Cremation...

This is difficult to write...I can't bring myself to describe it. I shall be truthful and neutral like always. I was frustrated. I have been frustrated for a long time now. Forever I have hated the fact that people at home keep saying that there's no money. All the time - when this is never the case. There's ample money at home, just more mismanagement than organization. Yes, if you want to blame me, I was tired. I felt lazy and dazed. I am running about all the time. With a very disappointed and depressed mind. It's difficult, trust me.

Saturday evening was like this. I don't know what happened with my temper. It's only that I have promised myself that I won't be stopping myself from doing anything I wish. So I wanted to post this.

Just a casual conversation I had with my niece. But I got scared. Writing about poetry might cause people to suspect the identity of the person I like. That was the first stress. Mom's cribbing about money was the second one. That dad had asked the FD agent not to come home and give us the due money was the third. And dad always barging in my room and calling me even if I would be asleep was yet another stress factor. The already rare self control was shattered. I shouted, I broke down, I made a mess of myself. My grandma asked me what has happened, why I am behaving like this...I shouted to her that this is something she should ask her daughter and son in law. I didn't know then that this would be the last ever time I would be speaking with her.

I went for the rehearsals and came back. I gave couple of biscuits to the dog. Then I went upstairs. Dad came up to call me for dinner. I closed the door on his face. I ate a cup of yogurt and two chocolates. I went to bed. I told myself that the next morning I'd attend the rehearsals and then go over to the mall. Have dinner, watch a movie. I won't inform anything to my family. Just like Piku, I shall spend a day with myself. I dozed off thinking these things.

When the phone rang I saw the time as 10:35. It was mom calling. "Drama queen", I thought to myself and disconnected the call. My rehearsal was due at 11. "I am late as usual", I told myself and was about to get up, when there was loud banging on the door and mom crying like a maniac..."your grandma is no more". Everything else seems like a picture now. I went down the stairs and from the staircase I could see grandma sitting up in her usual posture. I said, "mom, what are you talking, she's fine"...I went near her, saw her breathing normally. Her body was warm. Only her face tilted downwards and her tongue jutted out. I went on calling her, embracing her...she didn't answer. She kept sitting in that position, and it really looked like a frame as a cat sat facing her, on the boundary wall outside her window. Both of them sat facing each other, one barely alive, the other basking in the sun. It was actually 6 o'clock in the morning, the watch in the mobile had somehow shown me the wrong time. 

The doctor came. He referred to the hospital and refused to take fees. We called the ambulance, took her to the emergency ward, still having some hope, transferred her to the neuro ITU, the senior doctor met us and crushed our hope...and I thanked him for not mincing words and baffling us, we called the relatives, she went on fighting till two more days and let all her near and dear ones see her breathing one last time...and finally breathed her last. I consented for the mechanical ventilator, I signed and took custody of her dead body. My first visit to the crematorium, knowing the rituals, doing them, wondering that some people even have this kind of a life as profession, and finally seeing her body being engulfed by the fire. Collecting the ashes and accompanying my mother to throw away the last remains of her. Making arrangements for her last rites. Everything's a first for me. The so called non existent relatives streaming in and some of literally running the show was a surprise event. The cooperation extended by the hospital was another wonder, in these days of health care being a business...but all these things apart...this entry was all about the unspoken truth. If grandma left because of my whimsical nature, I begged forgiveness from her in front of the entire crowd that gathered during her cremation, and I am telling the truth here too.  The son I lost, the husband I never could have as my own apart, I am losing the few people I really treasured. I don't know how I shall deal with the ultimate loneliness, but that's perhaps the only true constant in my life...