Loss and Sticks

‘You think there’s a place?’

‘Place for what?’, he asks me.

‘A place for the people who die?’

‘I don’t think it's like that’, he responds.

‘Why?’

‘You can’t have such a clean and definitive line drawn between life and death, I think it is just one another concept that was made up by humans, like calendars or geographical boundaries. They exist, but only for the sheer ease of administration.’

‘Yeah, how else would people get by consoling each other mumbling about how dearly their departed are in a better place.’

‘Exactly’, he says, giving this piece of conversation the end it did not deserve.

I sighed, hospitals made me queasy.

These institutions are like a painful reminder of the end you do not think you will have. You can live your entire life without as much as giving a second thought to the question of mortality, and somehow any time you make your way in to one of these place, constructed for the sole purpose of making the sick better, and it makes the healthy realise that there’s an end to this stick.

It is out there, even if you can not possibly fathom the exact moment you will reach there and realize, begrudgingly, oh shit!, my time is up.

In order to distract myself while we waited for the nurse, I tried recounting the similarities between my last visits to these institutions. The walls, as always were stark white, with a few paintings hung here and there, always choosing to go with the basics, the flowers in a vase, the mountain peak as seen from a distance, the hut on the foothills of a majestic range.

The starkness of the wall seemed to be tainted though, with the contrasting minds of the people who clung to their seats, waiting. The waiting is definitely something you can witness at any such institute. The empty glances that seemed to take forever to respond to any movement near them, they were always in a daze of sorts. As if, they were trying so desperately to hold on to this idea that if they tricked their bodies into believing they were not fully awake, then they probably will get to wake up in the comfort of their own beds, away from these clunky metallic chairs that were always colder than how they felt.

The hustle and bustle is always a given too, the constant flow of people, now you can easily distinguish the staff from the visitors, the empty eyes give away the visitors, while even without their uniforms on, the staff always have a gleam. No, not the happy kind. Just the brightness of someone who does not have a sick someone being held in a room of automated beds, beeping machines and a stockpile of chemicals.

I must have looked like I was about to throw up, because soon I was brought back from my hazy day nightmarish with a nudge from him, ‘You want a coffee?’. I proceeded to nod, almost involuntarily while he looked at me. In times like these, I have figured it's better to make the other person feel like of some use. He was here, after a dreadful day at work, it would have been cruel to not just align my needs with what he could give.

He was making his way out of the scrawny chairs when I said I will accompany him, no use waiting here anyway, I reasoned. He nodded, almost enthusiastically, I knew he would want me to eat. I couldn’t though, not since I got the phone call two nights ago, whenever the phone rings at 3 in the night, it has an ominous air about it, each ring sending into the quiet night reverberations that couldn’t be cheery even if you had a rock song as your ringtone. The phone call from my aunt, who had called from her way to the hospital, had mentally transported me to this place, making me nauseated with the stench of bleach and disinfectant that is another thing you can always count on these places to have. We had all taken turns of course, to be his side, while he battled his yet again striking attack. One of my uncles who had a knack for organisation, went as far as to make a table, making sure everyone did their share of tasks, got enough rests and no one was ever alone.

So today was my third cycle, last two spent with an aunt and my mother, both of whom had considered it the best use of their time to just cry and turn into big blobs of incessant sobs that would turn heads of the visitors as they stayed so committed to continue living in their comfortable daze. I was relieved when I found out I would be spending this given chunk of afternoon with my uncle instead. He and I had barely a difference of 8 years between us, thanks to the great family planning my grandparents did, so we got along better than I did with my cousins.

But being the older one amongst us, had somehow made him don this cap of responsibility wherein he felt the need to ask about my wellbeing, a question I honesty found too intrusive.

We made our way to the canteen, situated in a complex away from the main ward. Another thing you can always find in hospitals is the crazy amount of efforts they put in, trying to make it into a place, as pretentiously cheerful as possible, to the extent of hurting your senses. The latest edition of this scheme I encountered was the ‘play area’ or the garden with a lonely set of swing sets, for the children to somehow feel welcome into this ghastly place, where to be honest, even adults feel uncomfortable.

With our hands freezing and snouts covered in a film of water only Delhi’s winter can make you experience, we cut across the lawn and made way into the almost empty cafeteria, filled mostly with the staff trying to catch a break before they went back to looking death in its eyes and smiling while they changed its bedpan. Overpriced coffee with powdered milk in hands, we made our way to the corner most seat. Sipping the sorry mixture of sugar with lukewarm powered milk and crappy instant coffee, I noticed almost involuntarily of the greying hair in my uncle’s full head of hair. Hospitals really bring out the mortality in every aspect of your life, as if it lurks behind every corner when your life is far away from these places, but boom!, as soon as you come here, you can feel its eerie presence everywhere.

As a child, I remember howling every time I had to leave his company, no amount of consoling could ever make me okay with going back home. My mother had always been working and for the few years that overlapped between his departure to college and mine to childhood, he was often forced to babysit me. Over a period of time however, I think we fell into a routine, me being dropped off after my school to my grandfather’s place and the crying that ensued when my father picked me up every evening. The time I spent in between, was by far ideal. He was a broody teenager who had a knack for video games, so while he spent most of his time glued to the computer I would bumble about him, playing with one thing or another. We never really talked, come to think of it, I never really heard him talk to anyone at length but the silence we shared was a comforting one.

It gets increasingly hard to find people whose company gives you a solace, maybe because it gets increasingly hard to find solace as you get older. Either way, I tagged alongside him much of my childhood until the fateful day he left for college, I was inconsolable. At 10 years of age, I hadn’t really wrapped my head around the concept of abandonment. It took a few months to do, and life’s curve-balls have hardly surprised me since. If you really ponder upon it, it isn’t the hardest thing in the world to actually pick up the hints.

‘So how is the advertising industry?’ He asked, bringing me back to the present.

‘Not as fun as I believed it would be’

‘How come?’

‘I guess you get into an industry looking at the people on the top and it is hard to accept that everyone starts at the bottom, where all you do, day in and day out are a set number of meaningless tasks, it gets boring. You are just a regular cog in the wheels.’

He nodded, almost understanding what I said, but I could sense that this level of melancholy did take him aback for a moment, if not for long.

We went our separate ways that evening as my uproarious uncle with his boastful claims of knowing the ‘right people’ came in with his bland daughter, after exchanging a few pleasantries I got home to my mom bawling yet again.

Turns out, my grandfather was about to reach the end of his stick and had received his pass for the last ride. The week that had started off with the phone call had ended with the entire family struggling to gather around the man about to witness the other world. I can’t really say until I know for sure, but I think most of us avoiding mortality are denying our souls the only inevitable truth. In an ideal world, I believe at the end of this stick you get a hamper for making it through the tough part while a bunch of people wait for you at the other end, grinning.

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First published in Issue 91 (May-Jun 2020) of Muse India.