Devi aunty passed away.
She died yesterday but I received the news today. I visited her home and saw a few people take her lifeless body away in an ambulance. She was my neighbour who lived six houses away from mine. Our definitions of neighbours may differ. I would see her twice a week walking past the gate of my house with a basket of flowers on top of her head, supported by her ring-clad hands and a feeble-tuned voice singing the folk songs of her tribe—an old sweet beautiful human being. I don’t usually shed a tear when someone like a garland maker dies. The kind of death that doesn’t disturb the patterns of your life, the one that doesn’t carry forward any repercussions to your activities that have been perfectly planned out. Usually, I join the collective gloom that has settled around me and move on with it. I seldom attach any grief to myself or let myself indulge in it. Such times are when I am ridiculed for being a self-absorbed person to whom death is only something that slightly disturbs the pattern of my routine. This was highlighted in a book I read a few years ago. But today, a strange sense of grief engulfs me. And maybe that’s why I have never felt a deeper love for the flowers in my front yard until today: Aunty's death somehow penetrated through my tasteless routine.
The last time Aunty walked by, she had no basket on her head. Lean and tired, yet much akin to her name, she walked in a grace patented to her, with her glorious stoop while swinging a polythene bag of what looked like strips of medication. ‘Well, people do get sick. She must go by the temple later today,’ I thought. I reminisce of the time she would bring us treats whenever she stopped by: payasam to ripe jackfruit to pickles. She would invite us for special occasions at her home (for which I never went. Gut-wrenching regret.) She never ran out of time to have a little chat with anybody she met walking down the street or to the temple. She narrated to us stories of when her husband was alive, complimented us girls to that of the Goddess Lakshmi, bossed around a little bit, and loved us. And this certainly wasn’t common.
I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Aunty before she was taken away, she looked peaceful. It was her unique grace mixed with a pinch of pixie dust. At least that’s what I told myself. Standing there amidst a crowd of all those who knew her, I couldn’t help but think of all those who had known her, loved her, admired her, helped her, disliked her. The ones she went to school with, her roommates in college, her siblings who grew up with her, her students, and the list of people who were lucky enough to have laughed with her and cried with her, for her. Her husband whom she loved dearly through sickness and health, whom she nursed for a long time before he passed away, her children, and grandchildren who couldn't be here for her today. And so many people who didn't know she was gone. And somehow in between all of this, there's someone like me who will begin to forget how this frail beautiful grandmother looked in a few months.
The last time I saw her, she told us she stopped wearing bangles and a nose pin after her husband passed away. On a normal day, my deeply rooted repugnance towards age-old customs that dictated women's choices would have infuriated me, but hearing her say that, somehow didn't. Some days, I am confused about the principles that I live by because people like her who have been a pawn to such blind adherence to traditions and values somehow calm my fuming self because down the road for them, everything came down to love.
Today my routine and timetable were slightly disturbed initially, but within 30 minutes, I was up and running through a busy day. I easily bounced back into dealing with my previously missed classes, worrying about the CIA submission due today at 11:59 PM, writing and rewriting paragraphs to avoid plagiarism, and everything else that had to be done. I have even gone back to disliking a classmate of mine and have returned to ignoring her due to an incident that took place a few days ago. My ego remains, still. I had secretly hoped that something like the death of someone I knew personally would budge my stupid ego, but as I said before:
death only slightly disturbs your routine, nothing more.
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