Living with Merlin

“ For I have touched the lowest point of my existence,

The immeasurable depths of despair “

I can’t believe it. It’s not true, not possible. It can’t be. How is it possible that he’s gone? I still cannot use the word dead without an icy feeling of dread engulfing my very soul, a feeling of overwhelming horror at its sheer finality. They lie to me, all these people around me, my family, my friends and the many so-called well-wishers.

“He’s gone to a better place. He will not be in pain and he won’t suffer there”.

This is Aunt Leela, a well meaning, gentle, placid lady in her seventies who hasn’t seen any grief closer than losing her nearly 100 year old mother the previous year. To her death is a natural event and a part of our lives and must be accepted as such. She goes on

“I know how you must feel but life must go on . . .”

Dad, my father, is there by my side, as he has been through this whole nightmarish chain of events, from the start, the illness, the treatment, everything. My strength during all the pain and suffering he is here today to give me support, hold me up. He grieves with me and my pain is his too and as I watch him, tired and somehow broken by this tragedy, I wonder again why God wrote this in his larger plan.

“I know how you must feel but life goes on”

How sick I am of hearing this phrase, it’s a kind of hello that people use when they don’t really know what to say, a kind of start to a conversation. Or a string that is meant for someone to pick up and carry on in an equally meaningless fashion for an absolutely futile attempt at consolation, an uncomforting set of phrases that are mouthed in a kind of parody for providing some solace in grief.

She knows how I feel, oh does she?

And how does she know?

And what about that bit that one about him having gone to a better place. That is completely unacceptable.

A better place? A place where he can be happy without me?

Without me??

That is not possible. He, who wouldn’t even be able to take his meals on time if I went to a conference for 2 days, will be happy in a place where I’m not there?

What are all these people trying to tell me?

They’re all crazy and don’t know what they are talking about. I shut my mind to all of them and think to myself

It’s all a bad dream, a nightmare. Any minute now the doorbell will ring and Diven will be standing there, in that all too familiar fashion, with one hand holding the leather strap of that bag he loves to carry all his stuff in and the other hand resting on the side of the wall. The slight slouch and his head thrown a little back so that his hair doesn’t fall on his face. And he’ll be home again.

For days on end, even months I was like this, unable to really accept what was staring at me in the face and going on day in and day out like a zombie and expecting it to suddenly end and my life return to being my life again. Because ,this wasn’t my life. How could it be?

My life is a life with Diven all around it. I wake up to him or rather he wakes me up and then goes around starting a clangor of noises designed to ensure that even the dead can’t sleep. Puts on the television, that’s called a subcortical reflex action where the male of the species is concerned, then takes off to the loo where he invariably drops the ashtray or something. And then, leaving every light burning, he goes to the kitchen.

By this time all this movement has woken me up and I snuggle down, waiting , as I invariably and happily have done for years, for him to give me that first cup of tea in the morning that turns me into a waking human being. Ok so that’s how we begin our day, which is normally a dull, boring and mundane day. After my tea, which is around 6 am, I start to get dressed to go for my morning walk. Fancy track pants, branded keds and a sports bra. Pulling all this on and then topping it off with a nice T-shirt and a woolen scarf it its chilly.

While getting dressed I give half an ear to the daily dose of advice I get from my husband

“Don’t go too far, stay in the colony. There’s no shortage of crazies. You keep hearing all kinds of things “

No shortage of crazies I often think. No definitely not.

“Stay away from the main road. It’s early and the trucks are often speeding. Its at these times you get the maximum hit and run accidents, you know”

As I finish dressing I take a look at myself in the mirror and apply a touch of lipstick. And am told

“What’s the lipstick for? Who is going to see you at this time? “

“Just like that, I like to. You never know “

Back from my walk, a quick bath and then breakfast and I go off to work after having often being told as I am dressing,

“Gosh, do we have to do this six yard thing? It’s a pain, really.”

