again for any of the rituals,” I requested, shocked and scared to death.

I decided that the only way to keep myself composed was to drive myself to the crematorium. Ishani, Kritarth and I got into the car as I drove behind the hearse while Nani came in another car accompanied by her friends. In a third car were Sabin, Gokul and Kaustubh, my friends from college who made sure they were there when I needed them. At the crematorium, around ten people carried the mortal remains of my father from the hearse to the pyre. The priest called me ahead.

“Yeh ghee leke pure shareer pe dalo”

As I took the ghee in my hand and started putting it across my father’s body, I felt his hand move. It was because of the stiffness of the body but I almost jumped at the feeling. I closed my eyes tight and continued until the ghee had finished.

“Ab yeh matke ka pani charo taraf girao aur teen chakkar kaato.”

I had seen my father circling my mother’s pyre with an earthen pot on his shoulder, slowly dropping the water. As I started with the first circle, I felt myself getting drenched with the water. The cold water trickled down the side of my body, partially awakening me from the trance I was in. After the third circle, I was to crack the pot at the head of the pyre. Five minutes later, the priest handed me a long stick with a fire lit on the other end of it.

“Chita ko aag do beti.”

My hands started trembling as soon as I held the lit wooden stick. I lit the pyre and pushed away any thought that dared to enter my mind. As the fire blazed, I stepped aside, watching. I remember when two and a half years ago my mother held my hand watching her father’s pyre burn. And when a year ago my father held my hand and I watched my mother’s pyre burn. Today, I was standing alone, watching my father’s pyre burn. I snapped out of my thoughts and looked around. I could see all my friends wiping their moist eyes and looking at me proudly. I saw my grandmother standing among the gathering. In two years, she had never stood next to the pyre. I went and washed my hands and feet and thanked everyone for coming. Everyone assured me that I wasn’t alone. I got into the car and started driving back to an empty house.

Phone calls came, condolence messages flowed in and everyone said, “You’re being very brave.” I wasn’t being brave. It was a mix of me being used to this happening too often and not being able to believe it. One phone call had the other person telling me how sorry he was that I was now an orphan. It made me think back to when I was standing by the pyre. When I looked up, I saw a new support system made up of my friends. A Facebook post that jolted me back into reality for a while, read, “RIP Nilam and Siddhartha”. I had seen my parents’ names together in a lot of places – marriage certificate, official documents, all my educational documents, on nameplates. But I never imaged seeing their names together with RIP as a prefix. A couple of days ago, I left Dehradun to go back to Bangalore. This time I had only a grandmother to say goodbye to and three dogs who couldn’t understand what was happening.

This time, I won’t make any promises. This time, I won’t have any expectations. But as always, I will go back home. 

Journeys: Part II

It was 6:00 pm and I had just walked through the doors of my office. It was drizzling outside. The Mumbai monsoons had arrived. I saw the screen of my phone flashing. My father was calling. I picked up the phone and went numb after listening to what he had to say. 

“Mumma had a few tests and the results say that she has a tumor in her mouth. She’s got cancer.”

I called my father back a day later and told him that I was moving back to Dehradun. 

“Are you sure? he asked very concerned. You have always wanted to live in Mumbai.” I told him I was sure and that I wanted to be with Mumma. I packed up all my belongings, put them in cartons, booked them onto a train and left for Dehradun the next day. My mind was blank. ‘What is happening to my family?’ I kept thinking. 

The next few months included a surgery removing the left half of my mother’s tongue and a few lymph nodes, rigorous sessions of radiation for six weeks, a lot of pain for my mother and an incredible show of strength on her part. While in hospital, my mother would tell me stories about her college days and childhood while I would listen and wonder why she was being put through so much in life. On 26^th January 2015 with Republic Day, my mother’s last session of radiation was conducted. She was tested again and proclaimed ‘free of cancer.’ She and my father asked me to go back to Mumbai. I went back and started working again. After a month, it was March again. Since the 13th of March was my grandfather’s death anniversary, my parents and grandmother asked me if I would come home. I was more than happy to oblige. I booked my tickets and travelled back. The journey was peaceful for most part. I wasn’t going crazy thinking about how my mother would cope with cancer or how the family was going to deal with the passing away of my grandfather. 

