Grief

Numbness is a form of grief

For those who wrestle with how they feel.

It's an eerie silence of the mind

Where large parts of the world go blind1

Not everyone expresses pain in the same way

Some, like us, fight demons in our mind, or so we say.

In the end, the loss is paramount.

But the circle of life provides comfort, to some amount.

Acchan

.....................

August 2017. On receiving a panicked phone call from Amma, I took the first flight from Bangalore to Mumbai and rushed to be with Acchan in the ICU of Fortis Hospital, Mulund. We ended up staying there, him and me for over a month. A battery of tests yielding nothing, until eventually a haematologist walked by, a short little curt Bengali fellow, pronouncing his imminent death warrant. He was eventually to become Acchan’s saviour. The one in whom Acchan found; both the Gods he never believed in and the demons he fought. Sitting at the cold reception of Guantanamo (as he called the hospital in one of his poems), holding the results of his bone marrow biopsy, I felt the earth cave under me.  Stomach churning, heart racing, a host of hitherto unknown words entered our world. Myleodysplastic syndrome. Azacitidine. Chemotherapy. Blood transfusions. Blood. Our worlds were to soon be consumed by the red.

 

Acchan took it in his stride. I am ready to go he said. I have lived a full life. Cancer surgeons in

Mumbai, Bangalore, Kerala and New York gave him 6 months to live. One of them painstakingly drew out a chart, all its end points in the inevitable death as he said. At this age, there is no chance at recovery, they said. Doctors - these clinical statisticians.  Acchan eventually went on to prove every single one of them wrong. When Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage rage against the dying of the light”, I am pretty sure he was referring to Acchan. Acchan ended up in a tiny 25% cohort that responded amazingly well to the treatment and went on to live for nearly 4 years since that prognosis. Like in life, he became the most spectacular case study of the resistance. Of everything the doctors leave out in their pronouncements. The exceptions. The rare. That lone bright spark in the deep well of darkness. When he eventually left, he did it entirely on his own terms, out of his own will.

 

Acchan, the everyone’s man who belonged to all. His deep empathy for the human condition,

evident in his big wide smile permanently plastered on a deeply tanned face. That smile reflecting the warmth of the bright light in him; empathetic, observant, kind. Acchan, who’s large heart and expansive soul had space for everyone. From his family to his help, everyone was under the shade of his compassion and love. He grew up surrounded by women, his mother, 4 sisters, wife, 4 daughters. He was the leader of the unit. He loved his extended family and took care of them as much as he did of his own. “No man can survive in an island”, Acchan would keep rebuking me. “Man is a social animal; he needs to live in the warmth of people”. I heard this ever so often as my introverted self, seeking silences all the time, tried to hide away from yet another social gathering. As I found many of my answers in complete isolation, I saw the bi-polarity of how rich Acchan’s life was -large, surrounded by the resounding presences of a million people who loved him deeply.  Loved by the families he was born into and the families he knit together with his compassion and commonality of creative and political interests.

 

Acchan, the liberal. With whom, I started rational discourses, like a postmodern critic from age 3. Arguing about the existence of God to the true meaning of love. He would have made for a brilliant advocate, fiercely arguing all his points in his booming loud voice. Where logic always found merit, no matter how deviant from his own beliefs. Even if in the moment he wouldn’t relent, he went back and reflected. I found my way with him many times, no matter how unpalatable the stance. When I got good marks in 10th but wanted to pursue commerce, Acchan put all the reason and wisdom and his own dreams out of me away and let me find my path in the world. When I wanted to quit an investment banking job in London’s financial district to create a business serving the bottom of the pyramid in the back of beyond of India, Acchan the die-hard communist, who should have been happy - at the very least with the loftiness of the idealism - fought very hard against the idea. For all his principles, he didn’t want my life to mirror the hardships of his.  Swimming against the tide requires strength, no one knew that better than a man who had dedicated his life to social, cultural, and political causes. But the gene pool came home to roost, I spent the next 10 years amid the poorest of the poor, trying to find answers through business and skilling. Eventually, the establishment wins most of the time, something Acchan and I learnt in our own specific way, him through literature, politics and culture, me through business and advocacy, searching mostly the same thing – an egalitarian world and arriving mostly at the same punishing answers – utopia is perhaps just that.

