DEATH – before and after.
Inspired by FRIGID – dabba’s surreal science fiction,whose imagination I cannot match.
Encouraged by CURED – Subrat’s style of 80s locally flavoured memoir, my literary Guru!
Written for Arun Prakash who specifically demanded this, Thank You.One reader like you is enough.
Dedicated to VOLGA, a Telugu writer who also runs the NGO Asmita in Sec’bad, her ‘Ayoni’ is my all time favourite.
I walk towards the two room official accommodation that has been our house for the past one year and smell the aftershave of death hovering over the front gate, it has visited once again. I hear the familiar crying. My steps falter. I see a crowd of women around my mother. She is crumpled with grief. My father is fussing about uncharacteristically.
This time it is my grandfather.
Thank God! I am not an orphan. Thank God! She is alive.
It would be horrible to spend a lifetime without her. I don’t speak much to her, as a policy I don’t speak much at all but I would like her to live longer, so that maybe at a later date I can talk to her on an equal footing. Right now, unfortunately my age is the biggest hurdle. She thinks of me as a child.
Last month when death came for the first time into my life, I had no previous knowledge of its vice like grip on the living. Then too I walked into a crowd of mourners.
“ Nandi uncle died in a Chopper crash” , then too amma crumbled sobbing, knowing fully well how Nandi uncle and I were the best of friends.
My mind raced and raced, reached into the grey Godrej Almirah in his bedroom, opened it up noisily and raced back home with an armload of Asterix.
“What happens to all the Asterix comics?” is all that I wanted to know.
Guilt, like death was still an unknown relative to me, but when it did visit finally I could no longer muster enough courage to meet his parents and pay my respects, I was so consumed by it. Nandi uncle, eligible bachelor of twenty seven whose aged parents had just arrived from Bongaigaon to wrap his pathetic pilot body into the tricolor, had always allowed me direct access to his room, his heart and his prized possessions.
He had even entrusted me with an extra key to his Almirah.
“Here darling this is for you, all these right here are yours as much as mine understood, no more ‘borrowing’ from me, ok?”
I was the daughter he would never have, his one love who had left him for another.
That was a month ago, the body and the comic collection were taken away from me without my consent. I cannot tell them of the pain that my heart has just discovered, they will not understand.
While the first death came uninvited, I am prepared for this one. I will always be prepared henceforth. I know what death is and what it entails to survive it. My body stands erect like I am taught, ‘to walk like a queen’, but my innards are coiled into a mass of serpentine shapes hissing at regular rhythms that they wish to ‘see him just once more’
That whole first week I resisted all temptation to run and hug my mother.
It would have been out of character. I did not want to deceive her or him.
I want Nandi uncle back, I want to hug him not her.
I wandered into the forbidden jungle paths in grief. [Wild Haathis had visited us the night before, trampling upon the human settlements that lay in the ancient route etched in their memory as a ‘Highway’, hence the ‘forbidden’ tag], I drank straight from the forest streams without filtering, Climbed trees to collect ferns to ease the heavy heart and went to the Officer’s Mess to watch TV in direct defiance of my parents’ wishes who wished to keep me away from such unsavoury influences.
That is how I managed to catch a glimpse of Lady Diana’s wedding beaming into the ante-room from the clandestine Bangladeshi Channel that was programmed, fed and kept alive by the Capitalists. We also receive Famous Five and Richie Rich by the way [these are my favourites] and a lot of Jewel in the Crown. My father says we ought not to participate in anything illegal and he does not ever break this rule even for his favourite Shakespeare Plays.
I don’t yet know who the Capitalists are but I will some day, when I am old enough to talk to my mother as an equal. Even though I read the newspaper I do not always understand what is what. I could ask my father I suppose but I do not want him to think of me as ignorant. Last time when he was acting Othello on stage and stabbing amma , who was Desdemona, my silly sister cried out
“ Papa mamma ko math maaro, math maaro”
So I wrote a children’s play for her.
She is a real baby. She is six years younger and has no sense of propriety.
When my father read the play that was not intended for him, he laughed and laughed, he read it aloud to all his friends and they also joined in. Nandi uncle stopped them and said
“I am sure Sir that she has changed the plot out of deliberation and not out of ignorance”
He was kind, my Nandi uncle. He read my play and asked me intelligent doubts.
Like why I thought that Othello and Desdemona were brother and sister.
Why did I call it the “Case of the Missing Handkerchief” and so on.
That’s when I told him that I wanted to read all the books in the world so no one could make fun of me and he gave me his Almirah keys.
While watching Charles and Diana exchange wows, Darrell snickered. He always does that to attract my attention. He has become very bold after Nandi uncle died. He comes and sits next to me on the carpet when we watch TV and makes silly slurping noises while drinking Gold Spot and says “Want a sip?” I ignore him once again, it is appalling, how can Darrell even think I like him. He is so childish and has no manners at all.