“I’m not so sure I like this look. It makes you look older”

That’s an allusion to the cotton saris I love to wear to work and the fact that they take a while to tie because if they are cotton, they are starched and stiff. He is often still immersed in the newspaper as I ready to leave. When I’m all set to go, he will get up to check the car, the tires and my stuff. Even though the fellow who’s cleaning the car would have seen it and said something if anything were the matter, that’s not good enough for Diven who has to check for himself.

Then at the end of the work day, where intermittently I have got one or two calls from him

“What are you doing “?

“Working “ standard reply and finally in the third or fourth call it will be

“When will you be home?”

“5ish “

“OK give me a call when you are nearly here and I’ll put on the kettle”

That is so I can have my tea ready as soon as I get in.

And the evening would pass with us hardly seeing each others faces sometimes, both being involved in whatever we were doing but each knowing the other person was there, somewhere. I think that is the whole point, that the other person is there – somewhere.

We’d often argue over dinner, since something would invariably be wrong, the choice of food, the way it was cooked, the way it was served, the way the table was laid, something, anything.

Our day would end too in invariably the same fashion

“Diven, please put off the TV, I’m sleepy”

“In 10 minutes, I’m watching something important.”

Something important meant Tennis, Cricket or the News. What is it with men? They love having the TV on even if they are dozing off in front of it and the remote in their hands. The minute you say

“Give me the remote “

The situation has turned into one with a potential for irritation, arguments and outright fights

So we too lived that way, nothing very different and nothing exciting.

So of course it follows that this is not my life. This is some kind of a weird farce I’m stuck in, a time warp, and it will suddenly, seamlessly and hopefully effortlessly, after all this lunacy and oddness, fall back into place, into normalcy.

Meanwhile the visits by the various well meaning and sympathetic persons are beginning to take their toll. There are so many people, relatives, some friends, even acquaintances, all of them coming to meet us, to commiserate in this time of grief. The faces and the names start to run into each other and their well meaning, oft-repeated platitudes begin to take on a drone like similarity. Its not that I don’t appreciate their taking time off to come and console us, its just that they often do not really know what to say and I am closed in my mind to their words. My mind blurs the time of the day and I dread mealtimes, it is abhorrent to sit at the table on my own and face a meal with no Diven by my side and who ever else is there is a nuisance, an intrusion.

The nights are in some ways even worse. After these people have left, and the house is empty, when one could have some silence with one’s thoughts, I have various relatives who have agendas all their own. There are some conversations, which will suddenly cease when I enter the room making it exceedingly evident that they in some manner concerned me. How do I put it across to them that it doesn’t matter, they could have continued talking and I wouldn’t have even known for I am never listening to them at all. They are concerned with so many things, the food, the cars, the running of the house, the future where as I am in a kind of zombie zone where none of this is registering and even if it is, it is surreal.

At present, keeping in mind that my loss is so recent, Aunt Leela is sleeping in my room. This is presumably meant to make me feel less alone and the fact that there is someone with me is supposed to help. To put it very simply, it doesn’t. She is a well-meaning lady, somewhere in her late seventies and pleasant to a point. She worries about the fact that I am not eating much and considers food a remedy for most problems. She starts the day by planning breakfast, then goes on to plan lunch and then dinner and then the food for the next day. As can easily be understood, with all this preoccupation with edible objects she is a nice, healthy size. When she sleeps next to me on the big double bed she drops of to sleep within minutes of lying down and I lie there with my eyes wide open. Will it disturb her if I switch on the light and do some reading? Sleep doesn’t seem to be coming my way easily and my mind is in a kind of overdrive and finally leaving her snoring in my bedroom I leave the room and sit in the silent corridor outside, near the verandah, hearing the wind in the trees and shedding tears in silence. Crying to myself, my misery silent and complete and total.

Why did this happen to me? There are so many people out there with the same disease that he had and some are 65 or seventy years old. They are doing ok and some aren’t doing so ok but they are around.

So then, why my sweetie? Why him, he wasn’t even old, he didn’t even have any white hair in his head.

We were supposed to grow old together.

