Grief sets in

4th Feb 2018, 7 am, phone rings, half asleep I observe it’s Mom,..she doesn’t call me so early unless I am going for a tour, interview or something important in my life..it was not a special day that I could remember. I picked and everything froze upon listening to the 4 words, “Sonu, baooji nahi rahe”. Whatever she said post that is not there in my memory, for the entire world seemed insignificant. Was it gravity that all of a sudden overpowered to clamp me firmly to the bed? No, it was the grief that sank in. That’s precisely when I realized how tangible grief is, how inconspicuously giant it is that once it gets into you, you lose the ability to even carry yourself forward. Everything comes to a standstill. That’s what had happened to me at that very moment.

Something started fighting with the force that rendered that immobility. A hope, hope to see him off for the last time. That’s when I realized how inconspicuously magnanimous hope is, that it can give you strength in the darkest and weakest of the times. Hope helped me carry that grief and myself to the airport, go through counters find flights, request for a seat in departing flights, ending up waiting for an hour to get next flight to Delhi.

Hope, I realized comes with a strange dose of anesthetic – dose of an effort. Effort somehow helps you forget the pain you are in and focus on the hope that helped you carry the grief. All through that process of making efforts running out of house, reaching airport, finding a way to reach home and meet my grandfather before he turns to ashes, I was numbed enough to hold the grief and yet have the strength to drag myself forward. Effort brought a fight, fight against the chaos that was trying to prevent me from reaching home, including against the ones who were determined to see him off forever before dusk. I told them I am coming, I knew my parents will make them wait.

Once you have made all the needed efforts to keep the hope alive, a pause creeps in. Pause, I realised is an ally of grief. It boosts the strength of the grief, makes you feel heavier, tries to tear your strength apart – bit by bit, moment by moment. The one hour of wait, and the duration of the flight added a lot of strength to the grief that had settled deep inside my existence. It felt like the pause had initiated some process of setting the system on a fire of sort. Your eyes burn, you tend to throw out, heartaches, a pressure seems to build up.

All of a sudden, you find out-pour joining you to fight the added strength of grief. The pressure is released through eyes and body through tears and sweat. The pause becomes your strength, for you use it to rekindle every memory stacked in the mind (for the logical) and in the heart (for the emotional). Remember the person, smile, cry, outpour.

I live in Pune, to make a living for the family living in remote corners of Punjab. That’s not the struggle, that’s a journey which we often go through (willingly or unwillingly) to satisfy our intellectual or family needs (depends on where you fall on the spectrum). This struggle is about realizing that it’s 1pm and you have only managed to reach Delhi. There are 400kms to go, less than 5 hours before sun-set. You struggle to think of what to do next. This struggle seemed a weird element, it helped avoid a standstill but kept inviting the fear of failure to see baooji for one last time. I rang up the to everyone again. Dropped messages of begging for a day’s wait to farthest sitting relatives on the globe, hoping their word might make a difference. And I decided not to enter Delhi and rather pick a train from outskirts to an intermediate spot between Delhi and my city (Fazilka) hoping to avoid traffic. Struggle kept the hope alive, but fear was settling in as well. At 1:45pm the last leg of journey began. Struggle is indeed a strange element.

It’s ~ 3pm, Phone rings in, elder brother on the call. You come to know, they have started preparing the “body” for the rites. Train halts in next few minutes as if it couldn’t bear with what was inevitable. You know it’s more than 300km to go..a realization confronts.. all of a sudden you lose all the hope, grief starts spreading its expand to overpower you. You know you won’t make it. You won’t be able to see him off. All that will be left is ashes.

Human being is a remarkable system. It always finds ways to fight the adversities – through hope, effort, struggle and then I realized through anger as well. You know you are stuck, you know you won’t see baooji ever again, but as if to fight this grief off for one last moment, you start feeling anger. An anger over the decision of not to wait for a day, an anger against my own inability to leave for airport even earlier, an anger over my decision of not trying a taxi and fight through the traffic. Anger, it kept vortexing inside, trying to keep the grief from overpowering me yet.

Mamaji (mother’s brother) rang up, it was a video call. The funeral procession had started. You watch your grandfather on a motorized vehicle, covered in flowers, petals, garlands, herds of people around. People for whom he lived, with whom he exchanged the stories of his life, whom he gave advises, from who he might have taken few advises, people who frequented him at our home, people who rarely visited him in years that had gone,..there were people of all kinds around…lucky enough to see him for one last time, pay tribute.

You breakdown. A flood of tears engulfs you. Everything thing is simply too heavy to process. You realize you have lost both your grand parents in succession of 1.5 years. You lost the pillar who kept supporting the family when he could have retired peacefully long long back. You have lost someone who has been a part of your every single day you have lived on this earth, someone whose voice and blessings were calming against all the odd days you have lived through. Someone who was so much and you have lost that part of life. Never to be seen again, only to be felt and remembered. The breakdown amplifies upon watching the pire. You are shaken to your very core. There is no anger, no hope, no fear, no despair, only tears and breakdown. You can’t get over this feeling ever. It stays with you.

You reach your home. It’s 2 am, yes that’s how late I reached home. It’s an eerie silence. You disappear in that silence. Some lost their grandparents, for some they were the parents..You accept. You come back with a part of your heart taken over by grief, that shows itself in moments like these and then you disappear again into the everyday life, forgetting how insignificant you are, chasing things, fame, ego, pride, positions and people that will not matter in the end. I remember my grandparents for their love, I remember them for their aura, I remember them for their strength, I remember them for their dedication, I remember them for their values, I remember them for their souls, for their sacrifices… that’s all it boiled down to in the end…you are still there, for we are here.