Life lesson from my dad’s passing

Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.

Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.

1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.

2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.

3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.

4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.

For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.

I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.

Obituary of my dad

It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.

Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.

What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.

People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.

Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.

My tribute to the pink-collar workers

My favorite women can be found working in supermarket and apparel stores across India and I am thankful to my dad for telling me about them from an early age. Born into socially and economically backward families, they neither have the environment nor the motivation to excel in education. Instead they are conditioned to be married and sent packing from their homes as soon as possible. Their vulnerabilities are exposed when they are forced into the lives of wayward patriarchal men who indulge in everything except managing their homes and are forced to look for jobs to earn money. These men, though useless to their families have no hesitation in impregnating their hapless wives without having any thought about how and in what circumstances will those children grow up in. When we see the next generation kids going wayward and crime rates going up, one of the most important reasons is this.

I love talking to them at the supermarket store near my house and they tell me about how they wake up by 4 in the morning, finish off all their household chores, cook food and get their kids ready before travelling to reach the store and inside the store they have to wipe and clean the floor of the store, what they just did in their houses. They have to stand the entire day near their designated areas even when there are no customers and they tell me about how tired their back and legs become by evening. I warn them to be careful about developing varicose vein and they give me rueful smiles. Then they travel back to home, cook again, take care of their kids and end up sleeping by 11:30 pm. That is hardly 5 hours sleep for an entire day’s work. Even worse is, they have to work all days in the week. Every sick day is loss of pay for them. Their callouses filled hands are the best indicators of how hard their lives are. When they put their heads down and bear with borderline abuse from the store managers for even the slightest mistakes it shows how fragile their lives are.

My parents and I are very particular that we engage with them to the minimum. In apparel shops we tell them to stay back, do not touch any clothes on the racks and ask them to show us only what we want to see. In supermarket stores I forbid them from bending to put anything in my basket. Bending forward without breathing in and without bending the knees is why most people suffer from back pain. I warn them to be careful about their back, I get their rueful smiles again and I understand why. When the soul is broken what will anyone care about their body?

Every day they go to work in the fear of losing their jobs and not knowing where their next meal will come and what will happen to their kids if they lose their jobs. Women empowerment is just a fancy word for me when there are thousands and more of such women out there who are forced to face the harsh realities of life and are wearing down their body and mind every day just to survive. The best customers can do for them is to smile at them, be warm and nice to them, talk to them and show our gratitude for making our lives easier with shopping. All they might need is someone to hold their hands and tell them “I understand you and I am with you”.

The picture I have put here is one I found on the internet. I will never take their pictures and objectify them. Already deprived of warmth and appreciation they need not be burdened with unwanted sympathy and publicity.

A Year On After Her Suicide Toxic Work Culture Continues To Haunt Swapna

Swapna was an alumnus of the engineering college where I studied. She was forced to take her own life last year after she was unable to bear the work pressure she had to endure at Canara Bank where she was working. A friend and another alumnus of the college informed me of her demise and after almost a month I got to know that she was the elder sister of the wife of a doctor whom I befriended during my morning walk and is a good friend now.  

Indian banks set unrealistic expectations about their yearly revenue generation and the entire hierarchy of employees is under constant pressure to meet and exceed the targets given to them. But branch managers are the ones that suffer the most. It is the employees of the branches that deal with customers every day so they are the ones expected to generate revenue by selling insurance etc. Loans are also disbursed from the branches so branch managers are responsible for repayment and NPAs pile on more pressure on them. The catch here is, authorization for large business loans comes from higher management of the banks and when business owners stall and evade payment due to bad investments or market downturns those loans become NPAs. Banks mostly run into losses because large sums of money gets stuck in business loans. Then the pressure is on the branch managers to close NPAs of as many loans of individuals as they can regardless of whether they are unable to repay due to genuine reasons.  

