The Final Journey !

It’s Thursday late night or wee hours of Friday morning, as you wish, whichever side you are facing the sun.

I have bid farewell to my chithi’s final journey, heaven bound.

A very beautiful soul.

The transition period from one body to another is supposedly the most difficult time for the departing and for those bidding farewell.  Prayers and rites are marked to ease the transition of energy from one space to another, said my father to me once.  That it was important, we pray and wish the soul happiness for the onward journey .. a peaceful transition.  I don’t know. Sometimes it is easier to believe than to challenge.  If anything, I have understood in these four decades that there are somethings that will always be beyond the challenge of human mind. Death- one such phenomenon.

My Susilamma passed away Saturday morning.  Exactly a week ago, we had spoken and she had encouraged me to find a suitable placement in India so she could come and live with me whenever she needed a break, she had said. I had teased her that Dubai is closer than she thinks and promised to come for the next shopping festival.  She spoke about her 40 day grandson, her own daughter’s temperament, buying a house in Madurai and reminded me to take to the hair salon next time she came to Trivandrum. 

Death was not in the agenda. Not then, not now, nor in the near future. 

Come to think of it, it is never in our agenda unless we are looking for a convenient escape. Even then, Death has its own mind.  My own days are filled with agendas; one structured for the corporate, one for home, one for health and fitness, one for retirement and so on. Those agendas mostly are full of objectives to be achieved in this world. Therefore, we put the death—the inevitable agenda as the last priority. This life is a long journey which will come to an end sooner or later. We all have got a ticket which will take us to a station unknown to us. We do not have an option not to set on a journey.

There was something about my chithi that made everyone in the family feel that they were special to her.  Everyone I know had a special bonding with her. She had the childish innocence about her and was never known to speak harsh.  She would rather be silent but not say words that word hurt anyone.  I always admired the quality of her mild temperament sweet words which could turn into the most abusive language when she was in control of the laborers and their  hundreds of families around her, who lived under them, working as labourers , solving their issues. She owned several match box units in and around sattur.

Her management skills and technical skills will bring an IIT IIM to shame.  She could calculate the quantities or bundles as she called, the cost, the quantities that were unpacked, all while simmering the rasam for her diabetic husband. She would know when someone cheated her, but would chose to ignore most times, telling me that it was the circumstances that made man do that. Just as she was catching a nap, someone would knock her house asking for food, she loved children in all sizes shapes and colors. In a village that was caste creed bound, she would play with a nigger’s child, much to the antagonism of my grandmother. My mother once said she would cry, if anyone in the hostel cried. Compassion was her soul quality.

She blamed me for being unable to complete her studies. I was born when she was 15 and had just finished her schools.  My own mother was nine months away to her 20^th birthday and was too young to tend to two children below the age of two and therefore I was under the care and custody at my grandparents’ house.  My chithi blamed me for turning her life topsy turvy.  I wouldn’t sleep unless it was she who rocked the cradle, I wouldn’t eat or drink unless fed by her. I used to call her amma and my own mother akka, according to her. A fact which my mother never denied.  I have lost the person whom I first called amma and I am shattered.

In many ways I prided that I had 4 mothers. My mother’s three sisters always were at our side when we needed. My pregnancy, mothers illness, any trouble in the family one of them always came. But it was always my susilamma who was the first to rush to come to see me. I could go on and on and it pains me terribly to type her memories. I know I should be happy for her transition. I know that the end marks a celebration of her life. An end to a life lived to love. But, I also know there will be none like her. I miss her. Terribly so.  She has left a hole in a shape where no one else can fit in.

Funny, how it has to take death to summon all the love within to surface.

I couldn’t make out much from the call that came on the fateful Saturday afternoon. I was angry that she had a fall, she was so clumsy so careless.  My mother grumbled that she often forgot her medications.  She had hyper tension.  But not in the wildest dreams, did we think she would have left for the final journey…couple of days short of her 56^th birthday.  Death is a badly timed cruel joke. Period over.

I have to accept that she is no longer living with us, and I will no longer see her giggle childishly, never have her sumptuous food, never be able to sleep on her lap, and never be able to fulfill the promise of Viji’s salon or for the Dubai Shopping festival…I have to find peace in the happy moments that we shared, in the love that she unconditionally showered. Every life has a death and her light has now gone to take care of another darkness.

I once read a Korean story where God weighed souls on a pair of scales. On one is the departed soul and the other the tears of those who wept for the soul at the time of departure. If nobody cries, the soul goes straight down to hell. If there are enough tears and they are sufficiently heartfelt, it is believed to rise to heaven. My Chithi, the one who found joy in all endeavours, even the most mundane is smiling at me from heaven, I am sure.
Death and a journey to funeral and last rites, is one unique phenomenon.  It teaches you the biggest philosophy of living is dying. But the lesson is lost as soon as you are back from the funeral. And to lose that lesson is perfectly normal and acceptable in this mundane life.  We continue to thrive in the certainty of the uncertain and philosophically lament that life has to go on!

My blackberry's cruel ringtone jolts me back into the present. I have to catch up on the myriad of emails that I have not responded for a long time, back to the corporate rat race with super celestial outlook and subterranean conduct, strive to earn those that are denominated valuable by the humans, believing that I will own a space in the world, fully aware of the futility of it all, but not knowing if I will live to live.. and so on until my own end beckons me for the next journey and how many more to go, to that I wearily bow.

When people don’t express they die one piece at a time…allow me her life in my words at least. Good day !