Tag Archives: death

P.S: Don't stop talking to me in my head please, that is what keeps me going!

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This is not my first monsoon without you, yet I am not seasoned to live alone,

The “Project Childhood” seems a far away dream, yet each morning I wake up craving the smell of you.

I miss pouring my heart out in cryptic terms and yet you understanding what all I meant,

I miss you making sense of even the most mundane activities that surround my being.

I miss goofing up in the kitchen, yet you lapping up the food like it was fit for the heaven.

I miss you making my favorite “payesh” and then putting some away in my favorite bowl, for only you knew that I liked it stiff.

I miss those endless debates that opened my mind, I miss you trying to make up for a word gone awry.

I miss teasing you, I miss you writing down notes about all that I need to pay off when I start earning.

I miss reading your letters, I miss learning Bengali from you ever morning over newspapers.

I miss having the zeal to discover more about Vedas just to let you know new things.

I miss playing carrom and blaming you for cheats, I miss those scrabble sessions where you taught me grammar.

I miss being the girl who thought who shall forever be around

Forever and ever somewhere is missed too in essence with you gone

Today in the world of frequent “I miss you(s)” I don’t know if mine really carries the intensity of how lonely I still feel, despite everyone saying that they see you in me. I still get choked whenever I see a little one being cuddled by someone like you or when in search of a certain post I stumble on those which have your smell. I can’t change my old phone for a new one for it stores your photos and it’s so outdated that I can’t transfer them anywhere else!

I still hide pictures from my timeline whenever someone puts up a marriage photographs where he/she is being blessed by a set of hands, which I shall forever be bereft of on my special day. I am jealous of all those kids who stand proudly in photographs with the set of great-greats and it is no consolation with Mistah asks me to believe in re-incarnation.

I still can’t mourn you the way the world wants me to!

I still can’t refer to you in past tense!

Whoever says “time is the best healer” forgot perhaps that I hate wearing watches or having clocks around my house. For me thus, it stands still and so every morning by the window watching the droplets flow, I wish it was you sitting on the chair humming to me by your feet. Instead today there’s me who sits on it like a misfit and you smile on from behind the frame.

By the way it still rained on my birthday, and thank you for sending the Asian Koel wherever I go. Your secrets are still safe with me, and the stories you told me to make me have my drink still make me roll my eyes.

I am still mad at you for leaving me without attending my first book launch (though I cried buckets and tried to show it was all out of joy). My eyes are not moist as I type this because I miss you, it’s the damn contact lens that needs to be disposed off!

I am your girl thus I won’t tell the world that I am broken, when in reality I could give up anything to just have a morning where I wake up to your voice. I promise that then even if you call me at 7 on a Sunday to discuss the newspaper headlines, I won’t tell you that you are a being a “spoilt brat”!

Hope you doing good. Kindly stay of trouble, will ya? I am not there to bail you out!

Love. My GM.

A year gone by and I still haven't learnt …

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To refer to you in past tense like all others …

To not allow my voice to quiver and eyes to blur each time I write something about you …

To not feel giddy when I sit on that bed, on which I have created some of my bestest childhood memories …

To come to open that “treasure chest” you so safely guarded, for I know that I would break down when I see the contents (all our childhood “complaint” letters to you neatly stocked and a lot more)…

To fight the urge to instinctively reach for the phone and call you every morning …

To not crave for the sandalwood smelling white linen and the frail fingers that used to put me to the most peaceful sleep…

To not kiss those never-ending debates and fights and you keeping an account of what all to reimburse from the man I marry…

To not wonder at your last promise to me and think if you really meant it…

To not thank you at your parting gift and hate you for not sticking around to see it …

To touch a chocolate today and not cringe at the thought of lighting an incense stick!