Worst of all he does not read. I have never seen him at the Mess Library. Not only that he creates trouble just to impress me. Like when I borrowed Exorcist from the librarian saying “Papa asked me to get it”, he burst out like a fool “She is lying, she is lying, she reads all these books secretly” so loudly that the whole camp could hear him.
Darrell never liked Nandi uncle nor does he like Venkatesh.
Venkatesh and I are going to save India from disgrace.
Venkatesh told me that our Peacock Throne and Koh-i-noor are still with the British and no one is doing anything about it. I am really very distressed, just because we are tired after fighting for Independence, tired after fighting with China and Pakistan and Bangladesh, does not mean that we should let our honour be trampled upon.
So we are making plans to fly right into enemy territory and carry our property back to India.
Venkatesh has designed a special helicopter for this operation but we don’t have enough Commandos to do the job, if nobody agrees I might have to go with him, though this is a man’s job and I don’t want to be killed.
I don’t want amma to grieve for me like Nandi uncle’s parents did.
I do not want anyone to die.
Venkatesh came to walk along with me in the forbidden jungle. He is like that.
He knows what I want to do every time and keeps me company. We take the path behind our house, this goes straight to the stream in the forest and all children from the camp are allowed ONLY uptil there, but today I am walking beyond it. Walking with him I am not worried about the dangers, his father is an Army Commando and he has taught Venkatesh a lot of jungle survival tips.
The dimwallah scared me a bit by saying “ baby Baagh hai bach kay” , he is always scaring people,
“ Baraak may baad hai”, “aaj Load Shedding hai” but I don’t care anymore. I want to walk till I can remove this pain from my heart. It is suffocating me. Venkatesh holds my hand. He is like that. He knows I want to be comforted, he also knows that I wish it was Nandi uncle with me instead of him.
We hear some rustling in the bushes,Oh! God!! Baagh?
Which tree to climb? How to get to the topmost branch? Can Tigers climb trees?
But my whole body is paralyzed with fear unable to move,
Venkatesh is frantically tugging at my hand and running,
“ Lets go…..lets go …..lets gooooooo”
This does not seem like Commando behaviour to me but maybe it is the best option when facing a Tiger?
“ Hahahahaha, I scared you didn’t I ?”
I should have known Darrell would follow us.
I can’t even scold him, his father was killed too.
Two weeks ago and he continues to pretend everything is okay.
Sometimes I think he is a good boy acting bad but I cannot understand why.
Some say Walia aunty burnt her husband for Insurance and Tulasi our servant has even seen Walia uncle’s ghost on the park swing but we NEVER talk about this to Darrell or his twin Bret or Julie [who is my sister’s friend] or Judy [who is sixteen & yet my friend]
The family is here till the papers are cleared and then they will all move back to Bangalore.
They are Anglo-Indians.
I heard my father whisper to my mother
“Why would a woman like her marry a Sardar tell me, if not for…?”
He disapproves of amma and other aunties taking dance lessons from
Sandy, Walia aunty’s younger sister who has come to help the family battle the untimely death.
Sandy [she told me not to call her aunty] is a dance instructor in Bombay and teaches Waltz and Foxtrot.
“Is this an appropriate time to be dancing foxtrot while an Officer of the camp has just been burned to death?” my father asks angrily.
Amma says she will never get another chance to waltz again.
So I am always gentle with Darrell these days and he takes advantage of that. He keeps teasing us and telling every one very proudly how he managed to become a Tiger after all! We let him think he is smarter because he does not go to school anymore. I will miss him though when he goes away. Whenever he troubles me he looks at me in a funny way. He makes me laugh and smile and I have started drinking Gold Spot without telling amma. She does not like us to drink soft drinks, they are bad for the appetite. He says he wants to teach me cycling. I let him. I must not hurt him. He pushes my cycle while I sit on it and holds me when I fall. He calls out my name loudly for no reason and barks orders to the bearers “Madam kay liye nimbu paani”, as though he was older.He has taken to singing ‘Tayray Mayray Beech Main……” and he cannot even pronounce Hindi properly. Silly Boy.
The other day he asked me “Who do you like best? Nandi uncle, Venky, SS or Me?”
[Sudip Sen is in 4B. I like him because he comes first too]
“You”
“You are lying”
“No”
“Not even Sudip?”
“Yes, but he likes Bidisha”
“If he liked you would you like him better than me?”
He always does this. Makes me say I like him best, somehow.
I walk past Nandi uncle’s room which is now lent to another bachelor on Temporary Duty from Dibrugarh and towards my house. I look at his room without tearing up in a long long time. I am proud of having overcome the pain, the torture. I feel older. Like an adult does maybe.
My steps falter as I see a crowd gathered outside my house.
Darrell is the first to inform me.
“Your father got a trunk call from Hyderabad.Don’t worry it is the old man not your parents”
“That is very rude of you, he was my grand father and I loved him very very much”
“So? He wasn’t OLD?”
We start giggling and soon burst out laughing and almost fall on the road cracking up.
