Too many goodbyes

 

My grandmother passed away two weeks ago. We called her Ayyamma. She was 97 years old when she left this world. A tiny, feisty character who inspired all of us. My daughter thought she was the cutest great-grandmother anyone could have. I knew her as a very strong woman who didn’t waste time with words and preferred actions instead. She was the hardest working person I have met in my life. She had a green thumb and grew lots of vegetables. Her garden was always colourful. My sister got her talent with plants. I suspect I got her resilience. 

Ayyamma had had a difficult life. She was married as a child barely into her teen years. She birthed and took care of five children by herself. Fiercely independent, Ayyamma had the courage to do everything on her own during a time when it was unheard of.

 

We mourned our Ayyamma but blended in with the grief, was a host of memories. I remember her telling me about snakes she caught and teaching me how to weave coconut fronds into thatches. I remember watching as she gave the calf some tea in the morning saying that since she and I both liked tea, why would the calf not like it! And indeed, she did – the little calf quite enjoyed early morning tea time with us. 

 

Saying goodbye to Ayyamma was like watching a yellow leaf fall or touching a perfectly ripe mango while it was still on the branch and watching it slip into your hand. She showed us how graceful and peaceful death could be at the end of a well-loved and well-lived life.  We missed Ayyamma but didn’t grieve because we knew her time had come. 

The other goodbye was heart wrenching. Five days after Ayyamma passed, my cousin too left this world after succumbing to Covid. He was just 42 years old. He left behind two very young children. While there were many cases in the locality as well as in the family, no one thought that a seemingly healthy young man would have any difficulty beating the nasty virus.  

This death was a huge shock. All of us cousins kept calling each other while he was in hospital to see if we could get some second opinions or offer moral support or anything at all. One cousin found him a bed at a better facility and visited him in the ICU while keeping us informed of his progress. At the end we felt collective exhaustion and a deep-seated regret that we couldn’t help save him.

  

When death comes too early, we find it tough to let go. We ask ourselves why? We cannot accept it easily. A lot of guilt accompanies a death due to illness. Were the interventions too late? Was care not stepped up? The truth is we can never know what could have been done – we need to accept that the choices made were the best for that particular time and circumstance. But what of the children who await their father every evening? What do we tell them? 

This second wave of the pandemic has been deadlier than the first. How many families have been bereaved and how many youngsters have been lost? What used to be news in the papers I shuddered over came home to us in the most brutal way. There seems to be nothing fair in a world that allows a two-year-old child to continue asking for her father who will never again come home. 

Our goodbyes stay with us. Just like memories. Just like regrets. Just like longing. R.I.P dear ones.

The Broken Plate

It was sometime after tea. I was feeling quite annoyed. I was hot, sticky and felt a sore throat coming on - it was probably because I had gorged on the yummy vegan ice-cream my daughter Mahi had made for us. I can’t ever eat ice-cream without having a sore throat which is why I usually steer clear but yesterday night I gave in to temptation. Still - why was I feeling so irritable? Well, it’s a bit of a story.

After sixteen years in the crockery cabinet, one lovely plate which was part of a set given to me by my sister when we moved into our new house, found its way to the table. I’ve always kept that set carefully; never taking it out or using it. For some reason, I had the urge to get it out yesterday. I’d passed it to Appu so he could eat breakfast. All the usual plates were in the dishwasher and he was quite happy to get something new and interesting.Since his autism ensures a certain love for patterns, he used the same plate today and left it in the sink (typical guy - won’t do dishes unless you hold a gun to his head). When the maid came later in the afternoon, she told me that the plate was broken. Apparently ‘someone’ had placed something heavy on top of it and it had broken. I realised there was no point in asking how so I told her to wrap up the pieces carefully so we could dispose of it safely.

I got back to my work. The sense of irritability rose. I sat down to think. And soon my brow cleared. Why was I so mad at myself? It wasn’t because of the broken plate - mistakes happen. It was because all my life I have set aside things to be used later.I was always taught that the  best things have to be stowed away, never used. How much more meaningful would the life of the plate be had it been used to eat hundreds of delicious meals shared with friends and family? What was the point of anything if it had no use? Is value related to price alone or does the happiness derived from something factor too?

How many of us defer happiness, defer the pleasure of enjoying things, defer the time with friends that we promise ourselves? Most of us I’d imagine. Is it an Indian thing? An Indian middle-class thing? My mother kept tons of crockery in cupboards where only cockroaches got to use them. They were never taken out. Many broke without ever being used. I have some of those things with me now - it’s hard to wipe off the scent of disuse and abandonment from them. Unused for decades does not ever translate to new.