To accept that the seeds of creativity, thought you had sewed flourished in the book, yet you are not there to read it. My favorite story is on our relationship, and yet whenever I read it aloud, I feel there’s so much I have missed to tell…

To come to imagine that the little pair of feet that totters around the house doesn’t have you around to spoil her. It’s difficult to imagine a child being raised in the family without having your hand around. She’d know you I’m assured but then only I know what she misses out on …

To not crave every single day that I’d give up anything to hear you call me out by that special name once … Just once!

To come to terms with the fact, that it’s been a year of losing my childhood!

 P.S: It’s good to have a clear memory, but sometimes when you can narrate a day minute by minute and re-live through tear-stained eyes and see it in your dreams, you just wish the calendar skipped a date, maybe then it would all be a nightmare and life would be the same again!

 

A Girl's/Woman's guide to mourning…

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Have been planning this post for quite sometime now, but the occasion was never right. In fact I guess the seeds were sown the moment GM slipped into coma and Baba, Kaka (Uncle) and me battled to make sure that she be surrounded by all her loved ones and comfort.

 Then there was no looking back. Mourning – I thought it was the only thing that spilled beyond gender, caste, society et al. As usual life was to break this bubble and tell me ‘welcome to reality’. It did and in the crudest way possible. It hasn’t left me bitter, for GM somewhere has taught me never to really be bitter with things and people. It baffles Ma, when I refuse to get back at people, but how do I make her understand that it shocks me more than it hurts me when what someone refers to as ‘depravity of human mind’! But this time I did get back at people, musch to everyone’s surprise and I have no qualms about it.

I scanned Amazon, Flipkart and the like, but unfortunately I didn’t find a handbook that defines ‘Guidelines for Mourning or How a girl should mourn’. Decided – its high time I be the leader of the pack, self-appointed, albeit!

Rule 1

You should mourn when you know that even the last straw has been pulled, instead of inventing new ideas to extend the time in this world – Money matters!

One of the cheeky relatives that the balls to come up to me and say that instead of teaming up with my dad to go in for the latest ventilator think for GM, we should just let her be on oxygen and pray! The bill apparently was scaring her. One look at her and a few crisp words in Bengali that the same is not our concern right now and that all of GM’s working children, grand-children are there for that, didn’t make her ashamed, instead just made her go away and try the same logic on my aunt. Who too walked away. She grumbled that that is how she had taken care of the ‘situation’ for her MIL then was she wrong? I answered no, but then just as she had the right to decide for her family, we had the right for ours!

When was the last time I asked you for money and how you plan your household, that you define mine?

Rule 2

Understand death as beyond all reasons and doings

The concept of guilt to me is actually par all. Death is inevitable, so I learnt, but to me what mattered more was the concept of guilt that it would leave behind. I know it for a fact that my father and mother both live with the guilt that they couldn’t be with their fathers (respective) when they passed away (both were working away from their home lands) and I did not want them to go through it again. So while a few of them told me to wait before I usher in my parents on an emergency flight from Zurich – reminded me of my sister’s condition, I stuck to my guns. My parents were to come and come in by the first available flight irrespective of the improving or deteriorating condition of my GM. One of them had also in fact called me in Mumbai to tell me that probably I should come when she’s really on the verge of leaving!!!! I had just disconnected the line then. Also, the decision to shift my GM to the advanced ventilator despite knowing that there was ‘no hope’ was my insistence keeping in mind that my uncle and my father were NOT to survive with a life long guilt that they could have done something more to give their mom comfort!

To me the very moment Baba had held my hand during a smoke break and asked me if there was something he could do medically to give her a few moments of respite, was the trigger.

Guilt eats you up, especially the guilty which raises ‘what if(s)’ which have no answer. It’s my duty as a daughter to ensure that the daughter/son of the previous generation do not live for the rest of their lives with such a guilt!

