By P Sasikanth
Even the frozen expression on her face reflected peace. Though it was a bit lost because of the state she was in, it still reflected placid peace. She was neatly clothed with her steely grey hair combed and neatly tucked under her head. Her lips now grown to brittle red, and her cheeks having acquired the pallor of death she lay in the coffin box with her eyes closed. Roses were placed near her head and large flower garlands were laid on her still body. She exactly fitted the coffin box. She was a large woman. Normally, it would’ve taken many men and tiring effort to carry her to the church burial ground. But owing to her last wish to be carried in a van, her grandson made sure that her wish was fulfilled; consequently, saving the people from the burden of her weight.
The man standing by the door bent down again and kissed her on the forehead. It was the dead woman’s second son. His father. He knew that his father was drunk. He felt a stab of sadness watching his father like that. The splitting headache from the previous night worsened even more. A little distance away from the second son, stood the dead woman’s first one. With arms crossed across his chest, he stood there with eyes swollen red from crying. Their respective wives and children sat in the front rows of the benches, grieving her death, except him. The priest was giving a sermon about death and how God perceives the death of his loved ones. He stood there at the end of the hall trying to cut himself off from the scene. He hasn’t eaten anything since her death. His head felt heavy with headache and sleeplessness. His dried eyes pained whenever he blinked. He got no strength in his body, yet he stood there as if in a delirium. Occasional bursts of tears wetted his eyes, but he repressed them with all his might. Those were not the tears of sadness but the tears of guilt, the guilt of her murder.
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Ever since he was consciously aware as a child, he saw her in the house. She was his grandmother, and she was the dearest to him as a kid. She taught him tying shoelaces when he first started going to school. She bathed him, she fed him, and she answered his childish queries with patience and love. And at night when they slept together, she narrated him stories that satiated his curious imagination. She taught him the love of God and religion. She taught him how to pray. They shared a bond without which he couldn’t imagine a significant part of his childhood.
But as years grew, though the love for her remained, the strings of attachment with her loosened and came apart. By the time he went to college their relationship melted down to occasional hugs and talks. And after college, he moved to another city to pursue further education. After the course when he returned back, the image he had of her completely changed. He saw her as an embodiment of existential suffering. She suffered without knowing why or for what. The more he witnessed her, the more the scales fell off his eyes. Now he saw a large old woman with mental illness completely dependent on her family. A woman who couldn’t keep her head straight without her dose of medicine. Even a few days lapse would drown her into depression and delusions. She wouldn’t come out of the house, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t sleep, and she’d keep rambling about her wild imaginations and fears. And when in bouts of anxiety, she turned the whole house upside down sending everyone into a frenzy. She took medicines for her illness. The medicines made sure that she slept for most part of the day and when awake, they just scattered her in a delirium of thoughts. More than curing her, the medicine has slowed her down both cognitively and functionally.
He saw his grandmother taking medicines from his childhood. But now, as she grew older her condition deteriorated even more. She became shrunk and strengthless. She got operated for cataracts. But the fogginess in her eyes returned back in six months. In addition, the operation left a permanent facial spasm which made a side of her face twitch without her knowing or control. Because of her overweight and unhindered urge to eat she continuously faced diarrhea or constipation. When diarrhea, she would be up all-night making rounds to the bathroom, spoiling her clothes and bed. And when constipation she’d struggle for days with gastritis which often led to heart pain. As a topping to all this, she had high BP (blood pressure) because of which she got palpitations and fell down hurting herself frequently.
It was not her condition that concerned him but something else that burnt deep into his heart. It was the complete lack of desire in her eyes. A complete desire lessness to live. Rolling in a mire of misery she just existed. Existed to die. The more he stayed with her the more he understood this and the more contempt he felt. She prayed three times a day, pleading God to grant her death. He had been listening to the same prayer since his childhood. Back then she was much younger, stronger and more cognitively functional than now. Yet she prayed for her death. He then realized, that in her existence to die, she nearly spent twenty years of her life. Even twenty years ago all she wanted was death. Slowly as he fathomed the depths of her anguish, and witnessed the burden of life on her, her image became more and more morbid.
One day after her prayers, as she laid down on the bed, he sat beside her. Then as a part of habit she asked him to pray for her. He looked at her for a long minute. In a cold tone, he replied ‘I don’t pray anymore’. Shocked, she immediately covered his lips with her hand saying, ‘shouldn’t say such things. Ask God for forgiveness’. Taking her hand away he asked in the same cold tone, ‘If God really exists and also loves you why doesn’t he grant you death?’. She was hurt and fell silent, then she slowly replied, ‘Never question the acts of God.’ Surprised by her exaggeration he looked away in disdain. A while later he asked, ‘Instead of praying to God, why don’t you just kill yourself?’. Shocked at the deliberateness of his question and even more hurt, she looked at him in horror and replied further lowering her voice, ‘Taking one’s own life is a sin.’ Turning away he broke into a mocking laughter.
They slept in the same room. Both on two separate beds. It was under his father’s instruction, to assist with her needs during the night, and also to make her feel less lonely, he slept with her. One night while silence engulfed the room, he woke up in sudden fright hearing a bone chilling shriek followed by a thud. Instinctively he knew that it was his grandmother and she fell down. He got up and sat in the bed. In the backdrop of the dim yellow light, he watched her pacing frivolously. The enlarged spooky shadow of her, reflecting across the wall terrified him. His parents came hurriedly from the other room and switched on the tube light. She was still pacing and bumping into the walls and objects. His father looked at him angrily for not doing anything. But immediately realizing that he was too terrified to act, his father went to her and putting his hands around her shoulders, he tried to stop her and calm her down. She lifted her head and looked at her son with the most miserable eyes one can ever imagine. Burying her face into her son’s embrace she started weeping; sweating and shaking all over. ‘Emaindamma?’ her son asked compassionately. Holding him with shivering hands, she replied, ‘Nanna bayam ga undira. gunde chaala dhada ga undi’.