I wait for the inevitable question.
“……More than me?”
“Yes”
I retort, happy to have him by my side when faced with another death.
Darrell suddenly storms away like a spoil-sport and I never could tell him that I was lying.
He must have left that week for Bangalore, while we were already in Hyderabad.
Saying a permanent goodbye to my second most favourite man in the whole world, my grandfather, my Thaathayya. I returned to the empty camp with an empty heart.
Whatever Venkatesh said or did after that never made it whole again.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
@CK3M – Will need to give attention this afternoon. Right now filter coffee beckons
Ailaa… much much ‘Sachm-Muchh’ better then the TZP review.
Nice one, made me think about my childhood days in various Indian states/city – yep my father was an army man, think you know ‘AMC’ right?
Aah those KV days…despite having a 3 ton/Shaktiman for KV – we used to walk those 4km, crossing a river (nala), a jungle (yeah real), and those well maintained other regiment’s parks having mango trees inviting us to have a sneek-peek.
Thanks …:>
Is there a PFC short story competition on now? Do tell!
just finished watching
3-iron by KKD (kim ki-duk)
this man is just beyond
tomatometer – 87%
^:)^
i have ordered dvd of his film, from amzaon.com
i came accros something like reagion 1, suggesting that it may not play. here in india. can anyone clarify?
@-)
That,Kavita, was a swift response;;)
Some real life stories are always better than the fictional stuff we have to make up.
This was a moving account of life as it was in the services,a tale drawn out from the deep recess of your memories,tinged with nostalgia.
Reminds me of my own bachpan ki din.My dad was an IAF pilot too.
I remember being hustled out of bed and pushed into trenches at night during the 71 war….remember my mom praying throughout those fifteen days …..dad survived the war and the Air force too….but every year or so we heard of some uncle whose plane had crashed leaving behind a widow and young kids or elderly parents.’Rang de Basanti’looked into this issue very sensitively.
And as PS pointed out above,fauji kids lead a lot more adventurous life than others,paving the way for varied experiences and consequently more
stories to write about!
@CK3M – Takes its time with lots of minute observations. All held together by nostalgia. You eschewed your trademark style though. Anyway, I hope there are more in the pipeline. In the meanwhile, waiting for the Halla bol review
Very engaging, I read it at one go, got over before I could realize that. For my lack of understanding or literary references, I couldn’t help thinking of Pan’s Labyrinth. Loved the flow and your grip on the narration, a little tragi-comic like Altman and Fellini.
@ kavita & subrat –
read both ur stories. give me a few days to comment. i witnessed/experienced an injustice so grave, it has filled my soul with even more contempt for mankind than I thought possible.
Don’t want your stories to bear the brunt of my rage. will critique when i am level-headed.
GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL IN DC.
Promising Stuff!
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/prj/flm/enindex.htm
Kavita,…waiting to read your Halla Bol Review !
SPB
me too ! no comments on Death?
was twiddling my thumbs all day yesterday ,
)
finally sent it an hour before the deadline
SPB= SHREE PLAY BACK !!!
Kavita ! …SHREE…itna samman ! Akhir kyu ?
Dabba – grave injustice? Intrigued. I will wait to hear from you
Kavita, the reason I didnt comment on Death is because it touched me the most at a personal level.
Death,…Bongaigaon,…the Baraak River,…they are vivid memories of my childhood.
Anyways,…loved it !
Playback, a few Pfcites are desperately trying to figure out who you are.
You’ve just dropped a few hints:d/
Was that deliberate:-?
Hi Arun
Who are these “few” people from PFC ?
O Kavita my Kavita (lol!) nice ishtory
Is this how (some)kids think? I couldn’t connect with the story, like some people here seem to have.
Liked the narration style. It has painted a picture of army camps in my mind.
Sankranti Subhakankshalu!
@ Subrat : eschewed my style yes, trying different strokes
) S Playback B
@ PS and Arun : more in the same vein comming up!
@ Tushar : am honored. Pan’s Labyrinth!
@ dabba : please share with us,what ails you?
@ Playback : itna samman kyunki you share my memories
[ Had to find something appropriate for S na......]
@ Neeraja : some kids? That was yours truly thinking.No most kids I knew did not think this way :(
Well written story..me thinks it has the potential for a longer version..
The lineUN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
@ K-3 :
this is the 3rd or perhaps 4th time i read ur story. And it has failed to connect with me at any level. It seems like a slice of life coming of age story structured around two deaths, but I don’t know what the story is.
there are vignettes of cantonment life. don’t understand the need to introduce the whole bit about darrell (and his extended family) and venkatesh in the second half. sure, it paints a picture of that environment, but that should have been in the beginning and perhaps integrated into the story.
what is the story about? summarize in 2 lines for me…
is it about nandi uncle and how his death led to the protagonist’s coming of age….
is it about the ways a young girl gets over the grief…
what is the story? the grief or the overcoming of it?