Bapi
It was 2009.
I have consoled so many with my experience of processing the pain.
The bleak days.
How it stays - the loss is permanent.
How I live his life to commemorate who he was.
Every step.
I thought I got it.
13 long years.
I was there.
And yet, those piercing words that showed altered reality
brought him back.
The need of him by me.
Just to give me that accepting smile.
Which washed away the deepest rejections.
Just to hear his voice calling Tuya once more.
And silence once more.
Loss, Home and a tryst with Tokyo
Every joy craves sharing. When a connection is lost, it is that sharing that is severed and hence the pain from the loss of the share. The pain recurs at every joy. Every joy becomes tainted.
It was a chance Sunday afternoon that made a pool of old acquaintances and unknown Tokyo folks pick up that pain and turn it into half a joy. As they talked about A Gentleman in Moscow, the conversation turned to Russian literature, my favourite, which then went onto little lanes of College Street, traversing dusty old bookshops and Vostok. Vostok was located right opposite to the numerous small shops selling wedding cards, across the then MG Road. As the pop-up Masha was mentioned, it reminded me of the monthly magazine, "Misha", bapi (my father) subscribed for me. I used to wait for the glossy magazine with beautiful colours and figures and cartoons and information from parts of the world I had no access to. There was no internet. It was a window into the beautiful world outside as I imagined that time. That world was created by these magazines which were priceless.
Ma had carefully preserved one of them. Actually, she did not carefully preserve - it is just the way she is and home is to me with her. Things are preserved. They are not easily thrown away for the sake of temporary cleanliness or the recent fad of minimalistic living. Ma's home is one such. It is still a treasure trove for me. I find old postcards in a corner of the dusty bookshelf which were written by my school friends, now long lost. I find a book in which I was given the freedom to scribble something random when I had no sense of what the book was about. Saratchandra's Parineeta will have a pressed leaf inside which would have created black moss-like marks on the pages of the book, rendering it a little illegible in those areas. I was given the freedom and so the footprints of time remain captured indelibly; 40 odd years since the little girl, super shy in demeanour and exact opposite in thought process, had left a leaf inside Parineeta.
Coming back to Misha. In my last Dec 2019 visit to Kolkata, ma asked me to bring the magazine with me. I now have the 9/1984 edition of Misha in my home. In tatters. The edges are worn out. The right hand corner of the back cover has been eaten up by termites. The middle pages have come loose, As I flipped through them I realised they belong to another monthly edition - ha ha ha. The beauty of imperfection. How I love it.
The half joy was in sharing those pages which delighted everyone, at the precious reversal of time. It was astounding to the cleanliness and orderliness of the present world to see torn pages of 1984 float up onto the screens of smartphones.
Ma's effortless being, bringing joy to people far beyond her reach. Such existences are blessings beyond human comprehension.
Re-New
It is that very happy season of New Year.
Fresh hopes, Fresh starts.
The happiness of "fresh starts" however, stems from the comforts of continuity of the old. Such was our gathering of the year end which brimmed onto the 1st of Jan. Comfort of old friends who never left, who struggled through the ups and downs, through the randomness, through our not-so-beautiful facets.
For those who did not want us. We can keep the goodbyes at the doorstep of the old, because of the comfort of those who are holding our hands while we struggle to put the heavy load of goodbyes down at the step.
Does it pain still? Yes, but the load is lessening. SanB said on the first day of the year, you are phenomenal in your capacity to comfort and your intuition in knowing when one needs it. I wondered how does one seek comfort though?
Maybe it is in comforting that comfort lies. When I give, I receive.