Swapna’s husband passed away 3 years back and she was a single parent raising up her two kids. No mother will take her own life knowing fully well that her kids will be orphaned and they will become the responsibility of her immediate family. So it is amply clear that what she was being made to endure at her work place was insufferable.   Swapna had taken a housing loan from the bank for building a house. Her immediate family has rightly put the blame on the bank for her suicide because it is the toxic work culture of the bank that has claimed her life. All they have asked is that the bank take responsibility of the loan and close it. The bank is still considering this largely because of the fear that if more such incidents happen they will have to close more such loans. Ironically taking responsibility of such loans seems to be more important to the bank than improving its toxic work culture and preventing more suicides of its employees.

Swapna’s death should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet and should serve as a deterrent and warning to all banks to treat their employees as human beings and not revenue generating robots.  

Couple of weeks back, the bank sent a recovery notice to her family and they approached the print media. That the bank is continuing to haunt her a year after her death was published as news item in all leading Malayalam newspapers. The Kerala GM of Canara Bank subsequently called her family to apologize for sending the recovery notice and blamed it as human error when it is abundantly clear that the bank was testing the water to see if her family’s wrath has mellowed with time. 

There has been national outrage over her suicide all over the media and whatever the bank does to avoid taking responsibility of her death will only dent their image further in the public’s eye. Their sole way of redemption is to take responsibility of the loan and go to her family with the offer to assist her children in every possible way till they finish their education. This will go a long way in regaining at least some of the credibility they have lost in the last one year.

Unwillingness to adapt to changing situations is what leads us into mental depression

 

India has been jolted by the suicide of a young, talented and hard working actor in Bollywood, the country’s biggest movie industry. As rumor mills swirl around nepotism as the apparent reason and repeated rejections from movies in spite of delivering hits and becoming a bankable star, the focus is firmly fixed on depression, the reason that finally led to his untimely demise.

Is depression a disease or a weakness of the mind is the debate that is hot on everyone’s plate now. I believe it’s neither. We need to see this from two perspectives.

1) Human mind is like God or the Almighty. The more we try to understand both the further they keep going away from us.
2) Our lives are fully controlled by situations created mostly by others.

Is depression a disease?

Is common cold a disease? We still do not know. But because we have been taught and indoctrinated into believing that cold is a disease, we take medication for it. And what do those medicines do? Suppress the symptoms of cold. What we need to know here is that suppression does not eliminate the disease. We think the cold is gone but only for now. Whatever is causing the cold remains inside the body. Moreover all medicines that suppress symptoms of diseases have side effects. Antidepressants never cures depression. They just numbs the brain so that we do not feel the pain of what is hurting our minds. If anyone believes antidepressants will help us stay alive, no. We will eventually get tired of living on them. We are not used to taking medicines to live our daily lives normally.

Is depression a weakness of the mind?

Sushant was academically brilliant, from being the national level Physics Olympiad champion to becoming a mechanical engineer by cracking an entrance exam with a top 10 rank, his mind was probably bordering on being a genius. We will never know what he would have become if he hadn’t chosen to become an actor. People of such academic pedigree are hardly seen in the movie industry but what we can understand now is that he was extremely passionate about whatever he pursued. That he was extremely hard working and motivated to become an established actor was evident from his movies. Such a person can never have a weak mind.

Then why did he take the extreme step?

Well, he did make some mistakes.

1) Looks like he never asked himself if it was his fault. As someone who has contemplated harming myself more than once, I managed to pull my mind back each time with the simple question “is it my fault?” Our lives are a 3-dimensional affair. While on one one side we have the free will to make our choices, on the other two sides are situations and destiny. We suffer mostly by becoming part of situations created by others knowingly or inadvertently. Destiny essentially says life is full of ups and downs. So all we can do is to be hard working, sincere, dedicated and focused. What happens from that point is not in our hands. That’s where we need three more qualities: 1) Patience 2) Perseverance and 3) Resilience. We will not develop these three qualities unless we ask ourselves if it’s our fault. He had already become a well known face in Bollywood. All he had to do was to be calm and wait. Everyone has their own life clocks that run differently and that is the beauty of life.

2) He made his passion his profession. Asking to make one’s passion his/her profession is a completely wrong advice to give. A profession is to make a living and work can be done only at the whims and fancies of others. Especially in the creative world, art in any form has to flow from the depths of our mind. Art and wealth never go hand in hand. If he had an alternate profession to make a living and he was acting only to fulfill his passion, no uncertainties in the movie industry would have had affected him. He would not have had to ask for work in the movie industry and be at the mercy of movie producers and directors. Supply only when demand comes to us.

