Stories Of Death

Stories Of Death

"A well lived Life....looks forward to Death. A painless, sudden death. No suffering. When people around you don't feel you are a burden, financially or otherwise."  Ajji kept reiterating every time she got a chance. Her ever growing snow-white hair that she massaged with hot coconut oil filled in a coconut shell, dentures she had started using after making more than full use of her permanent teeth and her now cataract free eyes that she used to read news on television - betrayed anything but her age.  For us, listening to her talk about Death was almost a ritual every year when we went to the village. It evoked mystique, a sense of awe as she narrated how people from the family met their maker, and Ajji's timelessness. She remained constant across births and deaths - transcending generations - and perhaps would continue to.

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" I always sensed Death closing in on your Father" Ajji told my Mother, for the umpteenth time. It had happened thirty five years ago and the emotion had been sucked out of the incident long ago. For someone like me, who had never seen my Mother's Appa, Ajji's narration seemed to paint a picture of my Grand-Dad's death, just like other incidents painted a picture of his life.

"There was something ailing him mentally for quite a few months. He had lived a happy life. Sons and daughters were doing well. That premature death of your brother....may be" Ajji said, looking at my Mother. The mention of that premature death still tugged at our heartstrings - though we hadn't seen our uncle. 

"He probably had a premonition of his Death the previous evening. And it was all over...next morning"  Ajji said, her tone respectfully sombre. We had heard the story multiple times from her and also from my Mother. But we fell prey to the mystique, as always. "What happened Ajji...?" I asked, as the rest of the audience waited in silence.

"I suppose he had a minor heart attack that evening...almost as if Lord Yama was preparing the noose and was trying to find out how tight or loose it needs to be. He complained of severe chest pain. But by the time we reached him, he had recovered. 'I almost thought I'd die alone' he said, sobbing. I think he knew he'd die. But he didn't want to die without anyone by his side..." Ajji paused for effect, we thought. But we could see that there was a drop of tears at the corner of her eyes. It was unusual, but it didn't stop her flow.

"He was reluctant to go to town and visit the Doctor. But driver Ahmed wouldn't agree. He insisted on a check up. He drove your Grand-Pa to the town. Doctor Basappa never minced words. There were no machines or sophisticated equipment at that time in Mandya. He was still the best Doctor around. Basappa calmed your Grand-Pa down and re-assured him. But he took Ahmed to the side and told him there wasn't much time left for Grand-Pa. Ahmed at that time didn't realise "not much time" was a few hours. He didn't mention the conversation to us till way later. "

My Mother took over, invariably, at this point.  "Anna came back. He looked weak. The light was already gone from his eyes. We never realised that at the time. I'm glad he had a good meal that evening. And then, he insisted on all of us sleeping in the hall, with our beds next to each other. I'm sure he knew it. Or may be, he was just scared. Who isn't scared of Death?. We felt that night was crucial. Nothing was told to us - but we had a hunch. An eerie hunch, if you ask me. And slowly we drifted to an uneasy sleep."

"I'm glad I saw him pass." Ajji said, breaking the silence after my Mother's words. "I'm not sure why. But I'm glad. And I'm sure he felt at peace that his Mother was watching him pass. I didn't want to wake up the next morning and just discover that my son is dead. It was five thirty in the morning when I woke up. I peered through the mosquito net and found his breath becoming shallow. He looked at me. I could sense the helplessness. He didn't want to go. I  looked at him. And then he relaxed. Or so I thought. The helplessness was replaced by a blank face. I'd want to imagine it was peace. I was the one to bring him to his world....I bid him Goodbye"

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" Your Chikkamma was lucky to survive her first bout with Death" Ajji said, looking at my Father now. My father was especially attached to his Chikkamma (Mother's younger sister). He always felt pained talking about her death. But Ajji would never leave him alone. "You should talk about it, for you to forget the pain. She was living on borrowed time, at any rate" she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I remember that car ride from Mandya to Bengaluru, vividly. Chikkamma unconscious. You and I on either side. I took a handful of tablets and thrust it in her mouth. Poured a bottle of water so she swallowed them." My Father started. I almost knew the next sentence. "I was the reason why she lived twenty more years."

"It's all fate. Chikkamma had some unfinished business here. She wanted to see you married and happy. Her own sons married and happy. And may be watch some soaps on the new age colour television" This last statement was an addition to last year's narration. Clearly, Ajji was improvising too.

"But she was a fighter. Every time Yama dragged her to the hospital, she found the will to give him the slip and return home. I never saw her spirit fade. Except the final time she made her way to the hospital. The look she had on her face when her sons carried her on her chair to the car - I was sure she had given up the fight. Her final journey had begun that day. What happened a month later was more a formality."