It took nearly an-hour to calm her down and persuade her to go to bed again. They waited till she fell asleep and slowly they themselves retired to sleep. That night she slept in his bed cuddled like a scared child. She whimpered all the night. Occasionally he heard her praying in her sleep with quivering voice ardently begging The Lord to take her life.
The whole thing disturbed him so much that he felt lost and helpless even to comprehend her plight. Somewhere around the early hours of the morning he heard her light snore near his ear. He got up and looked at her. She slept like a baby. With unconditional love he kissed her on the head.
Soon the fatal night came. Few days before the fatal night, owing to her uncontrollable urge to eat, she feasted on mangoes. As a result, she had a severe bout of diarrhea. For three whole days and nights she kept making rounds to the bathroom with his assistance. At nights when he slept with her, the room smelled with the stink of her stools, making him feel disgusted. With spoiled clothes and bed sheets she kept the whole house awake. Attending to her needs and with the stink in the room, he barely slept those three days. By the time the diarrhea has passed, she became so fragile and strengthless that she had to stay in the bed for the next three days. Finally, when the whole episode has ended, constipation took it’s turn. Soon gastritis followed. It was so severe that she began complaining of sharp pain in her chest. Her son took her to the doctor and the medication was prescribed. They thought that it would go away like it did many times. But this time the medication showed little result. The sharp pains in her middle chest made her convulse and turn to a side clenching her stomach.
That night, engulfed in silence, the room stayed still with the light snoring of his grandmother. Suddenly he got up hearing troubled groans. He looked at her. In the darkness, he saw her dark figure twisting to the sides of her bed. With the dim yellow rays falling into the room, he could partially see her whenever she turned to his side. He immediately got up and went to her. His immediate thought was to make her sit up and call his parents. But he did none. He stood there, still; watching her. She was trying desperately to get hold of something to get up. In those desperate attempts, her arm accidentally hit his hand. She tried to grab it, but he shook it off violently. Her muffled groans deepened as if pleading for help. She sounded choked. He realized that she was having a heart attack. In a jolt she tried to get up. He put his arm against her chest and pushed her down into the bed. He held her pinned and pressed harder. Her sweaty warm chest and her moist gasps wetted his hand. He felt the palpitations and the heart beating under her chest. She tried to wriggle off his grip but her fragile hands couldn’t make it. Looking into her eyes, he pinned her even harder. Minutes later, the struggle ended. Silence returned back. He waited for any movements; there were none. Her body went loose and lifeless. He waited few more minutes and then checked her pulse. Putting his ear to her chest, made sure that her heart stopped.
He slid down to the floor. With hands wrapped around his legs he sat staring into the darkness. His body turned warm because of the adrenaline rush. He felt nothing. Except for his racing heart and his grandmother dead, nothing changed. Everything was still and engulfed in silence. He felt surprised for the fact that nothing changed. Nearly half-an-hour later he got up and switched on the tube light. Her large figure laid on the bed with dishelved clothes and sheets. Her mouth and her foggy eyes were open. He walked to her, adjusted her clothes and the bed; and gently closed her mouth and her eyes. The eyes still remained partially open. He left them and switched off the tube light. He stretched himself on his bed and felt a guilty pride for his act. ‘I liberated her’, he thought to himself and looked at her. But it discomforted him. He laid still for a while, but then the silence began bothering him. He kept turning to the side every few minutes, to look at his grandmother. Slowly the feeling of nothingness faded, and anxiety took over. He planned many ways of conveying her death to his parents, but none seemed good enough.
An hour later somewhere around past midnight, his father, as it was his habit, came to the room to check on his mother as she was unwell. Noticing his father come to the room, he acted asleep. His father switched on the tube light and went to her.
The news that she wasn’t breathing spread like wildfire. The silence of the room was violently perturbed. In moments, the whole household turned chaotic. It was then the headache began. As people gathered in the room and she was being taken to the hospital, the fact that he has murdered his own grandmother hit him. Yet he tried to console himself by saying that ‘He did it for her own good.’ But the burden of her murder kept getting heavy on his consciousness despite being it for her own good. In the hospital the doctors told that she died of a heart stroke because of gastritis.
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Looking him at the doorway, his father gestured him to come. In a sudden momentum he kicked himself on the other foot and stumbled to the ground but managed to prevent the fall. He stood up. The headache worsened. The thumping in his head threatened to tear his nerves. With sweat trickling down his neck and fever burning through his chest he walked towards his father. As he neared, his father broke a sad smile and stretched his arm gesturing to come near. He walked around the coffin and reached the head side of it where his father stood. He avoided looking at the dead woman. The scent of the withering flowers mixed with the hot humid musk hit his nerves and he instantly began feeling nauseous. Putting his arm around him, his father asked, ‘Did you eat anything’. He shook his head.
The sermon of the priest, the musk of the withering flowers and the splitting headache. He looked at her. Her foggy eyes were still open. He wriggled off his father's hand and ran out of the door and vomited.
By P Sasikanth
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