Rage Becomes Her.

Some people live with grief buried deep in their souls that shows up as rage later in their eyes.

It’s the only glimpse of it you’ll ever find because everything is converted into steam that can move iron and steel and power a whole continent. Or end it.

An energy that explodes out at innocuous arguments, commonplace tiffs that do not warrant a nuclear response. Faces turn red, eyes lose coherence, and you watch a person become fury, lose all sense, all humanity or perhaps pick one destructive aspect of it to embody.

Pulling at the hair, is that the mind’s way of bringing itself back, check the mental decimation within the skull by creating physical pain? One would think hair are collateral damage in this fulmination.

And the screaming, or is shouting the appropriate word? No, still not there. It’s a roar. Yes, closest descriptor would be a roar. A series of roars. When I would sit on the Columbus ride, it would feel good to scream the fear out and not hold it in. Is it the same here? Except instead of fear you’re letting the anger out?

And then a hand clamping the mouth shut like there is dissonance within the same body. Like the hand moved to the mouth of its own accord, as the eyes returned from wherever they’d gone and got back that quality of being human, of being sensate.

What’s left behind is this powdery brittleness like the air is made of charcoal. Also a memory that changes each time you relive it, adds on some new layer each time you revisit it. What had Joe Miller said in The Expanse?

“You know, every time you remember something, your mind changes it just a little. Until your best and your worst memories are your biggest illusions.”

Something like that.

Something She Said

I was thinking about something she said.

That she can’t talk to me about someone because I didn’t know who he was. It’s true. I didn’t know him or him with her. But, I know her. I know how it feels to be in pain. I am not just cursed with the ability to feel like I’m living someone else’s anguish for this to happen ultimately.

I didn’t know the person she fell for either, the person she couldn’t be with. I didn’t know a lot of the people she spoke to me about but she introduced us. The friends and the lovers and the travellers and the heartbreakers. She told me the stories, tragic or funny, tragic and funny. So I got to know them over time.

I don’t think it’s about me knowing him, although it seems reasonable to some extent. It’s more about the immense grief that a delicate bubble of normalcy is holding. Talking will pop it. Who will drown? Not me, sitting in a different city. I can live it with her, ache with her, love her, but she will be left trying to swim with her whole body cramping. That’s true for any pain, but here the intensity is overwhelming. I know the theory.

I miss you though. It isn’t something you need to fix right now, not when nothing seems fix-able.

I know you feel lost, maybe not the exact path you’re lost on, but that you do feel lost. You don’t have to tell me, for me to know it. I know it feels hopeless. Like a rage that realises it can’t fill up a space left behind by someone you love. Like a grief that knows it will sit within that space forever. Just that the walls of your mind will break to make more room, the muscles will know how to hold those emotions, but that’s so far away as to be worthless potentialities at the moment.

Right now, just being on a treadmill at a hundred is all that keeps the bubble from popping. Right now, all other ropes are taut, holding you in place though you’re ready to break. I am thinking of you, as I do a lot, my heart aching at the way this particular year is hurting you.

I wrote something:

I watch you crumble,

from a distant shore.

I watch you stagger, fall,

no boat to take me across.

I watch you tremble,

my voice can’t reach you.

I watch you

on that parallel shore…

But on this side, right in front of me,

you wave to draw my gaze back,

smile and say, “What’s up?”

I can’t smile but I do,

“Nothing much.”

Birthdays In A Cruel Time.

Today is my Birthday. And my aunt, my mother’s sister, is admitted to the hospital in a different city.

It’s Covid, her oxygen saturation went down to 89. My mom wears this look of pleading directed at anyone or anything that moves. She’s begging the universe and it’s on her face. She’s also slaving away in the kitchen cooking for me and for my cousin who has Covid too (same aunt’s daughter). I think it’s keeping her mind off things though I tried to tell her to stop it. But I don’t want to think of that look on my birthday, even when I’ve accepted that this is how it is this time, just like last time. Actually last time was better. I’d be happy with the last year’s lockdown birthday.

Everyone I know and don’t know, is begging. For oxygen, for injections, for a hospital bed, trying to save their loved ones. It’s a tsunami and we’re all drowning. Those afloat like me, are also drowning.

My best friend lost her father too, not to Covid but natural causes. But absence is absence, cause doesn’t matter anymore. When we spoke, she wasn’t crying. She spoke of things in a normal manner. But grief layers her voice physically, something I’d never heard of taking on a physical manifestation before. It’s like a continuous breaking, and holding together, every minute as she speaks. If tears could be held in by a voice that would be her voice. More because there is no point of breaking down or howling or screaming. The pointlessness is the point. And she’s simply flowing, one thing to the next. I understand where she’s at even if I don’t know the indepth excruciation of being her right now.

