Ah the bliss of curling up in your PJ's, listlessly sipping your morning tea, aimlessly flipping through TV channels, having absolutely no clue as to how the day is to be spent or what should be done next. That absolute wonderful feeling when your day hasn't even begun at 9.30 AM and neither are you thinking of beginning it any time soon. This is only to be experienced on weekends of course when the rest of the week just whizzes past in a constant vicious cycle.
But come to think of it, the lazy, drawling mornings stretched on forever with my cup of tea is just about the only thing I really miss since I started going out to work. This maybe because I enjoy the work I do, for writing has always been my one true passion. Oh and I also miss those spontaneous cooking and baking adventures of mine from time to time too. Oh well, all in good time.
Speaking of baking, felt like baking last evening and was in an intense debate with myself, trying to decide between brownies or pumpkin pie. Finally decided on baking brownies, but very, very predictably, as is always the case, we were out of butter. Sigh..... Why oh why is it that the exact thing that we need is the exact thing that is missing when you need it??? Sigh........... So *poof!* went the dreams of warm chocolate brownies with melting vanilla ice cream for tea in the afternoon, disappeared into thin, invisible air, gone down the gutter, gurgled down the drain and flushed down the toilet, so very heartlessly :(
After a week of being terribly sick, Lady Grouchalot is finally back in the scene. Although throwing up everything, including water that dared pass beyond the throat and then feeling all dizzy and light headed 24 hrs a day was more than what I had bargained for, being pushed around the hospital in a wheel chair by a total hunk (I'm serious, hospitals should follow the example of this particular hospital and hire good looking dudes to push you around in wheelchairs.....Sigh), I found myself thinking to myself, hmmm....I could get used to this! :P
Still feeling the remnants of the flu singing within though. Its this bug I've heard. It leaves you feeling haggard for weeks afterwards apparently.
All in all, a good weekend. Took the Parents out for lunch. Mother Dearest had been craving for Indian food for quite sometime so took her and a sour-faced Father Dearest (he doesn't like Indian food much) over to Agra for some fine Indian lovin'. Ambiance was lovely, all cozy and intimate, food was ok, not exceptional though. In short, I've had better and for cheaper too.
Amrith's used to be good. And then they came to suck and finally closed down. Pity though, I used to enjoy the food there.
Exhibitions at BMICH always holds the most curious of all tit bits on offer. Had mehendi applied all over my left hand for 200 bucks and now the lines have emerged out in this beautiful deep red that I have always loved. The smell of mehendi brought back many memories. Its strange how smells, much more than sights or sounds bring back the most intense of sensations. Or maybe its one of my very own endemic idiosyncrasies.
Speaking of smells, finally managed to get my hands on Rock and Dreams by Valentino, a perfume that I had been eyeing (or nosing) for a while ever since I received one of those tiny vials as a complimentary gift when I bought my last Hugo - Woman (which is now discontinued, sob sob :'( ) about a year ago. (Yes, perfumes ARE my Vice :S)
Rock n Dreams is, well....different. Its dreamy, its fragile and feminine and somehow very personal. Is it "Rock" you ask? Yes, I suppose it is. Not in the gritty, hardcore, leathery way as one would imagine, but in a more profound, intimate way that the music tends to grab hold of you by your most vulnerable depths. Yes, vulnerable would be the word to describe the scent and its so damn sexy in its vulnerability. However, it reminds me of those rare childhood mornings spent rolling out pastries with my mother. The scent from the sprawling, flowering vine that hung over the roof of the open indoor garden (which btw no longer exists) adjoining the pantry wafted indoors generously in the mornings. My mother was a working woman and her staying home was a very happy day for me and she would usually do so when somebody was coming over and she would always wear this light, frilly floral dress that I used to so love on those days. On such rare occasions, I would usually get to skip school or preschool (under the pretext of a tummy ache of course) and sit on a tall stool in the kitchen, my feet not even reaching the floor, and watch her hustling and bustling around the kitchen while the smell of stewing pineapples, baking smells and the like would mingle together and fill the entire house. This perfume somewhat reminds me of this entire experience. I suppose it is this factor that makes the fragrance so beautiful.
