The goodbye


 I step back. The gulmohar has bloomed in full vigour. The canopy of bright yellow and orange flowers filters the sharp sun rays. The rays reaching you are as soft as a baby's fur blanket. Not scorching, not pricking but gently providing warmth, as if giving a company from distance without letting you feel claustrophobic. The leaves rustle as the wind tickles them playfully. Some golden, auburn ones shed their inhibitions and kiss mother earth beneath. Of one tribe, one can't distinguish the just fallen from the eternally lying ones. Very peacefully, the dried community makes a place for the new arrivals. For some time they all unanimously, comfort and cuddle each other. Soak themselves in the moment of supreme unity. As if knowing that the next moment can be of departure, and goodbyes are not always easy. 

The wind today is very mischievous, for he again starts the tickling and this time in a mood to set his charges topsy turvy. The serene golden brown leaves, get carried away from mother earth to rest on another of her lap, at another moment in time. The goodbye is not that really difficult but impertinent. The wind is now tired and gasping like a rave child who has run miles before finally finding a place to rejoice the stolen mango from the orchards. It breathes swooshing dust particles, for it can no more carry the weight of dry leaves. 

I close my eyes to prevent the notorious particles from blinding my sight. It seems like ages, I have been watching all of this without blinking. Eyes closed, I remember that I am here on an excursion with my troop and past hour or so I have been stuck at a place admiring the slow ways of nature. For a moment, I go paranoid at the thought of getting lost in the wild. I fear the leaves will swallow me in their crisp debris. Mother earth will bury me back in her womb. The roots will entangle me to use up my skin and flesh to flourish in green. I open my eyes and search for directions and again the wind blows, but this time just over my face. As if assuring that even if the leaves swallow me or the earth buries me, it will carry my scents to my loved ones. Slowly, steadily it will blow over their worried senses, conveying that I'm safe. Safe and happy in a place where one day, I will be beckoned to go. I can imagine those taut muscles relaxing and a smile spreading as the fresh lease of air has brought a fresh perspective to their minds. The goodbye is happening happily, each forgiving the other mutually. 

The wind stops its caressing and they open their eyes to the light, the light now not filtered but pure and simple. The light seeping through their ignorant pores and filling them with the knowledge that I'm not gone but now have travelled still closer to their existence. I can experience them without words, even before the thoughts have charged them up, I realise the discomfort. But without discussion, they need to relax that I'm perpetually next to them yet in my world. 

The excursion has been a deep one for me. Now I can leave without an early goodbye not bothering about school fees and bedtime stories. I can leave without longing for amicable farewells. I can just leave when the time is right. For after me, the wind will blow, the sun will shine and someone in form or matter will fill in the pores of vacancy. 

Death no longer scares me. A mother may die but not her love that is omnipresent and forever.

I can now shed the inhibitions and fall brown and happily dry to join the dead tribe. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the pursuit of pizza, discovering people.

Image
  I can only tell stories. That doesn’t sound like a great opening to a blog, right? Especially when you are looking at a giant called Happiness. Well, I can’t do much about it because I can only tell stories. Stories to me are happiness.  What kind of stories you will ask? Love stories? Horror stories? Thrilling stories? Adventurous stories? A little bit of everything, I would say. Like the Mumbai bhelpuri, tangy, spicy, sweet, and fulfilling. Again an old comparison. But what to do? That is what I’m made up of. Stories and food. Stories of people around me. I’m no unique individual. I’m a fragment of my mother, my father, my son, my husband, my friends, and even my milkman and house-help. Sometimes, I’m also like the rickshaw driver, in whose vehicle I commute every day to work. You must be finding it very funny. But many times, I’m like my pressure cooker and mixer grinder, too. I start abruptly whistling, when the there is too much pressure inside me. When I find too man...
Read more

Not Before Me- a book raising questions in a quest to find answers on disability.

Image
 Sixteen years ago, fresh out of the medical college, as an enthusiastic doctor, I visited the Bidada Medical Camp in Kutch Gujarat, as a volunteer. Amongst the thousands of patients I saw, this mother, aged between 65-70 years, stayed in my troubling thoughts for a long time. She had come to the camp to meet specialists who were visiting India to treat the ragged and frayed people of Kutch for free.  I remember her as a mother of an adult specially abled child. The father had passed away a few years back. No siblings to follow. ‘What after me?’ was the thought that stung her day in and out as she cared for her son. She had come to the camp in the hope that somewhere there would be a place that would care for her son once the heavens had embraced her. The staff refused to help the mother because her plea did not fall into any surgical or medical category.  Years later, as I read the book Not Before You, authored by Lata Gwalani, this mother knocked on my doors in Jaya’s d...
Read more

KICKED INTO LIGHT

Image
 What a miracle she was!! Waking up at the crack of dawn, before the first ray could find its way flittering through the dense blanket of darkness- she was my Amma. Splashing some cold water on her comely but tired face, she lit the firewood to facilitate a warm bath for both of us. This firewood was a stellar luxury, for the zamindar granted us the comfort only on special occasions. And today was Diwali!  As she washed her long locks, which were tied in a taut bun, Chutki, my elder sister, demanded to be lifted in her arms. Amma quickly winded up the bathing ritual and rushed to comfort Chutki. The first light that dispelled the darkness of the hut scared Chutki. It had become a routine for her to wake up crying, as the demons of the past brought out their ugly heads in her dreams.  "Kuruvi…" Amma's little birdie, that she was, "…we are far, far away from the tormentors. The ghosts of animosity have left for their graveyards."  Amma clemently brushed aside the ...
Read more