Rule 3

Nothing beats the grief a SON faces on losing a mother

My father was in a state of almost denial and hence everyone thought it was essential to give him company. I saw a DIL (my mom) who was in pieces, whom people said they had to be strong. I saw myself, who was still being viewed as the deviant grand-daughter ever, who just never cared for society.  For 36 years the DIL has been more than a son to this MIL. She was in fact closer than her womb connects. For the last almost 3 decades these grand-daughters were the ones whom GM had brought up . In fact it shocked them that my mother knew all about her last wishes about dressing up in finery and where she eye docnation receipt was kept. It shocks me to see this being a reason of shock!

 So we didn’t exactly feel the grief and know what my father was going through? Me who accompanied Baba for each of his smoke trips, because right since childhood those 5 minutes of father-daughter talks help us connect, didn’t know what he as a son needed? He needed space and realisation of the loss and when me and mom tried to reason that out, we were told that we wouldn’t really know!

Where were you when I helped my Baba cry so that he could sleep – busy talking about my deviance right? So Thanks! But not thanks for the extra gyaan about ‘grief’!

Rule 4

You are a girl, your mourning should be behind curtains

So when my mother stood up that I being GM’s favourite was to accompany her to the house and till the pyre, we got a lot of cold stares. It didn’t matter then, for anyway I was tagged, what shocked me was the gender associated mourning drama. You – my dear man who claim to be her close relative, had the right to shoulder her , because of your different genitals. Irrespective of the fact that you were never there when she was in pain. That despite of me having the nerves to sit through the trauma beside her, you considered yourself the stronger one fit to help her in her final journey. Sorry, not here, not with me.

Same thing happened regarding dressing her up, final journey and the ashes strewing. I made it I was there and I have no qualms. Yesterday too if people gaped when I sat for the puja along with my dad and uncles and later told me that she would have been proud of me, I did not bat an eyelid before I replied that she wouldn’t have been proud of me, just satisfied. Infact had they used these words in front of her, she would have said there’s nothing to be proud of – she’s just doing her duty!

Things that shock you, are actually normal. It’s you who are crazy to live in a shady world of poorly framed rituals. Not me who’s run by heart and mind!

Rule 5

She’s gone. Help her leave following all rituals

Even if the rituals make no sense? Even if I believe that there are no real leaving behind? That I still believe that there are no real ends just that there are no real beginnings? My ‘why(s)’ baffled them and their ignorance shocked me.

As GM lay there sleeping, one of them lit incense sticks beside her head stand. I jumped to remove it, shocking him. I coldly replied that she was asthmatic and could never bear the incense smell (something which I have inherited!) and hence it be kept near the foot. He insisted that it was the ritual. I told Baba that no ritual was to be at the cost of GM’s discomfort. End of story beginning of yet another set of whispers.

Same thing was at the shradh ceremony – when everyone insisted on the incense sticks being lit in front of her photo. I stood guard for 6 hours to make sure it’s not. Rituals cannot surpass likes and dislikes merely because a person is not physically present.

Also, rituals have a meaning and when are we to understand that. When I went shopping for GM’s puja last week I noticed that the purohit had asked for a ‘paan daan’ (a beetle leaf holder) to be included in the list of items. My GM HATED any sort of addictions and hence I struck it off. Yesterday at the shraadh an elderly person raised a hue and cry about it. The purohit looked at me, when I merely asked him that what is this puja all about? Isn’t it to give away as final offerings all the material goods that she liked? He nodded and so I looked at the lady and said, hence since my GM never liked all that, it shall be replaced by a basket of chocolates. Uncle and Baba helped me decorate the basket of flowers and chocolates.

When will you understand my fellows the rituals and society are what we make of. For when I teach Anarkali to distribute chocolates on GM’s anniversary, it’ll be a ritual which I create!

Dearest GM,

I am sorry, for I know you wouldn’t have never liked me being rude with people. I know that you taught me to step into the other person’s shoes before reacting. But this time I thought it to be more important to step into your shoes and speak what you would have. After all, that is how the world is to know that the legacy you spun is living on right? You don’t need any rituals for remembrance, I’ll make sure that the mind you have gifted me with shows your presence each day.