Guess I've always had an uber sensitive nose. Which can be quite annoying, specially when travelling by bus :S
Finally managed to get some brownies in the oven and that comfy baking smell is wafting up the stairs little by little. Father Dearest had been hovering around me while I chopped, melted, sifted and mixed and now he's hovering around the oven waiting for them to bake. He does not have much of a sweet tooth but he does have a whole set of teeth for anything that I may cook or bake. Must shoo him off the kitchen or else him constantly opening the oven will further delay the baking process. He's sort of our own personal cookie (cake, brownie or etc) monster. Chweet :)
Looking forward to a warm and cozy Sunday evening followed by a good night's sleep and a whole week of activity. Life's quite good these days, except for my still not back to normal physical strength and The Darling's new found obsession for planting trees and not having time for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! *sob sob* I'm worried that he may give up his job altogether and become a good ol farmer, loin cloth and all. Oh well...... never mind. However, a plan of revenge is called forth - Baking brownies (super chocolaty mind you) and not letting him have ANY! Mua ha ha ha!! *Evil, sinister laughter ensues* Let him plant and toil all he wants, he's missing out on brownies, conversation, random tickling, lubly, bubbly hugs and other very, very important things :/
Monday, July 30, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Dealing with Death
It took me quite a while to put this post together. The emotional numbness finally gave way to a more confused state me thinks. Loku amma passed away. And I thought blogging would help me grasp the situation after all this time.
Was floating around in a dream-like state, partly aware that this is not a dream and partly feeling as if I'l wake up from this horrible dream soon. Who laid there in that coffin was not her. It was some random old lady that I did not know. My loku amma was elegant. She never drenched her hair in oil and she never combed it back. Her hair was always a joyful mess and she was so full of life. Neither did she dress in tacky old sarees. She had good taste, was graceful and majestic. Unlike the strange, serious-looking person who lay there surrounded by flowers, looking all limp and dead.
She was a healthy person, had she been sick, we would all have understood. Of course she had the usual pains and aches of the old age, but other than that, she was a bundle of life, doing this, that and everything, bustling about the place with a purpose. Even the morning she passed away, she had been gardening in the morning with loku thaththa after which she had gone to take a bath. It was after the bath that she had been taken on by the wheeze. After trying two inhalers, she herself had walked to the car to go to the hospital and on the way, she had passed away. All this had happened within 10 minutes. A measly ten minutes and ALL the life that this frame contained for all this time had just evaporated in to thin air. And I do not understand how. Because there was SUCH a lot of life in there.
She had even prepared to cook lunch for the two of them that morning. We found a half scraped coconut, peeled and washed onions, chilly and tomatoes on the kitchen counters and two boiled potatoes, all prepped for lunch. Some washed and prepped Dambala from the garden (she rarely buys vegetables from the market, they grow their own, even tomatoes, cabbage, radish and etc in their own garden) alongside a chopping board all set with a hopeful looking knife. Some dry fish too has been washed and was kept separate in another pot, ready to cook. It was as if she walked out of the kitchen for a moment and would resume cooking any moment now.
We would usually go to her place looking forward to a scrumptious meal and being showered with lots and lots of love, attention, laughter and good, happy times. Going there for her funeral was a strange experience, at least for me for I had always associated Loku amma's place with joy, festivity and heaps and heaps of activity, all presided of course, by her. The place bustling with people, as we sat there in a group, I kept expecting her to come smiling towards us in her usual way, her lively voice resonating through the house. But she never came. But I kept expecting her to do so. It was all very strange. It felt like some stranger had died and we were all there to help out. Nothing more.
Not many people would understand the feeling if they had not been there, if they had not experienced it first hand. I have had close people react to me with aggression just because they are sad, yes, you are sad but you should also understand that aggression does not serve a purpose and that nobody is responsible for your grief, it is yours and yours alone. And just because you are sad, the whole world does not have to walk around you on tip toe because they do not know about our loss and neither do they have to know. Neither do they feel what you are going through and they are not to blame either. It took me the death of a close one to understand that death alone has no meaning and while the parting of a loved one is sad, it is the ones who are alive who must be taken care of. Because it is them who suffer more.
Death remains a puzzle but it is evident that death occurs when life leaves the body. Death in itself is not an entity. Death is a state of being. It should only be an adjective, it should not be a noun. You FEEL that once life leaves the body, what remains is just a worthless shell, empty, like a rambutan deprived of its seed or an empty pack of Pringles. The corpse is no longer the person that you used to know. The spirit that this body contained gets liberated. I think we should all be happy that this person is finally free. But as all lay persons do, we have our attachments, our own selfish motives. Isn't it for selfish reasons we weep when a person is dead? Isn't it because we shall miss the physical presence of that person, isn't it because we shall miss what that person used to be for us, used to do for us that we weep? Isn't it because you fear your own loneliness that you weep? If it isn't for selfish reasons that we weep, in this case we should not be sad because it was a relatively painless death. But still I am sad. And that is only because there were things that I wanted to do for her and yet could not manage to do so while she was alive. That is all. While her death did shock me in to numbness sprouting from pure disbelief, I did weep a little out of sheer selfishness because of all the ways in which I would miss her now that she is gone. But then I decided not to be so selfish. While grief remains, Life presents itself to me in a new light now. Take care of the ones who are alive, because once they are gone, there is absolutely nothing that you could do about it. Spend as much time as you can with them, do everything you can for those you care about. Hold no grudges, take no offense, do no wrong to anyone or any living thing. It is these things that matter, not how much you earn or who you hold grudges against, defeating an opponent or proving yourself right everytime. Life is precious and one should savour every moment of it, whether happy or painful. You feel all these things, whether it is grief, happiness, pain or loss because you are alive.