3) He listened to others. We all have an inner voice and we also have instincts and gut feeling. Always go with them. That’s our natural reaction to facing a situation and our first thought about the situation usually turns out to be the correct one. Surrendering the control of our mind to counselors & antidepressants is the completely wrong way to combat depression. Gaining control over our mind, senses & needs & distracting & diverting our mind away from what is hurting us is what will truly help in overcoming depression.

The pressure to find work & perform well exists across all professions which is why work should neither become an obsession nor stressful for long periods of time. The only way out is to involve the mind in many activities & develop varied interests. Fulfillment of any form comes only when we develop mindfulness. Only when we are content with who we have become can we look ahead and see who we can become.

My understanding of depression is very simple. We are perpetual victims of situations and our lives are like sinusoidal waves. When life starts going the wrong way for us, we try to control the situations. When we are not able to we try harder. When we get stuck in the loop and we fail repeatedly, our mind starts slipping. When the world starts looking down on us, we start losing our self esteem and we start believing we are not worthy of what we are aspiring for. Knowing the Kübler-Ross model is very helpful here. The first step to facing a difficult situation is to move from denial to acceptance quickly. Only when we accept a situation do we start getting greater clarity on how to face it. We will come across many situations where the only solution is to accept it and wait for it to pass. We do not usually walk when it’s raining heavily, we wait for it to stop. Snippets of survival.

There is no depression in nature. Animals have a simple 3 pronged agenda – 1) Survive 2) Eat & 3) Reproduce and they are absolutely clear about this. Having complex emotions doesn’t mean we cannot simplify them. Having greater needs doesn’t mean we cannot reduce them according to circumstances. Simply put, we need to be adaptable. To surmise, reluctance to adapt to changing situations is what leads the mind into depression.

Sushant, I hope you will learn these lessons in your afterlife and you will get another chance to redeem yourself. Be at peace for now.

About Nurses – The Downtrodden Caretakers, Sacrificial Pawns & Forgotten Heroes

The death of Lini Puthussery because of the Nipah virus should have thrown the spotlight on the precarious lives and living conditions of the nursing community in India, but beyond mere sympathies and as a news item and TRP booster for TV channels, nothing else has come out of her heroic sacrifice. The Government of India and Kerala seems to have already moved past her death. No cure has been found for the virus yet, even though outbreaks of the virus have happened in the past. In spite of this, Lini and other nurses were forced to attend to the people who had contracted the virus at the risk of their own lives.

What nurses do is social and community service and I have observed that such people are treated with far less respect than they deserve to get. Arvind Kejriwal is probably the only head of any state India has ever had with a distinguished background and credibility of social service (for which he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award), yet people does not seem to have much respect and regard for him. Same goes for the nursing community as well. Hospitals are the only places where people forget all divides and unite irrespective of age, gender, skin color, caste and religion and nurses are the guardians of these hospitals and the angels who sacrifice their lives for the patients. But I grew up seeing guys eager for hospital visits if anyone they know are sick, to eat food from the hospital canteen at the expense of the relatives of the sick person and to ogle at nurses. Nurses are treated as so downtrodden that most of them become extremely strong mentally and emotionally otherwise they wouldn’t be able to survive without any self esteem. Nursing is a profession that is always in demand and the need for qualified and experienced nurses is perpetual. This has propelled millions of families in Kerala to educate daughters in their households in nursing courses with the hope of sending them abroad for jobs. The onus of taking these families out of their dire situations and bringing prosperity are burdened on the shoulders of these young girls. Their trouble doesn’t end here though. Many guys look to marry these nurses working abroad as their visa to a life abroad without having to work and earn, a fact that has been highlighted satirically in many Malayalam movies.