We were supposed to retire and then grow vegetables and watch the flowers bloom and live this nice, leisurely pace of life. I had always teased him that he would make a really handsome old man with his full head of hair turning salt and pepper and the ladies would still turn to look at him and he’d in turn reply that I would most probably be a ill tempered old lady. But God didn’t even give him a chance to turn grey and took him away while he was still so young.

So now in my thoughts he will always be young. As I cry in the silence of the night I think how lucky he was and life was kind to him and how unfair to me. This may seem a foolish line of thought for someone who went so young but there is some truth to it. He was lucky for he always had me there, by his side, while I won’t be so lucky. I will be alone. He died in my arms and if I could ever have asked him how he’d like to leave the world that would have been the way he would have liked to go.

There is some comfort in that. I dry my tears and go back to bed, listening to the sonorous sound of Aunt Leela’s snoring and finally drop off into an uneasy slumber.

The first few days pass like this and slowly a kind of routine emerges since the world has other things to do. My world may have come to a grinding halt but the world around me hasn’t. The sun still rises, the birds still sing in the trees; the day still goes on and ends in nightfall. Slowly, one by one, our guests and mourners go their own way and leave us to ourselves. So that leaves Aunt Leela, the servant and the maid and me. She busies herself in the running of the house and takes charge of everything in a manner which gives one the impression that I am a moron and incapable of performing even the most basic domestic tasks or in this case supervising them since there are servants to actually do them. She decides that the servant is cheeky, the maid is lazy and they are up to no good most of the time.

The issue here is, to my mind, that old ladies, who do not have much else to do with their time, make it their life’s business to find faults with other peoples lives and doings. And this applies to everyone, the servants, the neighbors, and the younger generation today, the spouses of their various children and especially the relatives of their daughters in law or sons in law as the case may be. Of their own offspring there will be little mention since not much is wrong with them unless it is that the world had not done by them very fairly. That’s bad luck you know or a lack of judgment on the part of the world at large. But us, as in daughter-in –law or kind of, that’s oh well, well. There is no direct criticism, no cutting or nasty remarks for we are all too civilized for that but there is an undercurrent to many an innocent conversation.

As I start to return to the world of the living and begin to understand the magnitude of the tragedy, which has ripped my life apart, these things suddenly begin to impinge on my consciousness. All these days I had largely been unaware of these little poison barbs. As I review the situation around me certain facts begin to sink in. The servant is certainly not behaving very well mainly because he now sees that he has no authority figure to answer to, just a bunch of ladies. And the maid is having a field day with the household groceries with her light-fingered ways.

Human beings are selfish and self-centered creatures. In the midst of my sorrow and grief these things suddenly hold my attention and I am grateful for that. I need to get back to work and leave her to all this, give her free rein to do what she wants and not be there all the time to create this doubt as to who gives the orders in the house.

I am too tired to deal with all this as yet. Let her do it and we’ll see later. Some mistakes are made I think, almost knowingly and at that point for me, this may have been one of them.

As I decide to go back to work my life takes on a distinct and at least somewhat familiar pattern. Take it one day at a time someone told me and believe me that is what keeps one sane. One day to decide about, what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what to carry for lunch and what to then do for dinner. It’s these little day-to-day things that work. My work is a different world. Its busy most of the time and even when it is not, it is businesslike and practical and the interactions with strangers who are completely indifferent to your personal life being too occupied with their own or their children’s health issues. It will hopefully be a pleasant change from the all cosseting sympathy; the concerned looks and the careful watch which after a point starts to grate. I am not ungrateful, or at least I hope not and possibly that’s a bit harsh but still true.

Standing in front on my wardrobe readying myself for resuming work I feel tired and drained and unwilling to face the world. But it has to be done and so I follow my routine of putting out my clothes before I go in for my bath. I look at my pretty saris, hanging in a line, all ironed and ready to wear and the blouses and underskirts arranged neatly in the drawers it suddenly seems like an immense effort to dress up. I pull out a pair of formal trousers and a plain full-sleeved cotton shirt. My days of six yards of fabric seem to have run into jeopardy. Wearing a sari will never be the same again.