Yours and only yours,

SC *special name*

Letters to my daughter – Part III

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Dear Princess,

Yes :roll:  all you want at me, for it is indeed one of those RARE occasions when I decide to call you with a socially acceptable mush name! Or so what people think – for to me Anarkali is a perfectly socially befitting name!!!

To say that I am missing you bad would be the greatest oxymoron of all times right – how can I miss something I never had till now? Well I do and I crave – like never before. Maybe because after I ceased to be a princess I realized how wonderful it was to be one and I crave to make someone feel the same.

I don’t know where you are – whether you have already arrived in this world or are en-route or whether you have just expressed your desire to a stork to be transported to a doorstep. In any which way princess, I just hope you find your way to me in the next three years. But will you do one thing my child, as and when you decide to bless me will you meet GM once on the way. It’ll make life easier for both me and you, trust me!

The walls I have built around me, I don’t want to break them down and yet I want you to know the real me – so I think a long chat with GM will solve the dilemma. Those grey hairs are courtesy a lot many of my escapades, my dear!

Remember our dream den Princess – the one where there are no walls but just book shelves lined with the choicest ones picked by both of us, where there won’t be floors but just Persian rugs. And where instead of TV we’ll have a white screen for all those animated movies and jungle documentaries and a white board to doodle and learn new words – I shared that dream with someone. Not a friend, not even a close acquaintance. Not even Uncle A or Aunt S. I don’t know how to answer ‘who’. It was only when I rattled on to the coffee tables and the dreams of it storing our half played Scrabble or jigsaw puzzle games that I realized that the milk and cookie sipping escapades are only ours and there’s no scope of anyone else! He says I am fiercely possessive – I peep into my bag of dreams and smile at the little broken toy pieces I seek to guard. Scrap to me is valuable and that is perhaps why when you insist on preserving a twig, I’ll give into your imagination of it being a magic wand! He also thinks I’m sily and so I stopped sharing my dreams with him too – I am saving them all up for you.

You know I think I saw Bruno yesterday – yes the golden retriever with whom we’ll roll in the mud till we can challenge the Ariel or the Surf Excel guys! I was returning home when a lost Bruno caught my attention, as I stroked it, it’s warm nuzzle made me realize that he’s lost, I took him around the compound to the little boy holding the broken leash. I wish I could bring him home baby, but I guess I’ll wait for you so that we can bring both Buzz and Bruno home together!

It’s going to be a bit lonely here Princess, GM feared that, do you think you would be able to manage with the bed time stories and sky gazing activities I indulge you into? Or is Aunt S right when she says that her baby can already sense Uncle I’s voice and gets excited. Am sure we’ll work a way out Princess.

Why this letter today, maybe because am a little bit vulnerable. I was on the verge of breaking down my walls when I realized that I have to hold them up for you. But then again I sensed that it might not give you the glimpse of how your mom was really as a girl who believed on Valentine’s Day too once – long long back and did wish on fallen eye lashes. So maybe when one day you feel that you are stuck up with a demented mother devoid of all girly emotions – I’ll show you this letter to give you a glimpse of me and then remind you of the chat you had with GM en-route my world. Yes, I know then other questions will follow – but guess to you I will answer each one of them.

One thing I am going to do different but Princess, which GM would have ever approved of. I am going to introduce you to death before you discover it the hard way. I am going to share the story of Gautam Buddha* with you much before the time that my mom did with me!

Milk and cookies strike up awesome conversations and that’ll be our comfort food even when roles reverse and once again I become a child with dreams in my eyes – for you.

Come soon princess, I have almost perfected the animated steps of ‘5 little monkeys’ and ‘Good boy Carl’!