On the eve of March 13^th, I saw my mother sitting on the deewan in the living room. She had her face in her hands and was sobbing. I hugged her with all my strength and let her cry. As she hugged me back, she cried harder. I knew she missed her father and I didn’t know what to say to console her. I didn’t know what I would have said to anyone who had lost a parent. Just thinking about it was terrifying. That midnight, while my father slept in his room and I lay down in mine, I heard my mother stirring around the living room upstairs. A few seconds later, Joan Baez’s voice filled the house. I knew my mother listened to this CD when she missed my grandfather the most. I went up the stairs presuming that my mother would be sitting on the deewan, crying. As I opened the door to the room, she looked up at me and smiled. “Come,” she said and gestured for me to sit next to her. She put her arm around me and started telling me stories that she remember from her childhood about her father. I looked at her, awestruck, and listened on. At about 3 am, my eyes started drooping. I went into my room and went to sleep. That morning, my mother and I went to my grandmother’s house. At the bottom of her garden, we had planted a white Camellia flower in memory of my grandfather. My grandmother wanted to go down to where the flower was planted. I held her hand and took her down. It was a longish sort of walk for her given her age and fading eyesight. The day passed with us talking about my grandfather and his memories. That evening, my mother went to my grandmother’s house. 

“Mummy, I am going down to Daddy’s Camellia, are you coming?” 

My grandmother tried to contest by saying, “but I just went this morning.” I sat there and laughed at the light argument. Finally, my grandmother gave in and all three of us walked down the stony path to the Camellia, joking about how my grandmother had become lazy. As we started walking back up to the house, my grandmother said, “Bas, enough now. I am not coming down here for another year.”

“You wont have to,” my mother and I said in unison. 

That night, I fell sick. I couldn’t move off my bed and I called up my mother, knowing her phone would be next to her. She came up to my bedroom and helped me get up. She nursed me, sat with me till I felt better, gave me juice and water, covered me with a blanket and put me to sleep. As I drifted off to sleep I thanked her.

“You don’t need to thank me. I am your mother. I’ll always be there for you,” she said, softly.

15^th March last year: ‘Beware, the ides of March’ as the soothsayer said in Julius Ceaser. My mother wanted me to give her a haircut in the morning. I decided to make a game out of it and called my father. The on-going cricket World Cup inspired us to play cricket on my mother’s head by guessing various things and depending on who won, that person’s side of my mother’s hair would be cut. My poor mother sat there, helplessly watching my father and me. It was my last day at home before I went back to Mumbai. I was to board the train the next morning to go back to work. That evening, I went out to buy edibles for people back in Mumbai. I asked my mother if she wanted anything from outside. 

“Get me spring rolls,” she said, excitedly. She loved spring rolls and most people who knew her well, knew that.

When I came back home, I gave my mother her spring rolls. She took them into the dining room and started eating. I stood in the adjoining kitchen to cook the prawns, another one of my mother’s cravings. She told me how she wanted her prawns cooked…and then suddenly there was silence. Thinking she was probably biting into her spring roll, I didn’t turn to see why. I heard a loud thud against the table and turned around. My mother had slumped into the chair. I ran to her screaming. I shouted urgently for my father. Both of us rubbed her hands and feet, urgently. 

“Get some water,” my father screamed. I got the water, which my father tried to get my mother to drink. I called the driver and asked him to come as soon as possible. “She must have choked. Lets take her to the hospital,” I told my father panicking. The driver and I carried my mother down the flight of steps and put her into the backseat of the car. My father went with them to the hospital while I followed in the car behind telling myself that she will be fine. On reaching the hospital, I couldn’t see anyone familiar and called up the driver to ask where they were. 

“Emergency,” he said and disconnected the call.

As the door of the emergency room came into sight, I saw the doctor talking to my father. I pulled open the door ready to ask if she was okay. 

“We will only be able to find out the cause of death after the post-mortem,” the doctor continued. 

My father turned to see me standing at the door. He held out his hand towards me. “Mumma passed away.”

