On most days and most occasions, when I do not have the time or the opportunity, I will be overflowing with topics and ideas I want to write about and just like every other procrastinator out there, when the time is there, there is abundance of excuses and dearth of concrete action. Sometimes, however, there is a way around this. It is usually around the time when I have procrastinated for far too long and pent-up frustration over large periods of inaction leads to a burst of hyper-activity, in which a lot of things are taken up simultaneously, lot of creative ideas flow through at once and rarely do but a few things get completed.
I am currently in Vizag, a city which brings back a mixed bag of emotions for me. It might have been one of the very few occasions that my entire paternal side of the family was there together. However, in my family's context, it has a ominous meaning more often than not that there is a serious illness or death in the family. I lost my grandfather here, around eleven years ago. I still remember the day vividly. I still remember him being declared brain dead and looking at his comatose body breathing through the help of ventilators. I still remember looking at the heart rate monitor and other vitals and seeing them drop. I remember being explained about oxygen saturation percentage and how it could be directly correlated to the functioning of the brain.
I remember us waiting for the hospital to release the body. All of us in the waiting room, some crying, some wailing, us kids stunned but largely aloof. I remember looking into my dad's eyes and seeing the pain. Pain that he was trying hard to keep behind the tower of responsibilities that he had to undertake to ensure that the entire family and the support structure did not come crumbling down. I look back at this moment specifically because I then scoff at my non-issues issues that I fret over in my current state. I am disgusted at myself these days because I have very little real world responsibilities. I can hear my parents and their pain or their loneliness on most days through the phone, but can do very little about it. I am such a coward that I do not even engage properly when I get the slightest hint of them having a tough time, because I am not sure I can stay strong. The part that I am worried about is not that I will break down but that I generally try to force rationality in times like these, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. People want solace and comfort, not rationale and logic, which even though I know inside, I will try to shove and then get impatient and lose my cool. All this does is escalate the situation from what would have been a 4/10 to a 8/10 just because I could not handle myself.
I remember sitting in the hearse, by his side, towards his feet, towards the back end of the vehicle, looking outside throughout the journey from the hospital to the burning ghat. I was sad, but I wasn't as well. It was a new feeling for me and all that I was thinking throughout was how I would miss him, what would my father have to go through, the hell that my grandmother would have to face from now onwards and how things will never be the same again.
Flash of the lights from passing traffic. Sun had set beyond the mountains but there was another half an hour of fading light left. Suddenly I am transported back to our home in Kolkata. I am back reliving one of the many almost ritualistic afternoons when my grandfather would come over from the hall to sit with us and have a cup of tea. What I vividly remember was how he sat. Always at the corner of the bed, always just taking the minimum amount of space that a human of his size would need as well as his age and the inflexibility that comes with it. He was wise, no doubt and had a habit of exacting perfection from everything that went around him. More than perfection, there was a certain way things were supposed to be done and he ensured that people around him knew what the way was. Yes, it felt a bit dictatorial and imposing at the time, but the best way to soften feelings about anything is to let a lot of time pass. Today, I just look at it as a pecularity and can just gloss over the pain and suffering that it let to, especially for my mom. Although, he really cared and was always on the lookout for my mom's best interest. He was a simple person and he knew what he wanted in life. I respected the hell out of him and his oddities made him endearing in retrospect and frustrating in the moment.
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