Stomach bubbles and Butt kisses,

Amma

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The lore goes that an old lady was distraught on losing her only son and went to Buddha asking him to bring him alive. Buddha tried to reason when she challenged his powers as a divine entity and said that he never really realized the truth about human emotions or being. The calm and ever smiling Buddha then agreed to grant her wish but asked her to fetch an essential ingredient which he needed to instill life back into the child. He asked her to fetch a handful of mustard seeds from a house which has never witnessed a single death. The old lady without a thought set off to find such a house-hold. It was only after she covered the entire village in vain that she realized the true lesson which Buddha wanted to impart – that how no one can escape death. As I questioned a blank space that day sleeping on her bed that ‘why GM?’ – Ma told me this story – handed down to her by her grand father when she had lost her brother – her lifeline.

P.S: For more letters to my unfortunate unborn daughter click here ;) ;)

The one were Wendy introduces "Death" to Peterpan…

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As a kid I remember Star News flashing the famous line ‘The world changes in 30 minutes’ and me a stickler for news channels courtesy the absence of channels like Aaj Tak and Headlines lapped this up for ‘school time profound talks’! Well my world changed in the midst of 2 posts.

When I wrote the last post, she was still around and me the youngest brat who though couldn’t get away with murder, but whose pout could make her fetch the moon. Today as I type this, I am the one who has to take care of the generation which lost their ‘head of the family’.

Sometimes all it takes is a small step from your own side to change the world. Sometimes all it takes is a small step by an external force to make you grow up over night.

If someone asks me what changed I wouldn’t be able to tell you. How can you summarise the loss of a person whose ideologies make up you – whose words are exactly of what you had heard 2 decades back and then never thought that you would think the same way. Overnight I suddenly feel too grown up, I feel that there’s no lap where I can smell cinnamon and wisdom together, and for today I have to extend my own for the son who is still taking his time to come to terms with reality.

The home has suddenly become a ‘house’ because there’s no name to call out as I climb the steps to the top floor – a ritual she mandated as we entered the home, for to her no calling of her name by us was enough.

The reference in ‘past tense’ suddenly makes all linguistic skills and rules of grammar too monarchic – why there has to be a sudden gap of what is and what was. Guess I’ll never know.

Death – she knew it scared me and protected me from it with a ferocious intensity. I have never been to a house or a place where there lay a departed soul. Yesterday she made face reality for the first time and to the core. From the time they switched off the monitors leaving me to make the final announcement to the family, to the time they called me to take her from the ICU to the waiting area – she made me be acquainted be death step by step. All throughout holding my hand, just like childhood. My last hours as her princess were well spent.

I remember her narrating these lines to me, when her brother departed and she held me close as she gathered courage to explain me I wouldn’t meet one of my favourite people ever again. She spoke the words of Tagore loud and clear, -“Moron jedin aashbe amar duaare, Shedin tumi ki dhon debe tahaare???”

The full verse written in English by him narrated:

On the day when death will knock at thy door

What wilt thou offer to him?

Oh, I will set before my guest

The full vessel of my life –

I will never let him go with empty hands.

All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days

And summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings

Of my busy life will I place before him

At the close of my days

When death will knock at my door.

Thank you all for your message, comments, calls and constant support. Thanks Brat for the wonderful insight into Wendy and Peterpan last night – do you know I was sitting beside her then. Thanks Amit and Minal for the constant hugs. Thanks Baisali, Uma, Nu, Nuttie, Sakshi and Tan for just being there and listening to my state ever so patiently. Maybe she decided to leave knowing I have all of you who’ll help me welcome ‘adulthood’, no matter how much I hate it!

You’ll live on as my Wendy forever…

The way me and Di have resolved to remember you always....

Just before the theft …

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I still have the ‘special name’ – but I know this is the end. The theft is inevitible and I attempt to gaze the gem knowing I need to hand it over. But Anarkali, these are the hands that held it once my dear. Maybe I should never wash them till I hold you, will then you know how she smelt and felt?