Nurses and soldiers belong to the same category of citizens of any country, the ‘Expendables Community’. They are the ones who are supposed to lay down their lives in the line of duty to protect the people of the country. It is said that the people of the country sleeps in peace because of the soldiers who protect the country’s borders. I have often wondered, from what or whom? Apparently, India does not have friendly relationship with China, yet I got the visa to travel to Shanghai to do a one year MBA course with an international business school. I have made many friends and contacts there and the hostility between countries never extended to the human to human level. This hostility is limited only to government and political levels and soldiers have always had to give up their lives at the behest of the rulers of the land.

But the nurses partake in wars at a very different level. The war of survival of humanity. These are wars every living being is part of in nature, to survive and be a dominant species. We still do not know the purpose of more than 90% of our DNA which clearly shows how little we know about the bacteria and viruses that inhabit our world and their evolution. The more medicines we are finding for diseases the more viruses are becoming resistant to medicines along with evolving themselves into new unknown strains. The war we are waging with nature is for the survival of our species rather than for victory and nurses are the pawns who are sent out to the front to protect us and die for us.

It is the nurses who deserve the highest respect and honor any country can bestow upon it’s citizens. Instead, they are struggling because their profession is one among the lowest paid in India and not every nurse gets to make a life abroad. Many of them are not even getting enough salaries to repay the educational loans they have taken to study the nursing courses. The country should not forget the poignant letter Lini wrote to her husband before her death and her sacrifice should not go in vain. The Government of India should honor her with the highest possible civilian award and the Government of Kerala should extend it’s support to her family and children in every possible ways. This I believe will be the stepping stone towards a brighter and dignified future for the nursing community of the country.

Our star shines in the nether world now

We lost this girl 4 days back.

 

 

 

Exactly 11 years back, we brought Judy home along with Tommy.

 

 

 

 

 

Prostrate cancer took Tommy away from us 5 years back. Both were apples of my mom’s eyes and they were vying for her attention all the time. Mom was devastated after Tommy left but Judy’s presence kept her afloat. It’s kind of weird, but everyone in my family has a mind of his/her own and we never agree on most of the things. My granny was like a radio, there was no point trying to tell or convince her about anything. What is astonishing is, every pet we have had, be it dogs, cats and even a cuckoo bird, all of them imbibed this personality automatically.

Tommy and Judy used to know each and every activity inside the house, especially what mom does. They used to disappear the moment they understood that mom was getting medicines ready for them. They would try to keep their heads away from her sight as much as they can. If they had a chance to bury their heads in the ground they would have. Both of them used to sleep as close to mom as they could at night and Judy used to do periodic patrolling inside the house and around mom to make sure nothing were there to disturb her sleep. There is a reason why dogs get attached to us so much. Tommy and Judy were taken away from their mothers when their mothers were still nursing them. They came home and mom started feeding them so mom became mother to them. There is no love bigger and more envious than the love between a mother and her child. Even in his death bed and in his last moments, he was constantly looking at mom. Ditto with Judy as well. We made sure we were around her all the time so that she wouldn’t miss her family in her last hours.

Love in the animal world is straight and simple. Feed them and take care of them and they will give their complete loyalty in return. Their love is unconditional unlike in the human world. What pets do in our lives is something unique and special. They fill up spaces in our lives left behind by other human beings. Parents, siblings, family members, friends; pets make sure that we do not miss them. How do they do this? By constantly seeking our attention. They know when we are sad and need to be left alone and when we should not be alone. We believe animals are less intelligent than us. Most of our knowledge is built from our education system and what we experience in our society which has been created on the concept of wealth. The knowledge that animals possess is rooted in nature which is why they understand love, empathy and compassion much more than us.

Why does death hurt every living being? It’s just not us; every animal displays remorse at the passing of their loved ones. There are two things that happen when a beloved one passes away. We can no longer communicate with that person and most importantly we can never see each other again. This is what hits us first, especially after the funeral. Before this sinks in, we start missing that person and what hurts the most are the little things. Judy used to constantly move around inside the house and keep shifting her resting places. Her footfalls could be heard most of the time. Now there is a certain deathly silence.