 

Acchan, the Aesthetician. Acchan spoke passionately about Soundaryashashtram, the study of

aesthetics. My uninformed self, with no education and arguing primarily from first principles

debated if beauty was subjective in the cultural context of the subject perceiving it or if one could really arrive at an abstract notion of beauty, like a universal truth, with rules, ratios and math. Acchan argued, rather what I made of his arguments was – anything closer to life is more beautiful. I learnt when he died, how true this was. The imminence of death is truly among the ugliest, most

unbearable of experiences. Presence of life, no matter how strained is still joyous. When I look at pictures of his youth, I see how immensely beautiful he was. Vivacious. Truly tall, dark and andsome. I found some partial answers to beauty in replicating parts of our brain’s neural network in the artificial intelligence we created at my company and Acchan ideas resounded in them.

 

Acchan and imagery. Imagery is everything in poetry Acchan said, as I took baby steps towards writing my first poems. Acchan introduced me to Octavio Paz, Sunstone.

“I go on a journey in galleries of sound,

I flow among the resonant presences, going,

a blind man passing transparencies,

one mirror cancels me, I rise from another,

forest whose trees are the pillars of magic,

under the arches of light

I go among the corridors

of a dissolving autumn…”

 

It remains the most powerful imagery in a poem I have read. Thinking visually is a gift I have from Acchan, one I hope to use in all the 100 of his poems he translated into English, saying I must rewrite them for him. Acchan, you told me poetry is what is lost in the translation, what a futile task you have set me up on. But I will attempt to do so in the hope that, I will refine and distil all your values, your creative teachings and become half worth the giant legacy you have left behind for us to preserve.

 

Acchan, the eternal student. When we were small, Acchan bought home some books containing paintings from the renaissance era. These 16th century paintings of Leanardo da vinci,Michealangelo, Rapheal, Titian, Boticelli and other Italian artists were sewn into our minds with these books. My sisters and I grew up painting our own impoverished versions of the Mona lisa, the girl with the pearl earring, Madonna and child, the kiss of venus. With those books, Acchan sparked in me a life long obsession with colors and artistry of paintings. My eyes however had a real opening only when I travelled through the museums in Europe and the US. It was an awakening, a personal renaissance and I learnt through the sight, smell and textures visiting these great works of art that ultimately – originality of style, that breakout expression came from the courage to be utterly honest and completely vulnerable combined with diligent, disciplined study of the medium. Standing in front of the No 31, Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I had the most empowering of life experiences. It is a painting with rhythm, a painting with live wire energy that reverberates across the room. Only lines, no form. Complete abstraction. The museums filled my head with the Salons of Paris, the impressionists, post impressionists, the Dutch expressionists. I fell in love with Van Gogh after a visit to his museum in Amsterdam, a love story that lasts even today. After dismissing Picasso, I started to worship his genius when I saw the paintings from his blue period and the incomparable compositions from his cubist phase in Barcelona. I started studying Art Theory, its origins and movements with a fervour to understand the history of expression, our reason for being, the purpose of art and why we express the way we do today. Acchan, never having travelled to any of these places but fully informed of the cultural movements through time, followed me in hot pursuit. While I was physically there, Acchan was more mentally there than me. In his visits to Bangalore, he would read all the books I purchased from these museums, write detailed notes, have debates and discussions about how paintings and poems would be rendered in the different movements. We understood hyper realism in paintings to mean capturing the tiniest light, using the thinnest brush and in poetry to mean vivid descriptions, devoid of opinion. One of

Acchan’s favourite forms of expression was of course, magic realism. Acchan, the lover of magic.

The fantasy underscores and heightens the reality, try to move to magic, he said. Emerald islands

housing frozen angel statues. The place where the real moves to surreal lifts the creative. As a post modernist poet and philosopher, Acchan was deeply involved in its evolution and practise. But magic was the essential ingredient. I discovered Neruda accidentally and passed on a book to Acchan. At age 81, with the MDS diagnosis when he could barely see, Acchan with a magnifying glass went on to study not only Neruda, but all other Latin poets, the 20th century evolution of Spanish poetry and became the de facto expert 10:1. I hunted books for him in libraries from no man’s land, Acchan was reading such esoteric stuff till the end, I never found the books he wanted in any regular bookstores. I sent various friends on impossible mission to find these books, which ultimately had to be fished out of dusty bookshelfs in unheard corners of the world. He was the eternal student.

 

Acchan, the philosopher. The historian. Acchan’s reading and collection of books spanned everything from political ideologies to poetry, music, film, drama, history, fiction, literary criticism. Achhan, with whom anyone could have a discussion about almost anything.