My family is trying so hard to make me happy on my birthday even though I told them to let it be, but they’re not. They’re trying to setup the terrace for something. But it’s all pointless, don’t they see? All I ask for this birthday is for this pandemic to end. For those who are ill, to recover, for my aunt to be okay again, for my mom to lose that look, for my friends to stop posting messages of looking for help, for those healthy to stay that way. I want my family safe. So I pray and hope for this pandemic to end. Whatever lesson, whatever character growth this was intended to bring about I’m sure has happened. We’re terrified and in pain and grieving everything from the loss of our normal life to the idea of a free tomorrow. Will this ever change?

Friend Request

It was a friend request. Might as well have been the thinnest needle made to stick into my heart. How do tears fill up everything within so quickly to brim over? I clicked ‘confirm’. But how did it matter now?

I barely use Facebook any more, but for some random reason, I was going through the friend requests – an unreasonable number as I don’t bother to decline either. That’s when I saw his friend request – my uncle – my father’s childhood friend. I remembered how I’d made fun of his goofy manner of commenting on our pictures. But now, all I recollect is the affection of his words, not the goddamn diction. I had no idea he’d sent me a friend request, and it’s not like it’s the biggest deal in the world. But right now, with him gone, I feel…uselessly late. Is it hilarious in a cruel way that now we’re Facebook friends? When he can’t write his funny English on any posts anymore?

My father practices acceptance of a super-human kind and to me, at first, his reaction to his childhood friend’s death seemed cold. I remember distracting myself a lot during those days. I refused to think about my uncle, and definitely not his family. As an empath, if I go down such rabbit holes, it takes too much to come back out.

We had gone to Dad’s golf club on Sunday. Sitting on a table under the winter sun, with the manicured green stretching on and on in front of us. He doesn’t have to tell me that there’s something on his mind. It’s pretty much the vibe shift, the body language change, I could tell something was weighing on his mind. Asking directly never gets me an answer so I waited for him to find his words.

He did eventually open up about how he was considering how to take care of Grandma, of how we could help the strained situation between mom and her. But it wasn’t until we were in the car heading back that out of nowhere he said, “You know, one of the things I was looking forward to after retirement was spending time with him, but he…”

I stopped the song that was playing on the stereo. My heart ached.

“I thought…I’d have time to spend time with him. To talk, to do things but…” he didn’t seem to be able to go beyond that but. “I feel like his family didn’t take proper care of him. I’d wanted to tell him about certain things to be careful of. But before I could…”

“I think, his family tried their best,” I said gently.

He shook his head, “He had lost his father three months ago, and the strain of that, coupled with all the running around…even with his kidney problem he’d lived healthily and well for the past eight years. And then his son got Covid and…I shouldn’t say,” he knew that the pain and guilt and regret within was finding an outlet in the form of blame. It is a relief to be able to blame someone.

“I’m sure he had his complaints or issues with his children or life in general, but I’m sure his love for them was the only thing that mattered at the end. And,” I felt a stab of pain remembering the heartbroken call that my mom had with Uncle’s daughter. “He is at rest, Dad. He is at peace. It’s his wife, his son, and his daughter who have to now learn to live without him. In such a situation, it’s so easy to think back and say they could’ve done this or that, and believe that somehow maybe the outcome could’ve changed. If you’re thinking this, his family would’ve thought of each permutation and combination and more. They tried their best with whatever knowledge they had. But if it was his time, no one could’ve changed that either. No matter what choice they made, it will always feel like the other choice could’ve been the right one. The guilt will always be there.”

He nodded.

“I wish it wasn’t so. I don’t want anyone to feel guilt or pain when I die, just celebrate,” he said.

It was a moment of understanding between us, because that’s how I wanted it for me as well. I’d rather my loved ones celebrate my memories rather than focus on the pain of separation or beat themselves over what they could’ve done to prolong my stay when I arrived with the inevitability of checking out at some indeterminate point. It’s not like they can make those final moments any less scary, or lonely. So when it’s over and I’m ‘off’ as would be said in Mumbai’s street language (they really make it seem like you’re a light bulb), the people left behind can mourn a bit, but I’d rather they have a party rather than a funeral. Rules being:

1. Tears are acceptable but laughter would be preferred.
2. Dress code – super casual. No blacks, no whites. Bright colours only.
3. Music ought to be really upbeat because nothing messes with sorrow like the wrong background score.
4. Food ought to be a really calorie-ridden, dopamine-releasing affair.
5. Venue ought to be a sun-lit garden, meadow maybe? A really beautiful place, a place where with the right music, the right food and people, you just can’t feel sad. Bittersweet is okay too.

Even though it’s natural for me to feel this way about the friend request, I shall hold onto the good memories of him. Remember his warmth and thank God for the opportunity to have known him in this blink-and-miss life given to me.

How Does A Swimmer Drown In A Lake?

Trigger Warning – Talks about death.

Naya Rivera. Honestly, I didn’t know her name. I knew her face. Season 1 of Glee was where I’d stopped watching the show, but that doesn’t even matter. She could’ve been someone, anyone, and I would’ve read the news of her drowning and not felt but a passing sorrow. Headlines are meant to shock. It’s ironic that the jolt itself becomes mundane after a while and even the most evocative headlines get a ‘meh’. It’s the details that get you. Get you so you wake up one morning, read the news and are filled with a grief that isn’t your own.

