Pick Up The Phone And Make That Pending Call

There is a bereavement in the family. My husband’s elder brother’s wife J passed away last night. No, that’s not the only cause of my sadness.

Her husband had left earlier, three years ago. One of their daughters is married. The younger one, with whom J was living, is still in college. The girl is left without parents. Again, those are not the only reasons why I am feeling distraught.

Ever since her husband moved on, J and the girls have maintained a distance from the extended family. For reasons we could never understand, they never reached out; they were cordial when we approached them, but never forthcoming. It was as if they didn’t want to belong to this side of the connections.

J has been ailing for some time now, and I have been worried for her ever since Covid took mankind in its vicious grip. She fell under the ‘comorbidity’ segment and I had always hoped and prayed that she remained unharmed, for the sake of the young girl who so depended on her after her husband’s passing. Despite all the concerns I secretly harboured about her vulnerability, I believed she would pull through this Covid phase, because she supposedly was doing fairly OK despite her ailments. We had no information of any deterioration nor of any sudden change. All was well, we presumed.

Yes, we ‘presumed’ because the chasm between them and us had grown uneasily wide. There was no way to know for certain how ill or well she was. Things had slithered down to an ‘I am OK, you are OK’ status, and whatever little communication was left over infrequent calls skimmed only the surface. Like how most of our associations have turned out these days: so tenuous that it could break it into shards at a mere sigh.

It is hard to believe that our extended families can become vestiges of relationships. That we connect only in theory. That we don’t make conscious efforts to keep them intact. That we consider them dispensable. That together we don’t add up as units of a whole. That in many instances, we give primacy to petty things and stay detached.

I have been meaning to touch base with J for a while now. But what’s a plan worth if one can’t follow through with it?

I can’t say if it was the delicacy of reaching out or the compulsions and challenges in my own life back here that kept me from calling her. But the intention to call remained – unexecuted.

This morning when I received the news of her sudden passing, I was gutted. It took me through a warren of emotions. The lance of guilt stabbed me, the thought of the young girl melted me, the oddities of human relationships perplexed me, and the abruptness of life numbed me.

J had left before I could make that pending call to her. I sat down to get a handle on the news and took a few deep breaths. I gave myself a few minutes to gather my wits and sort my undulating thoughts. Going on a guilt trip does not help, I said to myself. Don’t beat yourself up. Do what needs to be done. Learn your lesson.

I let the turbulence inside settle on its own, without struggling to control it. Parallelly, I drew up a mental list of the people I have been intending to call, write or text since weeks and months. I flaked off all the excuses and reasons that I had taken refuge in for not doing it, and counselled myself –

Every once in a while, tell people in your life that you are thinking of them. That you love them. Unconditionally. The last thing you want to live with, Asha, is the weight of pending calls, mails, and text messages that will never get sent.

(P.S. Please share this note to all you know so that they don't have to live with the weight of a pending call.)

My Blue Ship

9.30 AM.

January 1, 2021.

Waking up to a New Year, long after earthlings around me had risen, I pull the curtains on the large French window next to the bed open and look far out into the sea.

The dust and grime of the desert has stained the window from the outside and it irks my eyes briefly. But the view beyond it is too vast and grand to be blurred by a murky window-pane and I peer into the expanse on the other side.

It must have rained somewhere while I was asleep; somewhere the earth must have tingled in the seasonal joy, for the haze that usually hangs over the ocean has miraculously cleared and I can now see as far as eternity. Even the waves are in motion today, rolling and crashing within my sight. It’s not so clear from this distance on most days, but today, strangely everything looks accented as if they had just materialized.

There are a couple of cargo ships at the far end, so close to the horizon that it feels they are on the verge of the earth, likely to fall off anytime. When I was little, I had believed that the horizon was the boundary of the human world and God lived somewhere outside that. Today, I know better.

I take in the pretty sight of small yachts with their hoisted sails dotting the sea and I remember a childhood rhyme-

Dip, dip, dip, my blue ship, sailing in the water….

How fortunate that in a year of storms my blue ship only dipped and didn't drown, I think.

How blessed that the ship is now sailing in the water and is not sunken forever!

I am grateful.

To rise in the New Year, to view the sea first thing, to take in the expanse with my tiny eyes, to be able to see beyond a dusty window, to realize that my worst nightmares didn’t kill me in sleep, to know that there are no real horizons, to acknowledge that if anything is real, it is eternity and all else are mere strokes of paint in a grand canvas.

To melt in that understanding.

To be a witness to everything.

To be in love every day.

To touch fellow human lives.

To live afresh every moment.

May this be my true ambition, even when I am dabbling in mundane, everyday things.

*********

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The Sun doesn't Set these Days

These days, strangely, the sun doesn’t set. It merely melds into a haze, smudging the horizon with its veiled presence for a while before dusk takes over the reins.

Standing in the balcony watching it, I feel a dull ache in my heart blotted like the sun in the distance. I gently put my hand where the ache was felt and trace its amorphous form. Beneath the pounding surface, I hear whispers of old wounds, timbre of recent woes, and the chilling silence of nameless fears. Memories breach their banks and form tiny mirages in the corner of my eyes. Through the blur it spreads, life looks distorted and unrecognizable on the other side.

When did the familiar sights and sounds become fragments of an old crystal ball? When did we forget the true meaning of laughter and become adept at faking our smiles? Who put a macabre spin on our simple stories and small delights? Whose sinister plan was it? And who will fix it right?

I get no definite answers, neither from the elements outside nor from the voice inside.

Then I remember someone telling me that this won’t last forever, someday it will all end, but that is hardly a consolation. ‘Someday’ is not a date that I can mark on the calendar and wait for it to arrive. You don’t settle things in ambiguity, do you?

As the sun’s crimson smear blends with the grey of twilight and the streets get into garish neon lights, I reckon, ‘there are no guarantees of tomorrow. All that there is, is the certainty of this moment. The day has passed and the night is yet to fall. If I must live, I must seize the interim, own this twilight.’

I step inside and switch the room lights on.

At the altar, where the God pictures are lodged, I bring a lamp alive. The flame sputters a bit before steadying itself. I join my hands at once, hold them close to my chest and stare at the glow in front of me in anticipation. I wait for it to speak to me; say a few reassuring words, but all that it offers is a quiet incandescence. In it, the dull ache of the heart melds, like the murky, summer sun dissolving into the haze.

I give the consummate moment a name-

Present Perfect Continuous.