As he lay sleeping..

My father is sleeping
on the bare wooden floor.
He hasn’t woken up though
we have visitors today.
Lots of them sit around my father;
their backs to the open door.
Why, I thought, did my father go to sleep
on this bare wooden floor
as his bed lies inside,
waiting for him?

Then I realized the shocking truth

and my eyes filled with tears.

I wailed and ran to a corner,

trying not to cry.

The Value of Loss

Yet another funeral song is in the air. This time, a young man; barely finished with youth and just beginning  adulthood. 22. So young and yet so old. Cancer, they said; I had learned about cancer in Anatomy. Uncontrolled mitosis when blah blah and blah. But cramming for the test was one thing, losing a life was another. One day, he was just a regular 20’s guy, having fun and skipping lectures. And the next, he was diagnosed. So randomly. He went through chemotherapy, suffered a stroke but the last I heard he was doing much better. Perhaps this is a form of “better” too.

I’ve only met him twice. For some reason, I have always been spared this feeling of loss. I am sad that he died, of course, but not devastated. I tried to cry but couldn’t. A stranger among many. How can I be devastated at his death?

That man..

There was this old man who used to come and give me narranga muttayi when I was little. He used to tell me stories too . I have faint memories of sitting on his lap and listening to him talk to my grandfather about various worldly matters. He was a teacher but was long retired by the time I met him. There were kids afraid of old people in my first grade class. Perhaps it was because I was partly brought up by my grandparents and their friends, that I never felt my classmates’ fear. Today, though, I saw this man again and I was scared. I sat through both Disturbia and The Ring without flinching for a second, yet… I jumped when I heard his voice. He was yelling for food though his wife told us that he just ate. When asked, he bellowed that it wasn’t enough. He ate again in front of us and five minutes later, the poor man was screaming again- names of people who were long dead, solutions to problems sparked long ago, more food. His voice still echoes in my ears. Alzheimer’s, they called it… makes me wonder whether there is a God. If there was, He surely would not have let this happen.

As I watched him die..

Feeling: =(
Listening: Chanda re (Eklavya:The Royal Guard)
Doing: Reading

Don’t you ever feel scared of time? Don’t you ever feel like you’re not ready to move on.. that this minute, this day should last just a little bit longer?  That years are passing by too quickly?

He was 80 when he died last week, in the words of Arundhati Roy, “a dieable viable age.” I wonder what he was thinking the last minute of his life, when he knew he was dying. Did he regret his youth? Did he think that perhaps he could have done more? Or was he satisfied? Was he scared? He shouldn’t have been, right? He was a priest; maybe his years at the seminary gave him more assurance that God has a plan for us after death. I wonder whether he thought of his grandson, the ten-year old boy or his granddaughter. I wish just for a second, I could see, hear, feel the world the way he did as he took his last breath. Cardiac arrest, they called it, I wonder whether it hurt.

I wonder what I would think… as I take my last breath.

They say.. They say you shouldn’t worry about the future, that this minute should be all that counts. But that’s so hard to do. I’m not scared of death. I’m scared of not living. I’m scared of being a failure, not being able to do what I want to or what I’m expected to do. What if I’m wasting this minute? Because maybe I will die the next.