 

Achhan, the friend, the mentor. From a very small age, I remember Acchan being surrounded by

large groups of young men and women – smoke filled rooms in our house in Garodia and heated debates. As time passed, Acchan grew older but his friends stayed just as young as newer generations entered our house and Acchan listened patiently, engaged with debates, regaled old experiences and always served tea and snacks cooked by Amma. Acchan was at once a friend and a mentor.

 

Acchan, the ever-devoted husband. Achhan and Amma were the epitome of shared companionship. Amma’s life purpose towards the later years was cooking for Acchan, her style of cooking tuned to his precise palatte. Acchan and Amma rarely spent more than 15 mins out of each other’s sight. He woke up and made tea for her every day, cut vegetables while she cooked, went through all of life’s business together, him walking fast ahead, her trotting behind and then they would chat through the day discussing the events of news until they finally fell asleep. In the hospital, in his final days, Amma was watching the news religiously to be able to relay all of it to Acchan. She spoke to him the morning of his death, he left in full consciousness having spoken last to his soulmate, his wife, connected till the very end.

 

Acchan, the father. Who bought up daughters in a utopian equal world. Who cut our hair short and

cultivated hard working ethos in all of us. Who came with us to every exam, waited outside the college after the paper was over, who bought fruits and cut them with so much love. Who shared our every pain and every win. The voice of reason. The instiller of values.

 

In the end I became Acchan’s healthcare supporter. Through several foggy moments, I tried hard to maintain the line of his human rights, especially when he was behaving like a child refusing to meet the Saviour, his Demon, his haematologist. In many ensuing fights, I sometimes became his gentle prodder – creating incentives to keep visiting the hospital and continuing the treatment. But covid and its resulting quarantining became a difficult fight for to win. Chemotherapy is a bitch. It involves injecting drugs 7/28 days in a month. Acchan after a year in isolation, after 300 doses, was done with the injections. In March 2021, after yet another fight over meeting the Saviour, his Demon, he told me – Surga, I am done. I have lived enough. If you come here and threaten me, I will go visit him. But only because you have come. I do not want to go. I am done. I have lived a full life. Please let me make this choice.

It was the impossible choice. But one part of him was ready to go. I listened to that part and did not force him. In the end, those are the only regrets. The fights left unfought. The child in him that

wanted saving. The lack of good options and not being there in the end with him. Leaving all of it

ultimately to the mercy of Covid wards. In the larger narrative of the second wave of covid, Acchan

was a statistic. But to all the people he touched with his love, he lived a thousand lives. Family man, writer, poet, philosopher, communist, student, mentor, post modernist, magic realist, lover of all things life. His life collectively was so much larger than any of those individual words.

 

For each day of the wretched isolation of last year, I felt Acchan, the community man, die a little every day and for each of those little deaths, a little part of me also left with him. Acchan was a lover of nature.  In our tiny 600sq ft house in Bombay, atleast a 100 sq ft was devoted for plants.  When Acchan was admitted to the hospital, all the plants in my garden started wilting. I knew the end was near, in fact knew the exact day and time and how he would pass.  My plants felt my grief every day. One of my favorite plants, a Thuja that we used as a Christmas tree, started changing color from a lush bright green to brown.  The browns deepened almost in rhythm and tandem to his worsening crp counts.  On this canvas of despair, Acchan conspired with the universe for one last display of magic.  Just a few weeks before he passed, one day a couple of bulbuls flew into my garden and started using all the drying twigs to built a nest in the Thuja tree.  The mommy bulbul then laid 3 eggs and began hatching them through Acchans hospitalisation period.  On the exact day Achhan died, the nestlings hatched.  When I returned home from Bombay, they had flown off.  Magic, as Acchan always told us, was everywhere. Always underlining the grand beauty of life.  Life - this stunning proposition we struggle to understand, eventually meets us the most at the time of the deepest loss. In the ever-fluid shifts from one form to another, the transience of life is somehow tamed through this infinite continuum created by our sense of shared oneness, our connectedness to every other being that is alive. 

 

Acchan and I.

Forever together.

He is present every day.

In every morning sun.

In the silver outlines of clouds.

In the warm breeze at vast oceans.

In the smell of every morning coffee.

In the intriguing mystiques of the night skies.

In every stillness.

In all the beauties.

He is there.

 

..........