And it took me the death of a loved one to realize all that.
Was floating around in a dream-like state, partly aware that this is not a dream and partly feeling as if I'l wake up from this horrible dream soon. Who laid there in that coffin was not her. It was some random old lady that I did not know. My loku amma was elegant. She never drenched her hair in oil and she never combed it back. Her hair was always a joyful mess and she was so full of life. Neither did she dress in tacky old sarees. She had good taste, was graceful and majestic. Unlike the strange, serious-looking person who lay there surrounded by flowers, looking all limp and dead.
She was a healthy person, had she been sick, we would all have understood. Of course she had the usual pains and aches of the old age, but other than that, she was a bundle of life, doing this, that and everything, bustling about the place with a purpose. Even the morning she passed away, she had been gardening in the morning with loku thaththa after which she had gone to take a bath. It was after the bath that she had been taken on by the wheeze. After trying two inhalers, she herself had walked to the car to go to the hospital and on the way, she had passed away. All this had happened within 10 minutes. A measly ten minutes and ALL the life that this frame contained for all this time had just evaporated in to thin air. And I do not understand how. Because there was SUCH a lot of life in there.
She had even prepared to cook lunch for the two of them that morning. We found a half scraped coconut, peeled and washed onions, chilly and tomatoes on the kitchen counters and two boiled potatoes, all prepped for lunch. Some washed and prepped Dambala from the garden (she rarely buys vegetables from the market, they grow their own, even tomatoes, cabbage, radish and etc in their own garden) alongside a chopping board all set with a hopeful looking knife. Some dry fish too has been washed and was kept separate in another pot, ready to cook. It was as if she walked out of the kitchen for a moment and would resume cooking any moment now.
We would usually go to her place looking forward to a scrumptious meal and being showered with lots and lots of love, attention, laughter and good, happy times. Going there for her funeral was a strange experience, at least for me for I had always associated Loku amma's place with joy, festivity and heaps and heaps of activity, all presided of course, by her. The place bustling with people, as we sat there in a group, I kept expecting her to come smiling towards us in her usual way, her lively voice resonating through the house. But she never came. But I kept expecting her to do so. It was all very strange. It felt like some stranger had died and we were all there to help out. Nothing more.
Not many people would understand the feeling if they had not been there, if they had not experienced it first hand. I have had close people react to me with aggression just because they are sad, yes, you are sad but you should also understand that aggression does not serve a purpose and that nobody is responsible for your grief, it is yours and yours alone. And just because you are sad, the whole world does not have to walk around you on tip toe because they do not know about our loss and neither do they have to know. Neither do they feel what you are going through and they are not to blame either. It took me the death of a close one to understand that death alone has no meaning and while the parting of a loved one is sad, it is the ones who are alive who must be taken care of. Because it is them who suffer more.
Death remains a puzzle but it is evident that death occurs when life leaves the body. Death in itself is not an entity. Death is a state of being. It should only be an adjective, it should not be a noun. You FEEL that once life leaves the body, what remains is just a worthless shell, empty, like a rambutan deprived of its seed or an empty pack of Pringles. The corpse is no longer the person that you used to know. The spirit that this body contained gets liberated. I think we should all be happy that this person is finally free. But as all lay persons do, we have our attachments, our own selfish motives. Isn't it for selfish reasons we weep when a person is dead? Isn't it because we shall miss the physical presence of that person, isn't it because we shall miss what that person used to be for us, used to do for us that we weep? Isn't it because you fear your own loneliness that you weep? If it isn't for selfish reasons that we weep, in this case we should not be sad because it was a relatively painless death. But still I am sad. And that is only because there were things that I wanted to do for her and yet could not manage to do so while she was alive. That is all. While her death did shock me in to numbness sprouting from pure disbelief, I did weep a little out of sheer selfishness because of all the ways in which I would miss her now that she is gone. But then I decided not to be so selfish. While grief remains, Life presents itself to me in a new light now. Take care of the ones who are alive, because once they are gone, there is absolutely nothing that you could do about it. Spend as much time as you can with them, do everything you can for those you care about. Hold no grudges, take no offense, do no wrong to anyone or any living thing. It is these things that matter, not how much you earn or who you hold grudges against, defeating an opponent or proving yourself right everytime. Life is precious and one should savour every moment of it, whether happy or painful. You feel all these things, whether it is grief, happiness, pain or loss because you are alive.
And it took me the death of a loved one to realize all that.
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