What we need to understand is that our comprehension abilities are limited through our 5 senses. We were created with the knowledge that if we understood the entire process and cycle of life and death, we would become reckless beings and would never respect the rules of the Universe. If I knew when and how I was going to die and what would happen to me after death, I would live my life out without care rather than respect the time I have and everything life has given to me. This is why the entire system of life and death has been restricted to us. But as we approach death, that world opens out to us; especially in cases where people have lived out their lives and are dying of old age. My grandpa had a big wide smile on his face as he took his last breath. Death is release from the agony and miseries of our physical existence. Our souls are chained to our bodies just like we put birds and animals in cages. This is why I despise seeing any animal in chains or inside cages because their sufferings are doubly ignominious.

My dad reminisces about all the pets he has had from his childhood and keeps wondering where they are now. Of all the 7 billion people in the world, why do we know only the people we know? Out of them, very few become our best friends and soul mates. Why did we pick Tommy and Judy out of all the big bunch of babies that were there? It is impossible to believe and accept that all of this is random selection. There has to be some sort of connection that brings two people or a person and an animal together. When I look back at all the friends I have made, none of them seem to be random connections. It just happened with each one of them without any explanations. I thought about one of them yesterday and lo and behold, I see his call on my mobile in the evening. I keep telling dad that his beloved pets are just no longer in the physical form; they are in the form of energy and are everywhere. Our beloved ones become our guardian angels when they go to the spirit world and in the spirit form they will have a lot more influence in protecting us. We will not see them in the same form again. They discarded it when they left. But they will always be with us. I don’t miss any of my beloved ones because I have realized that there is no going away. We are eternally connected through space and time and once we realize and accept this, the boundary between life and death will vanish from our minds. We need to actually look forward to the end of our physical existence so that we could be with our beloved ones again.

Judy, my girl, be at peace wherever you are. We buried your body but your memories will be with us till we go to our own graves. Till we meet again in the spirit world…..

My tribute to a friend who walked into the sunset

The news of any death is disturbing. If the death is of someone we know, the feeling is more pronounced. The death of a family member is devastating. But what hurts the most is the passing on of a friend. A friend and classmate from school of mine chose to move on quietly into afterlife yesterday night. The end was in sight, a cancer that was diagnosed at stage 4 two years back had battered and ravaged his body to the bones. He had held on with all the strength he could muster but the killer disease got the better of him eventually. It is quite an overwhelming feeling for me. When someone who grew up with us leaves the world it does leave a gaping hole in our minds.

I have always asked myself what is so special about friends. I used to always think that we don’t even have the choice to choose our parents and the families we are born into so what control will we have over our lives. Then I read somewhere that we choose the lives we want to live because there are things we need to learn from this world. With families, we need to meet their expectations, have respect, emotional bonds, gratitude and obligations. With friends, absolutely nothing. Zero. The relationship just grows like magic. We just need to be there for each other. Even regular conversations are not required. As we grow older, we realize and accept the fact that our parents and relatives will leave the world before us under normal circumstances. The ones we grow old with are with our friends. Maybe that’s why it feels like a part of me has gone with him.

A trivial and silly squabble had led to the breakdown of our friendship in school. I had a lot to deal with after we finished school and I got engrossed in working out my life. I got to know that he was married and settled with a kid and I was really happy for him. That the marriage had broken down and he was under severe stress for a long time became known to me only when he told me 2 years back, after his cancer was diagnosed. I knew the reason for the cancer instantly. Articles explaining the real reason for cancer are being revealed now on social media. The science behind it was discovered way back in the 1920s but it had been suppressed till now because the pharmaceutical industry has been beefing up their bank accounts at the expense of our lives. When our body becomes more acidic, our cells become starved for oxygen and that’s how they turn cancerous. Radiation treatment kills only more good cells than the cancerous ones. The stressful life he led must have had made changes to his body that eventually turned out to be his killer.

It dawned on me a little too late. I know that if I had not let him out of my sight, he would have been alive and living his life fully now. People will say that this was his destiny but I will never be able to wrap my brains around the concept of destiny. Even the existence of the Universe depends on mathematical probability so why is it not possible that we are presented with a number of possibilities before us and the choices we make defines our road ahead? He was easily the best student in my batch but the idiot never saw it. He was the one I always wanted to top the class, not because he was my friend, but I knew he had it in him.

