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.