Goodbye, and all thoughts in between
In a Mumbai that never seems to have power cuts the way we do back in Goa, or at least the way we did, it chooses the hottest February day to die on us. Stale, dusty air, with the occasional gust of hot wind billows through my nani's living room. A constant whirring of construction equipment forms the background score for the events of today to develop. I am unable to send mails, giving me the chance of quietude I deserve. I look outside the generous window to see tops of buildings I didn't even know existed, and orange cranes with orange Jai Shri Ram flags on them creating buildings I now know will exist. I was born in the clinic a few hundred metres away, here in Goregaon West, and as legend (my mom) has it, my umbilical cord is buried somewhere here. I hope it is not underneath Kabra Diamante, a tacky building if I ever knew one.
Today is February 28, the last day in an anomalous month. A month of anomalies it has been for me alright. Today, my grandfather's ashes were dispersed in the salty waters of Madh-Marve. For the last three days, I have been trying to find signs in birds, butterflies, dates and numbers. I have been making meaning out of nothing, trying to soften the jarring and crude reality that the mystical act of birth and death takes place, day in and day out in the ordinary and most squalidly human city. One would think the mind wanders off to imagining the better place - flowing waters, languid pools of silence, space to roam free. But I was transfixed on the things in the bedroom he was confined to in the last six months that his body languished through. Boxes of adult diapers stocked, catheters and tubes creating a labyrinth. But also, a hand-drawn greeting card in scrawny misshapen letters by my baby niece, wishing her great-grandfather a happy birthday. On the day he passed away, she told me, "Panjo-aaba var gele" [Great gramps has gone up].
Our earliest ideas of death explain to us that when someone dies, they go "up". I used to think they became a celestial body, a star looking down. When my nana passed away in 2009, I was told he became a crow for a few days. Well that sucked, I hated crows. Then I was told he became someone else, reborn. I distinctly remember hoping that he was reborn as a white male in Switzerland. When nana passed away, I was chilling in Malvan with my best friend and her parents. Her parents took me to the beach and told me that he was no more. I said "Oh, okay". Not a teardrop. I knew he was taken care of as a white male in Switzerland, with a better passport power than mine. Rebirth sounded awesome, especially when it happened to people who were so good that you just knew God would give them a better deal on the next life. I had just read the Navneet Illustrated Mahabharata, so I knew how this worked.
I didn't think much about these things till day before, because in the middle ages of teenage rationality and experiments with atheism, one just dies. It's something that happens, as it will with everyone. The life lived matters more than anything - the difference made, the lives touched - and you deal with the hand you are dealt. All else is gravy. You study, pass your exams, get a job, work, start paying taxes, marry someone (and love them if you're nice enough), you take care of yourself (you might get cancer even if you don't smoke tbh), have children, love said children, know what's best for them. They will learn to say your name, a decade and a half later they will tell you that they hate you. Then they will come around when they're 25. You will grow old, and if everything works out the way it's supposed to, you will die in your bed in your 80s, having lived a good life.
If this was the truth and this was all I knew, why did the fluttering of a butterfly around my grandfather's draped body and its resting on his garlands transfix me? We all watched through hurting, saltine eyes. It didn't know anything, that it was on the bonebag of an 87 year-old man, with cotton stuck up his nostrils. It was just there, resting, finding use of a dead man. It stayed there, unbothered by the lifting of the pallbearers, unbothered by the low-hum chants of Ram naam, and only left once he was put into the hearse.
Ajoba died on the day of Mahashivratri. I've written before about his love for perfomance, the artist that he was. Having done the dance with life and creation and destruction, perhaps contributed more to it through his decades of worship to music than most of us ever will — what a day he chose for curtain call!
What a life he chose, to continue on the plane of ordinary existence through his music, while the spirit moved on. I woke up at 5 AM yesterday, unable to sleep very well, and made my way to Dadar. I wanted to pray at the Ganpati Temple in Shivaji Park, but as fate would have it, a crow took a big dump on me. I took a cab home. See, I love you Aaba, but this was a little on the nose.
Beautiful ode to a life well lived. May he continue to inspire you while he's at peace amongst the stars now.
Sorry for your loss, Eesha. This was a lovely read.