Ajji certainly seemed more emotional this year than she had been in a while. Her voice was quivering as she narrated these incidents. But then, she took a weird pride in being in that unenviable position of having seen more deaths up close than any one else in the family. 

"She couldn't have been more helpless towards the end. She forgot names and people. Quiet, sedated and sleepy in the mornings. Manic and vengeful all of  a sudden in the night. Buried feelings and suppressed emotions burst forth unhindered.  She didn't want to take all the burden with her, perhaps."

"Talk about the last day and close it Ajji" Father insisted.

Ajji smiled and stared silently into oblivion. Her cataract free eyes couldn't hide the tears. 

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It had been a month since Ajji fell in the bathroom and broke her back. Doctors gave up hope on her being able to get up and walk again. The back injury did to her what Life could never do. 

She was shifted to a cot in the hall at our ancestral home in Mandya. Her spirit held fort the first couple of weeks. She was cheerful - hoping for -and making us hope for - a miracle. "It's just a broken back. I have rich grandsons who can get a golden rod fixed in my spine." But as more and more Doctors visited her and went back with grim expressions, she started fading. 

Tears streamed silently down her face, when no one was watching. The helplessness apparent in her face and voice. She felt ashamed when anyone tried to clean her up and help with a change of clothes or adult diapers.

"So... a couple of days before Chikkamma passed" she started, one evening. We didn't want Ajji to exert herself. But then we couldn't stop her from speaking. It was all she could do these days. 

"Chikkamma saw her dead husband beckoning to her, from outside the room. I was staying with Chikkamma for the night when this happened. I'm not sure where she found the energy, but Chikkamma got out of her bed and walked to the door. Talked to him for almost ten minutes. Then she walked back and slept. The most peaceful I had seen her sleep, after she was admitted to the hospital"

All of us were stunned. Ajji had never mentioned this in all these years. My father burst into tears and left the place. It took a while for us to calm down. And as we absorbed this incident, Ajji made an other revelation. "The other day when I stopped Chikkamma's story midway, I could see her beckoning to me from the other side of the room. "

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Ajji never spoke coherently after that. It seems her mind was made up. She refused to eat from the next day. Whether it was out of conscious decision or did her body start giving up  - we would never know. Weakness overpowered her quickly and she slipped to a semi-conscious state in a matter of days. And after that she consumed only teaspoons of water.

 About a week-ten days later, all of us got used to the new normal with her. We knew it was a matter of time. But we were not ready to give up easily on her. Doctors inserted glucose drips and we found improvements in her energy levels. "You have some unfinished business Ajji" we kept teasing her. She would give us a silent weak smile. She still wouldn't talk or eat. 

Our Sunday afternoon conversations took place around her cot ever since she was bedridden. That Sunday, after a long while, we could hear Ajji's voice. "Ice Cream. I want some Ice Cream". she said. We were thrilled. A couple of us ran to get her some ice cream from a nearby store. Ajji was smiling. Did miracles really happen? We wondered.  We took turns to feed her the ice cream that evening. She relished each spoon. She even managed to say "Thank You" in English. Clearly, there was some unfinished business holding her back.

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Ajji passed a couple of days later. It wasn't the sudden death she had aspired. We sat around her as her breath became shallow. Now from the stomach, now from the lungs, now from the throat and the last couple of breaths from the mouth. She had closed her eyes long ago. So we couldn't understand what she had always meant, by "light disappearing from the eyes."

Over the next fifteen days, some of us took turns to read the Garuda Purana. The paperback version was stowed away in her trunk. She had to be the one reading it when someone passed in the family. 

Did she actually see Chikkamma beckoning to her that night? We wondered. Did she know her time was nearing? Ajji always held us in awe when she was alive.......she would hold us in awe in Death too!

                                                                                       

                                                                                  -     25th September 2019

                                              

The Last Ten Minutes.....

The Last Ten Minutes…

The blue notification light had not glowed in the last 10 minutes or so. The ten minutes felt like eternity. It was as though the world was standing still. I was juggling between answering a mail, drafting a proposal and running a (mandatory) training video in the background. My brain constantly switched between these tasks. Yet in the milliseconds between these tasks, I glanced anxiously at my phone through the corner of my eyes. There was a tinge of guilt, that I was sucked in to waiting for a notification – yet there were almost an addict’s withdrawal symptoms that craved for it.

Was there nothing happening in the world that was interesting – in the last ten minutes? Surely, someone in my friend circle would have posted on Instagram? He would be vacationing in the middle of the year – while the rest of us slogged full days at office and waited for the weekend, to recoup and get ready for next week’s battles. Or a friend would surely have posted a #throwback picture to a vacation he had months ago – in a wave of endless nostalgia. Either way, that would mean a notification and that chance to hold the tender back cover of the phone that I had not felt in the last 10 minutes.