Being the active fangirl I am, Twitter is where I fly about the most. That’s where I first read that she had apparently vanished when she’d taken a boat out to Lake Piru in California at about 1 pm with her 4 year-old son Josey. Three hours later, the rental staff found the boat drifting with her son fast asleep wearing a lifejacket, and no one else on board. Seemed like the setup of a perfect murder mystery. But reality in its banality is far more tragic.

My first thoughts were what had happened? Did she kill herself? Was she depressed? They always use the prettiest pictures of such celebs in articles as if to underscore the horridness of the current situation with the hay-days of the past. We get it, media, you want us to weep. We will.

Over the next few days, snippets would keep coming in. Search was still going on. I wasn’t actively looking for this information but it showed up because it was trending. It was during this time that I came upon two images, on different days, that went in whole and sat heavy upon my insides like metal blocks.

The first one popped up on my feed a day after her disappearance. It was a grainy shot of the pier at the edge of the lake and a woman was kneeling on it, her hands outstretched to the sky. It was her mother. My first instinctive reaction was what kind of a prick took this picture and put it up on the internet for people to see. The comments seemed to agree. It was a private moment of grief, I felt like a prying intruder. So I neither engaged with the tweet nor commented on it. The second image I saw was her father swimming in the lake. Just a shot of his head above water, arm up in motion, trying to find his daughter, in the lake.

I remember reading a tweet in Thai on my timeline. Google Translate fucks up Thai hilariously usually but this time, as though it knew it had to do its best, Google gave a fair idea of what the tweet was saying. It said, “When a child loses his or her parents, he or she is called an orphan, when a person loses their spouse, he or she becomes a widower or a widow. What term describes parents who have lost a child? There is no word for it yet.” And perhaps because that loss is so crippling, so mammoth, no one word has been able to represent it with verity.

Some of her fans were hopeful that she might be still alive, may have reached on shore and may be disoriented. Some people were blaming the search authorities for not doing enough. It’s funny how grief manifests almost always as blame. It might be our one true source of relief at such a time – someone to blame.

They found her body today, apparently, it floated up from the floor bed due to decomposition. But how did she die? As per the Sheriff, Naya’s last act had been to save her son. Josey recounted that Naya pushed him onto the boat and then he saw her go underwater. As per the Sheriff, she mustered enough strength to put her son back onto the boat but not enough to save herself.

It’s the details, isn’t it? “Naya Rivera dies due to accidental drowning.” will never hit you like the images of her parents, or the idea of her saving her child but being unable to save herself. I felt…grief. And yet I wondered, how does a swimmer die in a lake?

Apparently the lake is known for its whirlpools and strong currents and has had people die in it due to drowning over the years. Now locals are demanding that signs be put up so swimmers are warned about the dangers of the lake. But, it’s so simple why didn’t the authorities do it before? I also researched a bit on drownings in lakes. Apparently more people drown in open water bodies like quarries and lakes due to the misconception that they are more placid and aren’t as dangerous as the ocean. But lakes are very dangerous due to various reasons like strong currents, temperature differences that can cause cold shock (especially if you dive in), whirlpools etc. The problem with pointing out one specific reason is that very few people who are caught in these situations ever have the chance to tell what exactly happened.

I don’t want to think of the child. He will have his demons to battle for sure. I don’t want to think of the parents, whose loss still doesn’t have a term. I don’t want to think of Naya, or what she must’ve felt in those last few moments. But I am thinking about all of it. And sometimes I wish I could stop feeling. Because I have my own shit to deal with, without feeling everyone else’s like it’s my own.

The River That Knows.

Good morning, River.

You flow like a silent green sheet,

Deceptively calm, glinting in the sun.

A cold wind sniffs and paws at you,

Then comes to settle upon my nose.

We come bearing a gift,

It’s an earthen pot,

A son, not more than an hour ago,

Hunted for his father’s bones in ash

And collected them in this pot. For you.

You might wonder how does one find bones

In a body of ash after a body is ash?

Well, one sprinkles water,

To make it easier for the fingers,

Slick grey with wet ash and dust,

To find the bones.

Never knew that.

I have opinions, River.

Like on the Syrian war,

On Trump’s immigration policies,

On demonetisation,

On a Bollywood starlet’s wedding trousseau.

I have principles too,

A gallery of artefacts

Painted in inks of loyalty,

Coated with an anti-deceit sheen,

I also want to pop the world into my mouth,

And protect it from pain.

I like winter sun, and chocolates,

Surprise gifts, and romantic walks.

Beaches and mountains,

Bad boys and good boys.

Complicated and simple.

I also like to fix broken things,

And at times break things that are whole.

I dislike shopping and crowded places,

The wrong music for the mood,

People who only want to be husbands and wives,

Authoritarian regimes.

Red tape.

Lack of a backbone.

Unhappy endings.

These are the things that make me, me.

But River, you know, don’t you?

You’ve known it for a million years.

The sum of all of that

Of all of me,

Of all versions of me,

Is one.

Ash.