Work is a relief. The comfortable routine of the patients, their parents, the juniors, the teaching sessions, the classes and clinics seem like a lifeline of familiarity in a now seemingly different and sometimes hostile world. Here, I don’t feel so alone and so suddenly the odd person out. It has often been reiterated that work is the savior for grief and I totally ascribe to that philosophy. Work keeps you centered, gives a degree of normalcy, not to mention that it affords you an income and a degree of self esteem which in my case seems to all have taken a severe beating of late.

For suddenly my identity has changed. I was somebody’s sweetheart and then his wife and then and always the most important person in his life. Now I’m not that any longer. So who am I? No other identity is ever that complete as that which encompasses you with your spouse. Whether people love each other or hate or are indifferent as is often the case with many marriages of late it still is your identity. You are so and so’s wife or husband. Does this seem like a gross exaggeration or a woman’s point of view and not applicable to the men or does it simply seems foolish. Quite apart from the fact that women may just emote more openly, I think men too feel a loss very keenly, a loss of identity as a couple.

You see, in society, you are a couple, the world functions in two’s, in pairs. This is equally true and devastating for men too. I have known men who while going through a divorce have in addition to loneliness and social issues suddenly felt at a loss due to this. All your friends and social connections seem to be with people who are couples, its just a way of life over the years and the same people now though they try their best to call you over and make time for you and go that extra mile, its just not the same thing. It’s a glaring deviation from norm, being on your own.

Work is good for me, time there passes and the day does not seem so long but the same cannot be said for the rest of my life. Life is shattered and the fragments impossible for me to put together into something viable. Home, that one word which holds a world of meaning, doesn’t exist for me any longer. What is home? It’s a place where there’s someone waiting for you to get in. But I now have a house to go back to, four walls that seem to jump up and suffocate me. I often make detours, go to the marketplace, go over to friends and just make every effort to get in late.

I hate my house with so many people in it. It seems to have been taken over by aliens and I seem to have very little control over it and though earlier I had very little interest in the day to day running of it so long as it went on without hiccups now everything is an issue. I dimly get this feeling that I ought to make more of an effort to make my presence felt but the effort is quite beyond me.

It was nearly four weeks after his death that a small incident took on the proportions of a mountain in my already dazed mind.

A blazing hot day and humid with a hint of moisture in the air and I got home a bit earlier than I had been usually getting in. As I walk into the house through a front door which is open, something which should never happen in this city I can hear voices, laughter and animated conversation. Too tired to make the necessary social interactions I pause in the doorway and wonder where they are. The house isn’t very big, it has only two bedrooms and these people are in my bedroom because it is the master bedroom and has a television and good air conditioner. Maybe this has been the norm for the past few days, I wouldn’t know, but standing there all this is suddenly absolutely intolerable. I turn around and leave the house, driving off aimlessly.

“I need to take some control of my life”, I think to myself as I drive out to one of the few green areas near the house. Without my even being aware of it my life seems to be run by some elders who take my quiescence with all this as a matter of course. And till now it hadn’t really bothered me, or shall I say that I had been in a state of near blissful numbness to reality. Prior to all this there was only the two of us and whatever house help we had at a given time and though often quiet, the house had always held for me a sense of peace and relaxation. And now these relatives seem to have taken over and turned it into a kind of guesthouse in which I am a guest of sorts. I get out and go into the park like garden in the neighborhood and cry into my cupped hands.

That’s all I seem to do whenever I am on my own. Shedding tears is supposed to make the heart lighter, why doesn’t it work for me? I’m sick of my life, sick of this existence where everyday only seems to highlight my loss, my loneliness and my misery.

I don’t want to do this anymore, don’t want to try and be normal, and don’t want to go on pretending that it’s ok. It’s not ok and as I sit there I realize that I don’t think I want to live anymore. I’ve had enough and I can just end it all. I sit in this park, now oblivious to the heat and accepting my solution, my way out.

