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.