I had an extremely disturbing night yesterday. I felt as if someone had woken me up from my sleep. After I went back to sleep, I saw vividly in my dream that I was bidding farewell to someone. I didn’t see who it was though I knew it was a guy. I was shaking his hand and hugging him before sending him in a lift. And the first thing I saw today morning on Facebook was the post about his demise. Coincidence? Or did he really come to say good bye? I may never know. My friend, no one stays in this world forever. My time will come too, in some time. In a way, I am glad that you have finally attained freedom from the insurmountable pain you have had to endure. Be at peace now. This sinful world and its miseries hold no more relevance to you. Au revoir my friend…..till we meet again.

A remarkable true saga of love

As the world celebrates Valentine’s Day with great fervor every year, spins fantasy tales on immortal love and comes up with new and innovative ways to showcase popular love sagas like Romeo and Juliet, one remarkable real life love story has been unfolding in a remote hamlet in Kerala for the past 60 plus years. The world outside the hamlet didn’t know about it till someone heard and went to find the truth. Today, the same man has shot a documentary about it and made a magnum opus blockbuster movie that is enthralling the people from Kerala across the world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennu_Ninte_Moideen)

Unsurprisingly, the common thread this story shares with all the other love tales is, this one is also tragic but in a very unique way. It has all the ingredients of classic forbidden love. It’s the 1950s, Muslim boy, Hindu girl, both from rich and well respected families known to each other. Friendship from childhood turns into something more as adolescence blossoms. The families get wind of the blooming romance and the girl’s family snaps its wings. She is put under imprisonment in her house for 25 long years. They keep communicating through secret letters smuggled in and out of her house. At the age of 44, he tragically drowns in the local river when he was trying to save people from a capsized boat. She lives on in his memory, saved by his mother’s words from suicide and dedicating her life to charity. Without writing more about it, here is the link to the documentary with English subtitles. It is truly heartbreaking. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFQm8nBvY2c)

There is something very important to learn from this story. Before we talk about love, we need to know how love can endure and stand the test of time. Their friendship started during childhood, when they had no expectations from each other. When such a relationship grows, there is no physical desire. They simply accepted each other as they are. But the key was to understand each other’s feelings and the need for togetherness and companionship they had for each other. Consummating their love by getting married and having kids was not paramount. If that was the case, one of the two would have had surely lost patience with time and slipped out of the relationship. Most importantly, they chose to be good friends and companions to each other. This is why their love has endured, because it was free of expectations and desires. I can vouch for this. Even though my feelings were never understood, they still live on inside me. Most people who claim to be in love are in illusion because their love is loaded with expectations. That is why we speak mostly about divorces, separations and breakups and couples still together after many years are looked at with curiosity. When more people believe in the 7 year itch theory, this is not the world for true love anymore.

Well, they say if we truly desire something, the entire Universe will come together to fulfill it for us. Then why were these two kept separated all their lives? It is really hard to fathom. Love is an extremely complex emotion. Maybe our souls do know true love but the constraint the society enforces on us suppresses most of our natural abilities and true desires. That is probably why true love is far and few because most people do not understand true love when they see it and maybe why all those love stories end in tragedy. Our bodies are just physical vehicles for our souls to learn and evolve. Science says everything in the Universe is a manifestation of the vibration of the sub atomic particles. If this is true, then true love has to bring two souls into synchronicity. Then I need not despair about the lonely love bird in the hamlet. Her soul is just waiting for time to take her to be with his soul. I am yet to watch the movie but this is one I will not miss.

Fame, alcohol and a tragic end to a great man

All greatness in this world has come at a cost and most of it has been hidden cost. Many among us drool over and criticize rock stars for their drugs, sex and rock and roll lifestyle. But what we don’t do is to find out how they end up living such lives. Climbing up the ladder of life is one thing but staying on top is a different beast. Well, there is no course in the world that teaches fame management. If we are striving for success without knowing what to do with it when we achieve it, we are in for a lot of trouble. The first objective is to know when we have peaked in life and then accept that we are no longer going up so we need to rechart our lives. I learnt this lesson from the life of Mark Knopfler. He broke up Dire Straits when the band was at it’s peak and was topping every music chart in the world. Why? Because Brothers in Arms is a phenomenal album which he may have realized he could not better. His decision was justified when he returned in 1991 with a new album which did not match up to the dizzying heights of Brothers in Arms as was expected. He achieved the fame he wanted to but was smart enough to chart a new course for his life. He still makes music but the music he wants to make and not what people expect him to make under the label of Dire Straits. But I guess most people who achieve greatness do not understand the need to scale down and stay consistently successful. They bask in the glory of their success and let life slip out of their hands. I know two people whose lives peaked and ended in identical fashion but in very different ways.