What about Facebook? No book in print got us hooked as disarmingly as Facebook. And were people silent there too in the last ten minutes? Creating content was passé, we were now into liking and sharing content. Surely, a war must be brewing somewhere? Between conservatives and communists? A social media war between neighbours? Or atleast a hilarious and supposedly harmless dig about Prime Ministers who served tea and played cricket earlier. One stranger from my friend list would surely have liked and shared the video. I could spend a couple of minutes figuring out who he is and then scroll through the content he would have liked and shared in the last couple of months. But no, that stranger friend too seemed to be silent in the last 10 minutes.

Almost anxious about the world’s stunning silence now, I turned to LinkedIn. Well, it was office time. Surely, people would have logged into their professional network?? I have this habit of keeping LinkedIn open for most part of the day. What if that ever elusive job gets posted and I’m not in the top 10% applying for it? My carefully crafted profile with exaggerated glories of past achievements and relentless jargon would go unnoticed. And I’d have to catch the attention of the potential recruiter all over again – for a role I coveted without knowing what exactly it entails. If I knew what it actually meant – why would I apply for it anyways? Well, there were no jobs in the last ten minutes-else I’d have been notified. No recruiter had viewed my profile. There would be no dearth for feed though. With people posting their latest insights and thought leadership. From posting about Toasters in the Cafeteria that taught lessons in “Keeping the Lead Warm” to waiting for the traffic lights to turn green that signalled “Process Orientation” as a key character trait. None of this, however, would warrant the blue notification light that would trigger me to reach out to my phone and check the notifications.

I looked at my colleague sitting next to me. He was busy scrolling away on the phone screen. His laptop had gone on standby. Which meant he was on his phone for atleast five minutes now. And he would have consumed so much information and knowledge in that time. Enough to beat me to a promotion? He would know how the economic slowdown would impact our industry and result in decreased demand from our clients. He might just be coming up with a Plan B to cover up the losses. He would surely present it to the management? Or he would have identified the next latest trend in technology and started applying to those companies before I did? Or he might just be chatting up with that girl in the Marketing department with whom neither of us had managed a direct conversation yet. In which case I had to worry the most.

My self-imposed penance of not touching the phone till the blue notification light flashed was causing me a lot of harm – mentally and materially. And it had taken less than ten minutes for this to happen. Nevertheless, I decided to stick to it. Not by focussing on my work. But by waiting with bated breath for the notification so that I could break the penance and know what’s going on in the World – my World.

The 24-7 news apps seemed to have gone silent too. It was as though the world was taking a holiday from mischief and misbehaviour. What kept the news apps going, what kept the world going and what kept you and me going, was that steady dose of addictive anxiety news sites and apps were injecting us, notification by notification. Creatively crafted click bait articles that ended with an ubiquitous question mark were enough and more to get us hooked. “Recession imminent??” “Countries are going to War…?” “This could happen if your city in nuked….” And these articles, gave us despair and hope every ten minutes, spicing up our lives and giving us a larger vision and a global event to be part of. We were not passive bystanders now. We were actively involved, desperately trying to click, like,  comment and pass the “buck” of opinion to the next equally desperate “Consumer”. The absence of a notification denied me from having the next drop from that eternal trickle of information.

I was slowly discovering how Content had become the “Elixir” for my brain and mind to stay calm and sane. The Content didn’t have to be meaningful. It just had to be there. It just had to be new – slightly new. The same landscape photographed from a new angle, the same news delivered once in a conservative channel and then from a radical tabloid. I would never remember most of the content – let alone use it in my professional discussions or personal banter.

Holding the phone had become muscle memory. And in the moments my hands were not holding the phone, I was almost feeling insecure. The Insecurities of the brain were a different dimension altogether. Holding the Phone - I realised – gave me a sense of control. I was on top of my professional world, my personal world and the World at large. I was in sync with every mail from office, I knew what every stranger in my social World was up to and I would know if my city would be nuked in the next few minutes – though I could hardly do anything about it.

Ten minutes. My phone had engaged me in a who-would-blink-first in the last ten minutes. The  notification light was still elusive. My resolve was weak and anxiety was at its peak. It was easy to end that battle against a non-living object, grab the phone and experience relief wash over me. A saner instinct prevailed and I held myself back. My colleague was still scrolling through his phone for what seemed like an eternity now. I looked at my watch. It had been 10 minutes. Only.

                                                                      

                                                                                                - 7th September 2019