Surga

Conversations with Daddy

 Conversations with daddy

Daddy

It’s time to say bye

I have prepared all my life

For this moment.  

Fearful, procrastinating 

Willing, praying

Hoping for this moment

To find itself flung far far into the distance.

Daddy

I knew the day you would be gone. 

I knew the day I left you

The many choices I made

Choosing myself 

And not choosing you. 

I was afraid to hurt you daddy

To let you down again.

You, who saw in me,

So much of your own success

So many of your ambitions 

So much of your courage 

I couldn’t bear to show you my pain daddy

And somewhere, I couldn’t bear to watch yours

So I created this distance 

A pandemic and a thousand miles between us 

Something to blunt the intimacy

To build some walls 

So it would be easier for me 

To let you go

And easier for you

To go, knowing I was safe.  

Daddy,

I over prepared for this moment.

When I would never hear your voice again

Never see that big smile light up your face again

Never know that someone in the universe cared so much

For how long my hair was or how bright my clothes

Never feel your feet again

Your dark skin, chaffed – scaly from the dry winters 

Your hands – once strong, that would always beat me 

Now weakened by time, limp, barely there 

Daddy

I watched you extinguish

Day by day I saw you become weaker

But never once did I see a smaller man

Your kindness and love outshone everything daddy

Your heart, oh your ever-loving heart 

Your magical heart that cared for everyone

That was large enough to encompass the world 

After you left, I am amazed daddy

At how large a life you lived

And how many thousands found refuge in you

Your unbounded, seamless, limitless heart

Daddy

As I finally met the sea this week

My usual conversations with the sea 

turned into conversations with you 

I finally accepted daddy, that you are absent 

That I have to eventually say a goodbye

That I have to stop finding you in spiritual ways 

And accept that you are gone.  

I have to reconcile that I was not there with you in the end

You went alone daddy

I am so deeply sorry I chose myself

You told me I was the pillar of this family

And I have to take care of them all

I was so afraid of letting you down daddy

I knew you could see through every wall I built around us

And stare into my grief 

I didn’t want you to go through that pain daddy

It took me a very very long time to find my peace 

And an excruciating amount of rebuilding 

In an lonely isolated time

When the walls closed in, silences loomed large

With the disease all around us. 

Daddy

In the end, it got you.

All of it did.

Your heart, your blood, your kidney and your lungs

We fought a long hard battle on each

But then one day, you told me you had enough

You were fatigued and tired with the poking and prodding

With the injections and the drugs and the transfusions

With looking for the yellow through the red

You told me you were done

And I felt it would be easier on you to go

We agreed this was the way

I found the courage in me

To find the kindness for you

We both knew the time was here 

And the truth would meet us soon

As hard as we fought

As much as we won

We knew we would eventually lose

To this order of the universe

To this agency of life we own for such a brief transient period

That we would one day have to give up.  

Daddy,

As I walked by the beach

I made some promises to you. 

Now the sea breeze is mixed up with you 

It no longer is just me and the cosmos at the sea 

You are now omnipresent daddy

In all my silences

In all my meditation

In all my oneness with the world

I often wonder what part of you remains daddy

Is it the values you left me with?

Or the memories of our shared time?

Or is all of me just an extension of you?

And as I accept this notion of something you

I start to think about your large legacy daddy

While you may be gone, I want to preserve all of you 

Your values, you work, your people

As an inheritor of you, I want to keep all your ideas alive

And have them inhabit this complex universe in different forms

Some through art, some through eco systems

And some through creating a fulcrum of kindness and values

In whatever extensions I may create.  

Daddy

I will take care of Amma

Your other daughters and grandchildren

I will preserve and publish your poems

But more importantly, nurture more poets

I will create a place for the arts 

As you always taught me daddy, 

the experience of the arts

Is among the largest experiences of humanity

And I will strive to do the work I began

To create a more just world

One which includes everyone

The one you believed in.

Daddy

A month before you died,

You said to me 

that the apple does not fall far away from the tree

Daddy, I miss your shade

The one that protected me from everything

But life has been a blessing

And the world has been giving

I am experiencing magic everyday daddy

And I will keep creating it for you.

Daddy, 

I hope you are in peace

While I am still here

doing your work.

I will find you again

In many different forms

Until then,

Good bye.

Isolation

 Isolation

The third eye 

Where the sounds cease 

Blank space 

Muted

Straight lines

Flat, Still. 

Isolation

Where you hear a beating heart

The flutter of eyelids

Your breath

Oh, your breath!