Someone who was like a father figure to me passed away yesterday after a prolonged battle with liver cirrhosis. He was affectionately called ND by everyone. Born into abject poverty, he rampaged his way through school on scholarship and then finished his engineering degree on scholarship as well. A truly remarkable achievement by the highest standards. When all his friends went for lucrative jobs in the marine industry, he went to Dubai and found his feet. He worked in one company for 25 long years, got married, got his sisters married, got his wife’s sisters married, got jobs for his cousins in Dubai, got them married and settled, built his own house, got his kids educated, saved money for the family and most important of all, took absolute care of his mother. He surpassed expectations so much that he managed to do things beyond one man’s capabilities in a lifetime. When I was growing up, I was always told to look up to him and see how he takes care of his responsibilities. His life was similar to my grandfather’s in many ways. With no job and no money, grandpa left for Calcutta during the peak of World War II and found his life there. He worked his way into Dunlop and had an cracker of a professional life there.

Both dragged their life downhill in similar ways as well. When they thought they were finished with their responsibilities, both decided to return to their hometown, the same place they had to leave and go in search of a good life elsewhere. They returned without any specific objectives, hoping to live a calm and retired life. Both didn’t realize that after living high profile lives in cities for so long, life in a town would eat away their minds. My grandpa spent his last years with a slipping mind, the only reason for him to hold on was me. ND veered down into a road of self destruction. He tried his hand at business and failed badly. Then a monotonous life of doing nothing took over his mind terribly. He was a normal drinker and he took to alcohol to drown out his mind without peace. He was neither an alcoholic nor depressed. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His path crossed with my grandpa once again during this time. Out of nowhere, his friends called him to Singapore to work. Without any responsibilities left, it was his passport to freedom, to start life again and end it in a blaze of glory. I begged him to take it up but sadly he didn’t. Dunlop had given my grandpa a two year contract to work in the UK when he took retirement and he had also refused.

From then on, it was only a matter of when it would all end. When I met ND recently after his liver had given upon him, he told me that all his responsibilities were over and there was no need for him to be alive anymore. That will always be one of the saddest moments of my life. All I could ask him was that he has left everyone a legacy of how one man can shape the lives of so many people around him. Does he want to leave behind a legacy of such a death as well? I saw his eyes welling up with tears and he asked me to leave. I knew he had realised it was all too late.

What I would really miss about him is the way he would question me with stern eyes and then melt down and give me a sly smile with a sparkle in his eyes. The prospect of facing his wrath was one of the reasons why I could never take the risk of slipping in my life. People may say that he drunk himself to his death and that he is not a good example to follow, but those people are either short sighted or never knew him for who he was. He just made one mistake in his life. He didn’t take a moment out of his life to look what is around him and ask himself “What is it that I really want to do?”. Did he want to explore the world? Take photographs? Paint? Create music? Make food? We will never know. He was unwavering in his focus towards his family but he was totally blind about himself. He just went with the flow and thought he was enjoying life, but he wasn’t. No one can truly appreciate life unless we know what our true capabilities and interests are and how we will truly fit in this world. He may only be remembered as the one who was born to rescue his family and that will give no justice to the man he was and the immense skills and attitude he had to face life. He leaves a huge lesson for everyone to learn and a huge hole in my heart. For a man who achieved so much in so less time, this was not the way to go. He deserved a much better farewell. If his soul has awakened, I am sure he is not going to be at peace for such an inglorious end.

ND, respect and honour. Your life will continue to inspire me and keep me focused on my family and friends. I will see you in the plains of afterlife. Till then, au revoir.