In our present times, when uncertainty hits us on all levels, shouldn’t we take a step back and decide to enjoy what we have? Don’t keep things to give away to your children. Use them. Derive joy from them. If you can’t do that, give them away to strangers, to the less fortunate, to anyone at all. Leaving objects hidden in cupboards where they get entombed in the dust of disillusionment does not spark joy. Let someone else have them who will find use for them. Don’t hold onto things for the sake of having , of accumulating, of finding meaning in quantity.

One broken plate taught me a simple lesson. Holding on to anything binds you to it, makes you heavier and never lets you be flexible. This applies to thoughts and actions as well as house or cars or anything  you can think of. The only way to survive this world is to let go. Things will unfurl. You will get there. Everything is always working out for you. So live a lot. Laugh a lot. And break a lot of plates. Because that’s life - messy, unexpected but also surprisingly joyous.

The power of failure

Failure gets a bad rap. Each time. Have you ever wondered why we, singularly as well as collectively, deride failure the way we do? Why do we only respect success? Is it humanly possible to be successful always? Is perennial success sought after because of the belief that it transforms man into superman?

All my life I believed it was important to be successful, to make money, to get for myself all those things that I did not have as a child.  By that scale I was not unsuccessful. Things changed drastically years later when I first heard my son's diagnosis. When autism entered my life, I felt like I had failed spectacularly – as a mother, as a woman, as a human being. All my banked insecurities roared into life in the form of a fierce fire that burned every ounce of confidence from my very soul.

I have had more failures than successes and my husband’s chequered career too lays testimony to the same truth. Having said this, I now say that each of my failures have taught me something so invaluable that today, as of now, I totally rock.

I have been through hell and survived. Each day still holds challenges that could break the backs of most but I get up and face them. When I failed to find a school for my son, I started one. When I failed to create a career for myself, I tried many and enjoyed them all. I have been an engineer, a  writer, a columnist, a teacher, a fundraiser, a translator - and I still run my house and make dinners that my children are excited to eat. I don’t think I would’ve learnt these many things or tried so many options if I had a regular successful life. So I am grateful for having failed. I wish I had started teaching my children the importance of failing when they were very little but at least now I tell them about it.

Respect failure. Don't fear it. Take it in your stride. Don’t equate yourself with your worst failure. Equate yourself with the strength you have shown in picking yourself up and moving on. No one ever walked the first time they tried. No one ever learnt to ride a bike without falling off at least once. No one ever got through life without one single instance of failure because no one can be good at everything they try.

Recently when I saw a lot of my friends on FB almost revelling in the failure of the Vikram lander even as the majority of Indians sat teary eyed watching the ISRO team frantically trying to re-establish connection with it, I felt terrible. Imagine the amount of effort behind such a mission. Imagine the number of people whose ingenuity helped the space program evolve into what it is today. Imagine the brilliance that designed a lunar orbiter plus lander at a cost that was a fraction of what other countries spend on such a program. And yet the failure of the lander was what was ridiculed. Not the success of the orbiter. Not the stellar work done.

It is only when we learn to respect failure as much as we idolise success that we acknowledge the power of learning. Without learning there is no evolving. So celebrate the failures and don’t put down those who try all their lives to do what others do not dare to do. They are the ones who make all the  difference.

The story of the handle-less sieve

I have a lot of sieves in my kitchen. A small one that is perfect for a single cup of tea. A few bigger ones for sieving copious amounts of tea. One for pouring tamarind juice through so that sambars, rasams and fish curries are sufficiently tangy but have no bits of tamarind seeds for unwary teeth to encounter. One for pouring golden ghee so that the burnt bits stay arrested in the sieve and don’t sully its beautiful perfection. And really big ones for flour and so on. I also have a small handle-less sieve. It wasn’t handle-less to start with and that is the story I choose to tell you today – the story of the handle-less sieve.

This particular sieve that I am talking about was a disaster. It looked great. It was shiny and bright. It had an amusing conical shape with a rather heavy handle. Now while it looked good, the handle was too big for the head which made it a really bad sieve. You couldn’t put it on a cup without risking it falling and tea leaves spattering everywhere. I never liked it, but like many other things (and people) in my life, I put up with it.

Then one day, my maid dropped it and its handle fell off. She then hid it and left. Many days later I found it and asked her about it. She blamed the fall on the sieve. I didn’t care in any case and left the conical sieve in the kitchen drawer and forgot all about it.

Last month, I was trying to skim cream off cold milk to make into butter. It’s a messy process at the best of times and I was struggling that morning. My husband came into the kitchen and told me to use the old handle-less sieve instead of the flat spoons. I tried it and lo and behold, in a few minutes I had rich cream sitting contentedly in a dabba in the freezer. After that, the sieve was used exclusively for skimming milk. It made me think.