I promised my mother that I would never cry in front of my father and that I would always take care of him. I walked out of the emergency and went onto the pavement. I called up my uncle and asked him to come as soon as he could. The news spread so quickly that before I could speak to my father again, I had already gotten condolence calls and messages.

“Come stand at the gate with me, Tats. I need to smoke a cigarette.”

I walked with my father towards the gate of the hospital, holding his hand and feeling him tremble. He lit three cigarettes, one after another. That night was the longest night I remember living. My father was screaming for my mother to come back and there was nothing I could do about it, except keep quiet and listen. 

The next morning, my grandmother sat in her verandah after being told that her daughter had passed away. We prepared ourselves for the funeral. As the ambulance pulled into the driveway, I ran into the back of the garden. I didn’t want to see anything. I didn’t want to hear anything. It was like a never-ending nightmare that I was waiting for someone to wake me up from. No one woke me up. I composed myself and came into the house. I sat next to my mother for a long time asking myself why she left and thinking about how beautiful she looked. 

As we drove to the crematorium on my mother’s last journey, I sat next to my grandmother. She looked at me and said, “You are just as strong as your mother. Looking after everyone else and being strong.” 

At the crematorium, my father performed the rituals. We decided that he would perform the rituals and I would do the immersion and the rituals surrounding it. As I saw my father circling the pyre, I remembered standing in the same place a year ago holding my mother’s hand and listening to her making jokes about her father. And now, she was lying on the pyre, deep in sleep. My father lit the pyre and came and stood next to me. He took my hand in his and hugged me. I realized he was crying but trying to hide it. 

As we entered the house after cremating Mumma, the emptiness engulfed us. We planted a red Camellia next to the white one planted for my grandfather. As I took my Nani down to the place where the flowers were, I remembered my mother and I promising her that she wouldn’t have to come down here for a while. It had been only two days. 

After a month of living with my father, he convinced me to take a break and go somewhere for a while. Mumbai being the place I was most comfortable in, that’s where I went. As I said bye to my grandmother, I saw she was tired. Perhaps tired of losing people, perhaps tired of being alone. As always, she cheerfully told me to come back soon and to be good. My eyes shifted to the red and white Camellia’s gently moving with the wind. As my car pulled out of my driveway, I saw my father standing alone. I thought about my father and grandmother, both of who had lost their partners in the span of a year. As I boarded the flight to Mumbai, I thought of the three of us, all from different generations, all alone, all in different parts of the country. 

I went home in September as it was my mother’s birthday and my father, grandmother and I decided to spend the day together. It was a nice feeling to have what was left of the family together. My next trip happened in March this year, to commemorate my mother’s first death anniversary and my grandfather’s second. Seeing the pattern, I was scared I would lose someone on March 17^th as well. Luckily, that didn’t happen. My mother always used to say, when people die, they die in threes. I didn’t realize that only two people had left me…

Journeys: Part I

Travelling has always been a hobby, a passion and a sort of escapade. Going to a place where I can lose myself, be myself, not be judged and just enjoy the things around me; sometimes, even the company. I remember almost all of my travels from as far back as my memory can take me. My first flight alone was from Delhi to Ahmedabad when I was thirteen. I remember sharing the waiting lounge with Dia Mirza and desperately trying to figure out where I had seen her. One of my favourite trips was to Jaipur, Ajmer and Ranthambore with my maternal grandparents and parents on the occasion of my grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Being an animal lover, naturally Ranthambore was my favourite part of this trip. I remember staying in a tent with cots, eating the most delicious meals and going on safaris to look for animals. We spotted quite a few, but the tigress teaching her three cubs to climb the trunk of a tree was my favourite. Several journeys followed after, mostly unaccompanied. Dehradun – Delhi – Mumbai – Bangalore became regular cities to come and go from. But in the last three years, I have made especially haunting trips to Dehradun.  And I never imagined I would.

Two years ago on the 13^th of March, I was in Mumbai spending an afternoon attempting to make aloo parathas. My phone started buzzing and I saw my mother calling. I picked up the phone in the excitement of telling her how I was mastering the art of making round parathas. My mother’s voice was so composed that I would never have figured out that there was something wrong had she not told me.

