Dear Blog,

I lost my Baba since the last time we spoke. In all my years in this world, I had never come face to face with a dead body. I had lost a lot of relatives and close ones too, but never had to witness what it is to see a person lying there but not really there. But the first one had to be of the man who has shielded me from this throughout my life. To enter your parents’ home and see your father lying on the bed, as if sleeping peacefully but never to wake, is a feeling I cannot describe. I think I didn’t feel anything. I was 20 mins too late. Everyone said he wouldn’t have wanted to go in front of us to shield us from the pain. So, he was gone. All I remember is that I was numb and on autopilot because so many things had to be done. My sister said it right. It was as if the code was deployed directly to production and we had to firefight right there.

He didn’t look dead. I thought he would wake up. I kissed his forehead and his cheeks, which I had been doing since childhood, but he didn’t stir. When I was in school, he would come to drop me off, and I would wave him goodbye with a kiss on his cheeks. My classmates would stare and say, “Aren’t you big enough to stop doing this?” I wasn’t then, and I wasn’t till the last day because he was my Baba and that was our thing.

I always knew that one day I had to see him off. I knew that it had to be me because, in some strange way, he prepared me for this. To think that I was the one who gave agni to my first hero is something that breaks my heart. My mom says I have done something really good. But how is that good? All I can think of is, what if he felt pain? Till the last moment, I kept thinking he would wake up, but he didn’t. And I sent him away. Cremation rituals are brutal because you can see the person you love lying right in front of you, but they are not there. But how do you tell your heart this? You can call them, but they won’t open their eyes. The hand that caressed me when I was born, saying I was so tiny, fragile and soft, I had to give those very hands up to the holy pyre. This is a heartbreak I don’t think I can ever heal from.

There is the Hindu ritual of asthi visarjan too after cremation. Imagine person of flesh-and-blood is gone, and all that remains can be contained in an earthen pot. I cannot explain to you the feeling of helplessness and numbness holding on to that pot, carrying it to Triveni Sangam, traversing the path he had traversed several times in the past while he was alive. You think of the last time you had gone there; you look back and think that, at that time, Baba was alive.

You look at his desk and see a book half-read. A Bengali book which you cannot read because you never learned. You see his medicine box, his laptop, the unsent messages in his drafts, or the messages he had sent to others, and you think, how can a person just cease to exist suddenly?

You cry, laugh, and don’t know where to pour this feeling. It’s as if someone is sitting on your chest or there is a huge mountain on your chest, and you have been asked to go on with life. I know I’m not the first, last, or the only person to have lost someone. In many ways, I also know I should be grateful that we had him for so long, that he lived a full and big life, when so many around us have died so young. But that doesn’t lessen the pain, you know.

There is so much to do now. So much paperwork, rituals, and so many calls to answer. If you are a parent yourself, you need to look after your kid too. Work needs attention because how long can they give you time off, even if they want to? So, when do you grieve? I don’t know. Maybe this is what it is. I will grieve throughout my life while living it as well.

I thought grief was linear, but so far, whatever I have understood is that I will still laugh at jokes and, at times, laugh and cry at the same time. I will still feel hungry and crave something I love to eat while the person that made me continues to not exist. I will travel, buy new things, celebrate occasions, and Baba will still not be there.

Many years back, when I was in school, I was participating in a dance production. During that time, Baba got admitted to hospital due to hepatitis. He was there for over two weeks. Of course, we were very young, and Ma couldn’t be at the hospital and also take me dancing, so I had to miss that production. My Baba cried because he felt I couldn’t dance because of him. You see, that was my Baba. This time when I go back to dance class, I won’t have missed calls or messages from him to reply to later. This time, he won’t be back after two weeks. This time, I can only see him when I die.

The morbid thing is my sister and I resorting to dark humor, as usual, believing that he would be negotiating our stay in heaven for later because, unlike him, we are not good souls.

Some years back, I had written a post called “Baba & I,” and I found that on his laptop in a folder where he had our photos. One particular photo, which has Baba holding me and my sister on either side of him, he named “My Guardians.” But the guardians couldn’t do anything when it was his time to go. Our Baba is gone, and that is our truth now. We found his college diary from 1968 where he made meticulous notes of the movies they watched. There were snippets of his thoughts and one where he vowed to make something of himself. He did do that. The outpouring of messages since he passed made us realize what a big life he lived and how much he did.

I’m barely coherent these days. Losing a parent will do that to you. I don’t know what else to say, dear blog. I’m just completely mind-fucked! There, I said it. But I will be back because writing is all I have to make sense of it all.

Until next time then!

Ciao!