πͺYou wake up at 3 am and again at 4 am in a different city, in a hotel room. You went to bed at 2 am, and you canβt seem to sleep because you havenβt really screamed yet. Losses need to be let out. The heart otherwise imitates a sponge soaked in heavy fluid that doesnβt evaporate on its own. You finally leave at 5:30 am on December 6, and the cityβwhich isnβt where you live or hail fromβis still waking up and the sky is orange. On the way, you will see how time works. By the time you board the flight, the sky will be blue. By the time you board another flight from another city, night will commence. Then, the next morning, they will cremate him.
Time works. In sequential order.
πͺIt doesnβt erase or fade anything, actually. It just goes on. You realised it while mechanically going about things after your uncle passed earlier this month. In fact, you lost your sense of tense. And of timeβs linear march.
π The scar on your uncleβs face, they had said, came from a fight where someone sliced his cheek. You only found out later that he was born with it. Back then, they had to operate on him to fix things on his face. Plastic surgery hadnβt evolved then. The scar ran like a deep river across his face. He was younger than your father and worked in the police department. His face, which you see differently now, was like a calm landscape after the rains.
π You are now preparing for the moments that will slaughter you, split you into a million pieces and you will try not to cry or to despair.
π For as long as you can, you will stretch time. But the orange is turning into blue already. The sky is alert. You arenβt.
κ¦You billboards, road signs, everything just to be in the present.
βYou will go to the airport, buy a cup of coffee, read a page of a book you are carrying about a womanβs loss of speech and a manβs loss of vision. You will board when you are called to and you will be lifted in the air and you will try to sleep for a bit.
βYou will touch down and you will go home and you will never be the same again. We are made up of people we know. Thatβs what the writer you met yesterday had said.
π€ͺOut of 11 siblings, including my father, five are now gone. The rest will live with the agony of the loss, the pain that unsaid things bring, the whole subtraction process that wonβt stop until the count is zero.
ο·ΊIt must be hard to lose a younger sibling. Your father is a man who speaks little. But you saw him cry that afternoon when he bid the final farewell. He sobbed like a child.
***
πThere were stories. Small little fragments that people shared about the dead. His photo was kept in the place where his body had been the night before in a glass case.
π·When they began to share the stories, they didnβt think they would remember so much that they would cry and laugh at the same time.
πSomeone remembered that one time when he had given money to treat someone in the family. Another said how he had continued to send him a stipend of Rs 150 for many years because the person had lost his father.
κ§A cousin recalled he had bought vegetables for her marriage function. He had checked the stock in the kitchen and found that it wasnβt enough. She remembered the amount. It was Rs 7,500. This was many, many years ago.
You didnβt share that once he had got you a badminton β±racquet. You used to play that sport as a child, and you remember that the house-help came with the racquet and said it was for you. You were so happy. Your father was struggling and your uncle remembered that you had wanted a racquet.
πSome time ago, he said you should come by his house too. And you said youβd go, but you never made it.
We grow up and we grow apart.
β Maybe there were more than 32 slots at Delhiβs Lodhi Crematorium, but how do you count pyres that are lives, dreams and losses burning in heaps? Long after the families leave, the ashes will be numbered and handed back. People end just like that.
πThe crematorium is a busy one, and all burning and rituals are to be completed within the dedicated time slot. One hour or so. A human with all those years and stories confined to a square and a deadline.
κ¦°The pits are designed to accommodate as many dead as possible. Your uncle was βNumber 26β. You were handed a little stick doll with a face made of rags. You placed it at the bodyβs feet, as instructed. Then, you placed the logs like everyone else. They say thatβs how you release the dead. By burning them, so they return to the elements they came from.
βYour cousin brother lit the pyre and that old crackling sound began. You saw your old and very fragile father wipe his tears. They say siblings are your soul mates. Your uncleβs son, standing there, suddenly seemed so calm. It was like he had just crossed over to being that man who now had witnessed his fatherβs death.
βPapa will now be only in the photos,β he said.
πYou didnβt know what to say. You sat there with him and watched your uncle burn.
π¦You instinctively took a photo. They say you donβt keep photos of pyres, but you kept it as a final keepsake.
To lose a father must be a difficult thing.
π―You still wake up in the middle of the night and think about all that you have lost.
You still have not cried.
Your uncle is now a memory.
πYour father hides his pain. You havenβt spoken about any of this.
πBut your father came to the airport to see you off.
βAnd every day, your mother reminds you to take your medicines.
πΉWe all know we will lose each other. Pyres will be lit and ashes will be committed to the river.
ꦬWe will never come to terms with any act of leaving.
π₯You wish you had said to your uncle that he was a gentle soul and that scar made him look so beautiful.
You will forever live with that unsaid bit.
Chinki Sinha is Editor, Outlook