I am a doctor and so I can plan my end with some degree of knowledge and so I ponder over my options. Sleeping pills? Easy to do but not a very sure or foolproof method, could possibly be found a day later in coma or suchlike and be saved. That would be horribly embarrassing.

Ingestion of insecticide? Very effective, but so sickening, vomiting, maybe seizures, painful? Aware till how long? Propofol? That’s how Michael Jackson had done it . . .that seems easy and painless. I am an expert at setting up I/V lines so that wouldn’t be difficult only that it wouldn’t maybe be possible to do on my hand and I’d have to do it on my foot. That’s a bit messy but I could set up the whole thing very easily and that’s it . . . who would find me? Do I want to do this now or later when all these people have left and I am on my own?

Somebody will find me, possibly the maid, I think to myself and then they’ll inform my Dad . . . a dog barks in the distance and my thoughts come to a grinding standstill . . . . I come back to reality with a sudden and horrified understanding of what exactly is going through my mind .Its wrong, bad, positively evil to even allow such thoughts to enter your mind I tell myself and try and get a hold on myself.

I look around, it’s hot, yes, but time will pass and the summer will be over, there will be cooler days and beautiful evenings and I am suddenly ashamed of myself. It’s a sin to contemplate ending life, a crime, and a hateful lack of gratitude for the many things that I do have in my life and it is against Gods wishes. Though few us are overtly religious I think we all still believe in the presence of the almighty or in someone or some power bigger than merely human who seems to hold the world in place and at least guide it, if not actually run it.

I shake myself out of my morbid reverie and promise myself that never, ever am I going to allow my thoughts to meander down that particular path again. Life is precious. This something we say over and over again, part of the teaching of my profession and also to my mind an innate and indestructible belief. It’s a gift, which we are given, to make the most of, and we owe it to ourselves and the people around us to do the best by it.

So what if it doesn’t always seem to do the best by us?

God has his ways and we have to accept them. In this frame of mind and now determined in a still somewhat shaky manner I head home with the firm decision that I am going to try and take control of my life and start by sorting out my problems one by one and not focus on the negatives but the positive things in my life. I do not at present have any monetary problems, I have a job and work which I love and which in addition to the financed does afford me some respect in society, I have some very good friends and I have my family. All in all I have a great deal to be thankful for.

On this note I decide to head to Kiya’s, rather than going home, for a cup of tea, and maybe a cigarette, should she permit it.

We all have friends and acquaintances but some of us are blessed to have friends who we can be sure will always be there by our side no matter what. My friends and especially one of them is in my thoughts as I drive home. Kiya and I, we grew up in this small town where there wasn’t a great deal to entertain young people and that wasn’t the age of the mobile phones and the Internet. Next door neighbors a going to the same school and later the same college for a short while we are friends with a long history. We studied in the same school, exchanged book and comics as teenagers, learned about boys, life and marriage together. I doubt if I could even recall all that we have shared over the years with accuracy, we’ve been a part of each others lives for what seems like forever and if anyone ever gave me a bit of information regarding her which I was unaware of I’d know it to be a lie .We have no secrets from each other for there is a degree of trust and caring that negates there being any reason to keep things to oneself. We have the ease of a friendship that can come only with long years of knowing, caring, nurturing and accepting, crying on each others shoulders in bad times and laughing together in the good ones. We are not judgmental of each other but that is not to say that we do not criticize each other, in fact I’d say that she is sometimes my fussiest critic. That may be with regards to what I wear and how I look and down to the way I conduct my life and myself.

“Heavens, why do you get your hair cut so short? You look like a plucked chicken. Its too harsh, too unfeminine “

“I like is short, its convenient “ that’s me, defensive, justifying my look.

Or it can be

“For Gods sake go and get yourself waxed. You seem to have hair everywhere except on your head” This is another one on my hair and then there are sundry ones like

“Oh, please where did you get that particular outfit? Give it away, to your maid, I’m sure she will love it.”

“Who got that sari for you? I’m sure you didn’t buy it yourself, your taste really cant be that bad “ for a sari she is absolutely sure I did buy myself.