Sometimes we find ourselves at a stage in life where we don’t fit. We don’t feel accomplished enough. We don’t feel loved enough. We don’t feel good enough. And then by some miracle or by the grace of God, along comes a purpose that fits us perfectly. Whatever characteristics kept us from being good at what we thought we were meant to do, made us perfect for something that we had never even imagined. That is the beauty of life. If we believe that there is something that each of us is exceptional at, we would wait patiently till we find that something and not settle for whatever our family or society or partner tells us we are supposed to do. So find that one thing. And go for it. Your self-doubt and awkwardness will fall by the wayside. And finally, you will be a creature of perfect balance. Just like my little sieve.

Standing by me

Working and living with autism has not been an easy journey. There have been so many challenges along the way that sometimes I wonder why I do it at all or why my partner and I keep the school going against all odds when we are financially, intellectually and emotionally worn out from all the adversity we run into. There is no rational answer to it. It could be that we both hate giving in to defeat. It could be that there is no one else doing what we do and so we owe it to the children. It could be that we are gluttons for punishment. Hard to say really. Maybe its all of it.

The other day a man from the house opposite the one where we run our school came to the gate when neither my partner nor I were present and proceeded to demand entry. On being denied it he grew abusive and hit one of my teachers who promptly locked the front door to get away from his tirade. The man then threatened to get the school closed. He had seen one of the children throwing a tantrum and wanted to see for himself what the child was up to. We don’t allow strangers to come into the school for obvious reasons. My partner went to speak to him only to be lectured to for half an hour. He claimed that she seemed highly qualified but how could such an uncouth guy be our staff – someone who couldn’t respect a government employee enough to let him in. He demanded to see the child and his parent. He wanted to know what was going on.

So today morning a whole host of parents came to our support as I walked up to the man and introduced myself. Immediately he sounded humble and apologetic. He claimed he did not need to be convinced. He was just concerned when he heard the child throwing a tantrum. He sounded like a completely different person. He averred that he had no issues with us. The tantrum-throwing child’s father came forward to explain to him why the child was going through a bad phase. Other parents stood by and declared that ours was the best, most caring organization for autism in Bangalore. I stood there and smiled. To see our parents come together and be right by my side when things mattered was a wonderful experience.

I walked back to the school with them. It was like being part of a family. Every parent supported us. Every parent was happy to take time to come and spend time with us to tell us that our work mattered. Today showed me how worthwhile our work is, how appreciated it is by those whose lives we have changed, how important it is for us to help more such children and their families. We aren’t alone. We never will be alone. Our work can go on. Such reassurance brings forth my warmest gratitude. Today, was a good day…

Golden Caramel Memories

My Caramel was taken from me almost 3 months ago. He was my golden boy, the cat who was a part of my heart, the one whom I remember every day. I try to forget that the lady next door had him taken to a place that she refuses to this date to reveal the address of. I try to forget that she was abusive to my daughter. I tried to forget that her husband messaged me that I better not go in search of my cat and that my children and I had no right to even see pictures of Caramel. But I cannot. I know that the better way to handle this is to let things be. And yet somehow I simply cannot.

The only reason I manage to get by without him is that I have his two daughters Caju (caramel jr) and Ponnu. They look so much like him that it eases my heart. Caju is a miniature version of her dad whereas Ponnu has his voice, his adorable trot and his naughtiness. They both like ghee dosas like their dad. They both climb the window meshes with the same alacrity that their dad used to show. And they both are as cute as their dad was. But what they are not, is friendly. They are 5 months old and while occasionally they allow me to cuddle with them, for the most part, they are independent. They don’t come and lie down on my laptop when I am working. They don’t follow me around and give me special attention when I am ill. They don’t curl up in any little gap they can find as long as its close to me. That was all Caramel. And its so hard to forget all of that.

I wonder what it is in a human heart that can make a person so selfish that they think its okay to hurt others with impunity. I wonder why the lady is continually lauded while my children and I are ostracized for fighting for our cat. Don’t animals have rights? Or do only certain animals belonging to certain people have rights while the rest of us have to hope and pray that their eyes don’t turn upon our pets in anger?

Anger and hatred are corrosive emotions. I know that. I cannot help feeling both of them towards the lady who knowingly hurt my children so callously. I don’t believe in fairness or justice. I know that there is no right and no wrong in this world as it is today. A world where a cat has no right to live and where children are made to cry in their sleep because they do not know how else to cope with the pain of a lost pet.

I tell my children that Caramel is safe and he is plump and he is happy. I tell them many lies so that they hurt less than I do. My golden boy is living the life of his dreams, I tell them. I so wish I had someone to tell me that too…