Holding the magic of life 

As profound, as simple. 

Isolation

In meditation,

Eyelids closed,

Searching inward 

To meet this fountain of grief

Held tormented

Under barely closed lids

With a superficial veil

Of healed wounds. 

A tiny grain of salt

Can let loose, unravel

The aching pain 

Of lost worlds. 

A part of you dies

In a divorce

A part of your body

Is taken away

In a death of a parent.

The rest of you floats

Buoyant from the emptiness 

Lost in the wind 

At the deep blue ocean. 

In the deepest isolation

In the purest meditation

You come to terms

With the insides of your self

No facades

No courage

Just – what is 

Blood, red, hot 

Throbbing veins

Corpses still alive 

That look at you

With treacherous eyes

Pain

This only true friend

Learning to heal 

The insides of your soul

With tears that embalm 

The skin from your burns 

In isolation

There is dystopia

Unsettled, discomfort 

Yet a strange kind of peace

Of your absolute self

In sync with what is 

Under the carpets

Over the sheets.

 

In isolation, 

there is deep love

Of a kind that hurts your heart

Fills your insides

With longing. 

In isolation, 

everything cancels

What is left 

Is the purest 

Reductionist 

Smallest grain

Of an absolute truth. 

In the deepest isolation

Is the deepest peace.

After the storm settles

There is lightness

Soaring 

Free as a bird

In glided flight.  

In isolation

There is the greatest mourning

And the deepest solace

Just so you know

You are the light in my heart 

around which life blooms 

the light I use 

to give shape, form, structure

to all my hopes and dreams 

With you I am 

a child again.

with you I have

no walls, no filters 

Just a free flowing gush of water 

Sometimes a cool placid lake

Other times raging waves 

With you I am 

a woman again.

I find what it means

to be feminine again.

The softness I once knew 

buried under heavy rubbles

of time and broken experiences.

I discover it again.

With you I find 

my constant companion,

an ever growing friendship

whose fragrance deepens

with every conversation.

With you I need

no one else. 

I can look wistfully,

relive my past.

I can gaze hopefully

into our imagined future.

With you I find

all my answers,

my resting place,

my sense of peace. 

With you it is still waters

this permanent presence

in the subconscious.

I carry you everyday with me 

in all my thoughts

inside me.

With you, I find

I am never alone.

In you I have 

found my home.

Memories

 Memories, you infidels 

like ghosts, you appear 

where I least expect you.

Suddenly i find you

staring at me 

in some strange corners 

of coffee shops

or in vivid colors

incandescent 

bright lights

life like 

your smile

your gentleness

your love

that always kept me connected.

Irreverent memories

you flicker and fade against my will

things i never want to forget.

Then 

unsuspectingly

just when i find calm

you come back 

in roaring color

dolby sounds 

in my dreams

reminding me

of what has been lost

this deep vaccum

this permanent hollow.

And so I paint 

to bring permanence to the transient 

to appoint a master 

to tame your fickleness

so that in those creations

you are always mine

to touch

to hold

to smell

to love

to always come back to.

The everydayness of things

When you hold me tight,

when we sit on the sofa watching Tv,

when you cook and I stand near you,

when you clean and I can't stop watching you; 

the simple everydayness of things 

in an overwhelming beauty 

of shared souls and shared spirits. 

This invisible shield of quiet joy,

of the kind we are afraid to contemplate,

scarcely believing, almost imagining 

that magic of this kind belonged only on stages

and could we ever really watch it's star light shower

inside our ravaged lives and broken homes.

When we lie next go each other at night

we hold on tightly to the moments,

almost afraid to close our eyes,

lest the moment be taken away 

like a rabbit, here today gone tomorrow 

and so we talk, hold each other close

into wee hours of the morning,

gazing into each others eyes

making the moment count. 

I feel your heartbeat as I lay my head on your chest

and try to make sense of the rhythm of your life, 

to know all the sounds and smells that encapsulate you,

both in the up close personal shot

and where you see yourself in the wide angle gaze.

I am waiting for life to unfold and reveal 

all those bits of you that are shielded 

by the finiteness of our experience,

waiting to watch the deep despairs and the soaring highs,

the twists and turns and the straight lines 

and let you know i am always behind 

at times in the front, at times adjacent 

but mostly, in prayer, sending wishes

for you to find calm waters, stillness 

in the midst of roaring tides. 

I love you.