“That bag is horrendous. We really must get you a new one”

Kiya is a good dresser, her taste impeccable whether it be clothes or jewelry or the way her house is done.

And on the other hand me, I’m not fussed so long as I am neat and clean and my clothes are like decent and appropriate to the occasion. Loving a bit of bling on occasion and getting an earful from my best friend used to be a part of life.

For all that we are friends we are as different as chalk from cheese. Kiya is fair, a trifle plump and very pretty and I was always somewhat an ugly duckling, tall and thin and dark. Kiya was married early and had her kids even before I completed my childhood dream of becoming a doctor. As a matter of fact, over the years we may have had times when we lived life with completely different priorities and responsibilities but our relationship has to my mind been steady and rock solid. Many a day now when my mind balks at the thought of going home to a house without Diven I go over to her house and just while away time before heading home. It helps, I talk and she listens or she criticizes and I pretend to listen and that how it has often been. The familiarity of our conversations has a comforting feeling and to my mind at least there is something is life, a relationship, which simply cannot change, come what may. I know she is always there for me, to listen when I talk, to give advise which often goes unheeded and to understand a great deal of what is not said and need not be put into words.

As I now sit in her home using her as a sounding board and try to sort out my thoughts, I wonder about God too. I had for years been going to the temple every Thursday morning and offering prayers or just sitting there and listening to the hymns being sung by devotees. Had always believed that it left me with a sense of peace and with a feeling of goodwill towards humanity and made me a better person. But ever since this I haven’t gone. I don’t believe in God any longer. If there were a God why would he do things like this? Why would he be so unfair? I stop my thoughts right there and make up my mind that I am going to fight this depression which seems to be getting its grip on me, this slow slide into despondency and lethargy which has crept up on me.

I finish my tea and cookies and head home.

Over the next few days I make a conscious effort to look at life in a more positive way. I aim to dress better and look nicer which at this point is rather difficult since I have lost some weight and being fairly slim to begin with my look is somewhat gaunt. And I have decided that when I wake in the morning I will tell myself that

“Today is going to be a good day”

“I will not be negative ”

“I will think about how much he cared for me and loved me and the good times we had together”

This works, you know. If you start the day with a conviction that it will be good and that you will make a conscious effort to see the best in things, things do look better.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy of the human mind. If I were to say

“I’m doomed”

It’s likely I would be.

And as to the things I have yet to set right in life, those I will take on, one by one.

In our country everything has associated with it a whole set if rituals which are ‘important’ and ‘must be done’. Be it a birth or a wedding, a new house or a new job there are many rules to follow. I think the weddings are the worst but deaths are not so far behind and if this statement may seem like a macabre attempt at humor that’s inadvertent. You have ceremonies on the fourth or the thirteenth day and something else on the fortieth day. These are all meant to provide for peace of the departed soul and let them leave their earthly ties. It is believed in Hinduism that the soul hovers close to its loved one or to its earthly and materialistic ties for about 40 days and then departs to the other world. In unnatural deaths the soul may not be able to find peace and continue on its journey but may stay near its loved ones and not be at rest.

I really wouldn’t know how all this works and unto this point in life had never paid any attention to it. When my mother died a few years ago we went through all the right things at the right times as a matter of course and didn’t agonize over the finer details. Now it seems every little thing has a huge and significant meaning and must be done right. Probably these came to be so that for a few weeks people would be kept busy preparing for some religious ceremony or the other and the immediate period of grief would be dulled.

But grief doesn’t follow a pattern of reducing with time or fading in a systematic manner. Days can pass in which one is composed and them some very trivial day to day occurrence can take you right back to the bottom of that pit, back to the moment it happened and break you all over again.

Crying to sleep or crying as I try to fall off to sleep seems to have become a way of life with me. Sleep is often elusive and I think with envy of all the people who fall off to sleep immediately as they lie down. I used to be like that, lie down and within fifteen minutes I’d doze off.

Now I toss and turn, and worry and cry often late into the night, my heart as bleak as my life, a bottomless pit, dark and joyless.