It all started with me wishing that it would rain in the weekend. I had gazed longingly at the incessant rain during the week and had said wistfully, ‘I wish it would rain in the weekend.’ I could see myself cuddling under a blanket with a good book, all comfortable and happy. My wish was fulfilled. It rained and it rained on Sunday. Which meant I was stuck at home all day. The weather put me to sleep like a soporific drug. At least I got to cuddle under a blanket. I faced the consequences today.
Monday mornings are in any case notoriously ‘bad and blue’ but today takes the cake. To start off with I woke up late which was because I could not sleep till the wee hours of the morning which was because I had slept all of Sunday. The alarm rang and rang till I angrily threw a cushion on it. I suddenly woke up with a start. Today was Monday the 9th. Oh my God!! AUGUST 9th, MONDAY was the important important meeting with the most important people of all- the people who owned the company that is my Client. I rushed and rushed only to realise that the ironing lady had not returned my clothes because of the rain last evening. (All my decent-wearable-in-civilised-company clothes were lying with her.) Drat the rain!
I turned my cupboard upside down and finally found a slightly old and faded white salwar kameez. ‘This will have to do’, I told myself. To make up for the bought-it-from-a-thirds-sale I wore a lovely and new blue dupatta with it.
To cut a long story short, my already faded white kurta got splashed all over by a guy who was driving like a maniac. (If I ever meet him again, I promise to give you all the day-to-day story of my life in an Indian prison.#@$@#$!!!!) My lovely and new blue dupatta’s lovely and new colour ran all over my mud-splattered kurta.
To cut the already cut-short story shorter, I am so sleepy I could doze off standing. I look like I have been picked up by one of those huge cranes and dipped in and out of a nice muddy pond. And I have a very important meeting with a very important person, who I am sure will look me up and down and wonder whether its Be-nice-to-the-not-so-blessed day.
There is a wicked wicked God up there who is laughing at me.

My initial grief, streaked with cheek-wetting tears, has percolated into a numbness of unwilling submission. I opened my blog page to see my last post that I had written on the heartache of losing a dearly loved person. And my only reaction was ‘What a badly written load of crap.’

Somebody had told me once that a person who cries when a loved one dies cries not for the person who has died but for his own grief and feeling of emptiness. He cries because of his inherent selfishness and not because of an altruistic understanding of the loss that is that person’s death.

Now I can’t decide whether my reaction today proved that I have attained the pinnacle of human altruism or whether I have finally become the epitome of cold-hearted bitchiness.

It has been a very long time since I last spoke to Dadu. It must have been during my last Ahmedabad-Calcutta trip, via Delhi. Over a year and a half ago. It was a hurried visit, as always. He was looking so much better, walking around in his room. We had discussed politics, my new job and my then-current interest (the Partition and its horror stories). A retired Hindustan Times Politcal editor for South-east Asia, he was a mine of information.

Dadu was my grandmother’s youngest brother. Having lost my own grandparents at an early age, he and his wife were my surrogate grandparents. When I was barely five years old, my father had gone to England for a course and my mother had joined him for a month. I had been left behind at Dadu’s house in Delhi. My uncles, his sons, were still in high school and college and were no competition for me. I demanded everyone’s love and attention. I was taken along for all social gatherings, where I was shown off. I was their pride and joy. The only reason I never missed having my own grandparents was because I had them.

Over the years as I grew older we didn’t meet as often. Not more than once a year. And that too happened during rushed brief visits to Delhi. By then, their children had had children and the love that was reserved only for me was passed on to the new additions. I was no longer the cynosure of their lives. Perhaps I felt a bit jealous, and my visits to their house were more out of duty than anything else.

I woke up early this morning, just before 5 a.m., extremely restless. A strange uneasiness gripped me and I twisted and turned in bed for a long time till I drifted back into sleep. Later, on the way to work my mother called up to inform me that Dadu had passed away sometime early in the morning.

I would like to think that he thought of me once, in his last thoughts, for he shall always be in mine.

Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
~Elvis