Tuesday, August 07, 2007
happy birthday, ma.
you died on 12 july 2007, 26 days ago. the evening before you died, i looked into your eyes, through the mesh of ventilator, nasal feed, and other such hard funny looking tubes (the ventilator tubes were bright, lively blue and clean! in a ccu ward in kolkata; not used very often perhaps, bright happy blue) and asked, "can you see me?" your eyes, so brown, bright with your mind that no sedative nor superbug could dim, moved ever so slightly, in a quick affirmation. yes you could see me. for 6 days i've watched you morning and evening, watched you and prayed and touched your arms under the covers and talked to you and willed and wanted with everything that is me: please ma come back. then that phonecall at around 9.30 in the morning of the seventh day as i'm on my way to the hospital: my sister-in-law saying the hospital had called, we need to be there soon.
my mind sorting the information carefully. this could mean only one thing. a crazy leap in another part of me: perhaps not? maybe a sudden turn for the better. i pick up my aunt, she was away and couldn't go to see ma, the roads pass by, the sun is warm and benign right in the middle of a monsoon morning. what happened to the rains that flooded the city only 11 days ago? the night that ma was admitted? global warming? is ma dead?
the crowded lift on the way up to the seventh floor, only people with passes can enter the ward of desperate hope, the critical care unit. where is the lady next to ma's cabin? white curtains float. there's ma, in her favourite pose: supine on the bed. but a hospital bed, not your seven by seven and a half double (made of two singles, with matching bedside tables), that nana and nani gave you as part of your trusseau in 1958, just one year and nine months before i was born. not your bed.
the doctor is sitting on the lone chair, the nurse hovers. strange, the doctor you're chasing to catch while there is breath, suddenly is very available now that the last breath has melted away in the warm sunlight.
you lie there. you look beautiful. i never knew you were so beautiful. in your face i see calm, peace, knowledge, youth. "we tried everything we could... the heart went this morning... pacemaker... everything." everything? what's that.
the heart has stopped ticking. someday we will find a way to understand and control this phenomenon, manage death. yes, i am quite sure we will. anything that hurts and troubles the human too much, we find a solution, a cure for it. one day we will solve the problem of death. when we are through with assigning jobs to god (life/death/etc, as though without our job description god wouldn't know what to do) and can really learn to take responsibility for our journey on this our earth. one day. and then once again a wise person will reinterpret our relationship with the eternal; someone will write the geeta again because we will hear the song of the eternal yet again.
ma, it's been 26 days. days in which i've seen how scared we are of death, is that why we try to find such quick and easy answers? o the platitudes, the pointless "tradition", the pathetic attempt to escape all that is death. why are we so scared, ma? i thought we were supposed to be brave?
i'm back in singapore. life continues. i think of you. and baba. and both of you gone. i remember, i remember. and i love. you, baba, my brothers, my partner, my daughter, my friends, this life. all that you taught me to love.
i saw a lovely painting eight days after you died. green strokes with flashes of blue, red, yellow, brown. people working the fields i think. are those huts in the background? you'd have loved all the colours, i know. by an interesting artist: used to be a statistician, now in his seventies, lives at the ymca, promotes young unknown artists, doesn't care about money. seems he sits by the basketball court of the y and paints. why does a painter paint ma? why does a writer write? is this our eternal? this, our ownness? and our expression of it, is it our only and most definite indication that there is indeed eternity and it is ours? does art stop death?
it's your birthday, ma. you're seventy one. what do i want to do today? i want to thank you for being here, for being my mother. thank you and happy birthday, ma.
my mind sorting the information carefully. this could mean only one thing. a crazy leap in another part of me: perhaps not? maybe a sudden turn for the better. i pick up my aunt, she was away and couldn't go to see ma, the roads pass by, the sun is warm and benign right in the middle of a monsoon morning. what happened to the rains that flooded the city only 11 days ago? the night that ma was admitted? global warming? is ma dead?
the crowded lift on the way up to the seventh floor, only people with passes can enter the ward of desperate hope, the critical care unit. where is the lady next to ma's cabin? white curtains float. there's ma, in her favourite pose: supine on the bed. but a hospital bed, not your seven by seven and a half double (made of two singles, with matching bedside tables), that nana and nani gave you as part of your trusseau in 1958, just one year and nine months before i was born. not your bed.
the doctor is sitting on the lone chair, the nurse hovers. strange, the doctor you're chasing to catch while there is breath, suddenly is very available now that the last breath has melted away in the warm sunlight.
you lie there. you look beautiful. i never knew you were so beautiful. in your face i see calm, peace, knowledge, youth. "we tried everything we could... the heart went this morning... pacemaker... everything." everything? what's that.
the heart has stopped ticking. someday we will find a way to understand and control this phenomenon, manage death. yes, i am quite sure we will. anything that hurts and troubles the human too much, we find a solution, a cure for it. one day we will solve the problem of death. when we are through with assigning jobs to god (life/death/etc, as though without our job description god wouldn't know what to do) and can really learn to take responsibility for our journey on this our earth. one day. and then once again a wise person will reinterpret our relationship with the eternal; someone will write the geeta again because we will hear the song of the eternal yet again.
ma, it's been 26 days. days in which i've seen how scared we are of death, is that why we try to find such quick and easy answers? o the platitudes, the pointless "tradition", the pathetic attempt to escape all that is death. why are we so scared, ma? i thought we were supposed to be brave?
i'm back in singapore. life continues. i think of you. and baba. and both of you gone. i remember, i remember. and i love. you, baba, my brothers, my partner, my daughter, my friends, this life. all that you taught me to love.
i saw a lovely painting eight days after you died. green strokes with flashes of blue, red, yellow, brown. people working the fields i think. are those huts in the background? you'd have loved all the colours, i know. by an interesting artist: used to be a statistician, now in his seventies, lives at the ymca, promotes young unknown artists, doesn't care about money. seems he sits by the basketball court of the y and paints. why does a painter paint ma? why does a writer write? is this our eternal? this, our ownness? and our expression of it, is it our only and most definite indication that there is indeed eternity and it is ours? does art stop death?
it's your birthday, ma. you're seventy one. what do i want to do today? i want to thank you for being here, for being my mother. thank you and happy birthday, ma.