I know this is not the right time to type this post, but then again the deviant me has never really bothered. I want to write it, despite knowing that I am counting the last few hours of my childhood. It is still ‘alive’  in the sense of the word. But then this post, when read out to my Anarkali would be of the time her BB was with her mom.

I read poetry all morning today. Rilke, Naruda, Silvio, Tagore, Akhtar, Gulzar, Rumi – it was almost ferocious - intensity with which I devoured poetry at dawn. I knew it was needed, so that tomorrow when I pick up my tattered poetry books again and refuse to barter them for new covered ones, I have a reason to keep them close – a memoir of these last hours.

Those wrinkled hands which has cupped my face six months back and re-iterated te name I love, a zillion times – I remember that scene. Why did I act so foolishly that day in a room filled with million others, as they smiled at my childishness? Was it my attempt to make sure that Charulata, who lay in the womb was aware of the ‘name’ her Mishka loved to be addressed with? My special name is breathing its last on the ventilator as I type this – but it is essential, for I’ll atleast have something to hold onto when I come back empty. This shall be the time-reference of when the ‘name’ was still ‘alive’.

I remember the last sleep on her lap, her fingers through my hair. Parkinson’s was often defeated when the neurons got excited at the mere touch of what she referred to as ‘Bengali hair’. There was a small despair in her voice about the ‘walls’ I had built around me. There was an attempt to make me understand that pearls still lay at the sea bottom, despite my rough outside demeanor. There was a wish in those eyes that I let someone discover it and not push all divers back to the surface. Invisible sharks are worse than real ones. For a split second I thought of giving in. I thought that maybe what she said was all that I needed to heal the scars that have marred me. But guess this post tomorrow shall remind me, that the ‘last wish’ to see me walk down the aisle is long gone. Guilt? Not really. Would have been there had she not seen those walls – she did and somewhere she understood as to why suddenly this zeal to overwork and exhaust. The person who really knew the me which none of you over there know is just there as a ‘visitor’ now as I type this, but essential it is for tomorrow when the ‘wall’ is attempted to be broken down again and I face ‘who are you’, I can merely smile and walk away – just like you do when a child asks you whether there is really an old woman sitting in the moon.

I left the “Bengali” newspaper untouched today. I’ll read it when it’s not needed to polish my native linguistic skills anymore. For then when I mispronounce and falter, it’ll be on the words printed on the day when she was around to hear me and cringe and even at times break out into bouts of sarcastic laughter.

Suffering – she hated me in that. She said I was too soft. This is needed now as the hospital calls me on the other line – a proof that I am weak and yet stoic enough to type this as I am urged to leave. I am praying for a suffering to end, at the cost of an abrupt end to my fairy tale, my dreams of my prince, of a perfect palace and those ballerina shoes that shall never be made by elves to fit my size again.

Suffering, what form does it take? Who dares?

Pain, what nuances accompany it?

With what eyes does sadness search us out?

With what colour does it paint its strange peace?

How does sadness walk?*

I wonder as I set out to walk today – alone. The security around the fotress is high and alert. Still the most precious gem stands to be stolen. The vigilant me stands head bowed. Strangely I do not crave strength today. I crave numbness and extreme solitude!

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* Translated from Silvio Rodriguez’s famous Spanish piece – Let the Guitar Raise Her Hand.

Mumbai Monday 5 – Lonavla Learnings

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 I thought I had seen it all. I thought the worst was over and that Mumbai had nothing else to make me realise how true Krishna was when he said to Arjun –

“Sanjay in the end, it’s all about you. In the end nothing matters but you. For in the end you are all alone.”

But then, guess that is the greatness about this city. Just when you sit in cosily on a rainy afternoon under the quilt with a piping hot filter coffee cuppa – the smell of freshly brewed coffee filling up your nostrils and senses beyond, the guzzling sound of the sea filling up your heart and the ears. It strikes you – the city patrols in to teach you an untaught lesson. Yet again to leave you in awe that how did it know that this was left to be learnt?