“I think you should come home babes. The doctors say Nana has less than 24 hours left. He’s sinking.”

I kept shut for a while. I didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t worry, Mumma. I’ll come. You don’t worry about anything, okay? I’ll manage. I’ll come as soon as possible.” I was desperately trying to fight back tears.

I thought being brave for my mother was the only way I could help her get through this. My mind was racing. I didn’t know what I should do. How would I get home? A few minutes later, my father, who was in Baroda at the time, called me up to tell me when he would be reaching Delhi and asked me to book a flight that reached around the same time.

After a long flight and a short wait at Delhi airport, I wondered if I should have called my mother and asked what was happening. I decided against it and just as I looked up from my the screen of my phone, I saw my father coming towards me from the arrivals. He gave me a brief hug and called up my mother. As he was on the phone with my mother, I got a message from my cousin.

“I am so sorry to hear about your grandfather. I hope you’re okay.”

I realized that my grandfather had passed away, probably while I was on the flight to Delhi. I looked up to see my father putting his phone away. He came towards me, held my hand and said, “Nana’s passed away.” I fought back tears and replied with an “I know.”

We got into the taxi that was supposed to take us from Delhi airport to Dehradun. It was already 10 pm and my father said we would probably reach home at 4 in the morning. He asked me to go to sleep in the taxi but both of us knew better. As I settled myself into the back of the taxi, I reminisced the memories I had with my grandfather. He had gotten me my fourth dog when everyone was against it. He got himself a dog much to my grandmother’s dismay and asked me to look after it in the initial days. A crossword aficionado, he was a man with skin of leather and a heart of gold. He took up all the expenses of my education from when I was in primary school and continued all the way till I finished my Bachelors degree. He supported me with all my passions; dreams and he pushed me to achieve more than I thought I could. He was the perfect example of a man who worked hard to get what he wanted.

I rubbed my eyes as we pulled into the driveway of my house. My mother came down the stairs to greet us. I hugged her tight and kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank God you’re home”, she said to my father and me.

We didn’t sleep that dawn. As soon as the sun started rising, I went off to my Nani’s house. Having just lost her husband, she looked lonely but fiercely strong. She was sitting on her verandah drinking her morning tea when I entered. I hugged her for a long time.

It was 9 am when the ambulance came into the gate with my grandfather’s mortal remains. Just as it halted, I heard Nana’s dog (the one he brought without consent) let out a loud, shrill howl. A lot of their friends had gathered around to be with my nani and to help with the rituals. My mother being an only child was supposed to do the rituals but she asked my uncle (my grandfather’s nephew) to do it instead. On my grandfather’s final journey, as the hearse moved towards the crematorium, I sat in the car following it. My mother was on one side of me and my grandmother on the other side. I looked at the two strongest women I knew; one who had lost her father and the other who had lost her husband. I saw them compose themselves for what was ahead. The cremation was conducted while I held my mother’s cold hands and stood next to the pyre. My father helped my uncle with the rituals while my grandmother’s friends kept her company sitting under a tree at the other end of the crematorium. As we watched the pyre being lit, my mother started joking about how my grandfather would have hated the lack of uniformity in the way the wood was placed on the pyre. I looked at her proudly.

My third year board exams were around the corner and I had to go back to Mumbai. A week after the immersion of the ashes, I went to my grandmother’s house to say goodbye. She smiled and told me to come soon. I promised I would. She hugged me and told me to “be good.” As I walked out of the door leading out of her house, I missed my grandfather. He always kissed my cheek when I was going away from home.

“Bye sweets, take care and come back soon,” he would say.

I turned around to look at my grandmother who was standing alone at the doorway waving to me. ‘I’ll be back soon’ I thought as I wiped away my tears. I’ll come back and stay with her. As I left home thinking about how lonely my grandmother would be, I saw my parents standing together outside the house. I smiled at the thought of them being there for each other. I knew I would come back to them soon enough. I got onto the flight leaving behind my parents, grandmother and dogs with the hope of returning as soon as I could to be with them again. I looked forward to the travel back to Mumbai hoping to encounter new things.

I was back home five months later…for a reason I never expected.