Just when I thought I had enough of Charulata’s guzzles over the latest video; I went for a walk by the sea. I love it when the sea speaks to me at midnight. With my laptop and my coffee mug, sitting on the bricked wall, I must look quite funny a scene, that even the dogs forget to bark. That’s when I thanked you Mumbai, for helping me grow for teaching me so much. Guess, you took my note a bit too seriously and so today you made me do what dad had protected me from all these years –death and funerals.

Yes, I’ve been that protective kid who till today didn’t realise what death actually meant – for I was always kept away by my father – don’t ask me why. To me when people departed it was as if they are living in far off lands, for I haven’t seen them off myself. It was almost like when Y left. And then Mumbai decided that I needed to grow up and face the truth yet again – eye to eye.

Ishaan, was the little boy whom I had seen growing up. The little pair of feet all of 10 years of age, scurrying around with a handycam in his hand, trying to capture all his big sistah’s friends and yes of course with a half slice of pizza hanging from his mouth. He was the baby of our hostel – the one who came to visit his elder sister once every 3 months and ended up being pampered by 17 more.  While there was a time we insisted that the little pajayma boy stayed in the hostel (we even snuggled him into the girls hostel for nights together) later when the chubby cheeks gave away to a stubble goti, it was we who put our foot down and booked the ‘guest house’ for him.  He was the baccha – he is still the baccha. Just that just as my baby came home; the other big baby chose to depart.

Friends. Party. Exam free birds. Dam. The adrenalin rush. Dares to cross the dam. 3 friends jumping in. Two making it to the shore. One smiling from above and saying “Dude I swam my way to the heaven”!

As I stood there in Lonavla today, surrounded by the mountains, it struck me how badly I wanted to cover this place for my Mumbai Mondays. But not this way. I didn’t think that the cremation ground would be taking away my breaths not because of the way 5 hills seemed to echo my cries, but because I was too breathless crying. The laughter that spelled goofiness, the mind that was so creative – would be now all a fond remembrance. Here lay a brilliant chap for whom even Shantanu Moitra cancelled his recordings and rushed in with us into that Lonavla house – for there lay our baby who seemed too grown up today, sitting there amidst the photographs of his ancestors during the last rite puja ceremony.

 

Death today stood beside me like the calm cold wave, that leaves you numb, that tires you and soothes you to sleep, that makes you question and then answers them for you.

It made me do one other thing too – it made me guilty. It made me break down before the hills and scream out a sorry to my parents for the night when Y left and I wished I didn’t witness the next morning sunrise. I learnt what parents deserve n what they often get. Yet they bear it all for us kids and live. It made me guilty for each smoke I take and that makes Ma scrunge up her nose and Baba sigh – for my moment of sanity I realised how much insane thoughts I drive in their heads.

That in my quest to know where me and Y belonged I forgot what my parents deserve and what they are getting. It’s the worst thing to see your child suffer and yet not be able to pick up and comfort. It made me rush up and hug his dad, hold hid mom tightly till she cried and make his sister spot a shooting star. There’s nothing worse than handling family in denial about an untimely death.

19 is an age where dreams take wings – its not the age to take on wings and fly to heaven. 20+x years is when you become wise truly – so decided Mumbai today.

Wish the road to Lonavla was not tear stained for all of us.

Yet another fear conquered eye to eye.  Just wish it was not this child.

RIP Ishaan. I am sure the angels are already smitten – can visualize you singing to them with your guitar and they all dreamy eyed. You’ll always be the Rockstar. Live on.

A bigger than life Mumbai Monday this – for that is what this city is all about. Learning the unexpected.  

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Mumbai Mondays is all about seeing Mumbai and its surroundings through my eyes. It’s my take to introduce you to a city and its surroundings which I love, as I see it – alone and often with friends (we call ourselves the Mumbai Mad Caps). It’s a thread that goes live every Monday. I cover places randomly and welcome suggestions too. You can find more posts about Mumbai Mondays here.