I CANNOT ACCEPT, BUT AGREE TO.

Have you ever had a dream make perfect sense to you when asleep but a perfect nonsense the moment your eyes open owl-ish wide? Your infant minds may wander about dead relatives or friends who meant a lot to you, take a retour and paying homage to your mind, or unknown treasures that were never buried, but suddenly discovered in your teeny weenie dream or you whistling away with that guy/girl who were purely just a figment of your imagination. And then, when you wake up, a “poof!” followed by a “damn!”, your lips move in the same fashion and you hitch a curse on that something that woke you up, something hypothetical like you fall off your bed, or hypocritical like your alarm, or hysterical like your mother. Finally once and for all, realization occurs. You are not a living proof of bedtime stories, or a living character of fairy tales, neither are you the most desired by the world (let alone your GF/BF), nor an action hero and an inspiration to man and woman kind alike.

But if and if only they were ‘lucid dreams’ psychologically, we would be invested with that power to control our dreams a lot more effectively and bliss would refill our sleep. You would once again be a Cinderella or Tom cruise or a multi millionaire or reunited with a heartfelt person and I would get back to erasing HIM from my dreams at least, as in reality it seems to be my mission impossible; dreamer protocol.

Well, he rendered me impaired. Not for a while. For all the while.

As it lay there… the solid reality that I ever failed to digest, it has been a little more than 3 years since he had vanished into the n’th world that I know not about. Yet I know this for sure. He takes a little peek at me often. How can he not, given the fact, he was obsessed? Obsession is just another relative term. Let alone, with me? Yes. I had a man who loved me irrevocably. Although love for me has not been a sudden condition that occurs for every human out there, when nearing that tipsy teenage, it has been there my whole life. Yet, I never found love. It remained silent and omnipresent that I never realized it was what the homosapiens named “love”. It is not an instant from my life. You can quote me; this is so for every soul and flesh out there. But doesn’t anyone come into the terms that this so called love is a pre requisite for life? That no one is unwanted and a hidden way or another, the naked loving is just a quest for realization and unaware of other worldly pleasures as it is a pleasure in itself? And there are alpha kinds of love out there and it does not necessarily have to be the much hyped Romeo and Juliet.

When this flickered in my mind it was already late and untimely. Too late as he had vanished into that n’th world that I know not about, but he had taken that little peek at me yesterday night. When I was dreaming. Maybe, that is why it was told all through the history that dreams tell us something. I would like to believe it is the fantasy I devote myself to: that he is still alive there with a new body, without those wrinkles that creased his face, without that silver tooth that he felt precious, somewhere to the right in his mouth visible partially, without the big and flappy ears that he used to make me laugh so hard till I clutched my stomach and rolled over the floor, without that half bald forehead which he carefully disguised by smearing “vibhoodhi, chandan and kunkum”(in Hindu culture) all at once appearing divinely , without that glazy eyes which probed me out of those tiny slits when he smiled, without that sudden crazy faces appearing out of nowhere and making me burst into peals of laughter, without that “poonal” or a sacred thread weeping across his shoulders and chest, without that lucky chain he wore together with me, without that voice which often cackled calling me, “kuttima?” and without that strong arms with which he crushed my wind pipe by a so called hug. Yet I hope dearly he still possesses the ghosts of his youthful heart and mind. All I can concur to is, he was the rarest gem for me and the purest.

I say “without” because I know he left them all back here. I’m guessing he forgot or probably asked me telepathically to keep them with me. But in this unfortunate and vicious Hindu culture that I cannot accept, but agree to, they burn the remainder. And all that was left of him on the evening of January 15th, 2010 was a small pot full of ashes. Excruciating is what I feel as it all comes back to me today, his funeral. He was lying there in the heart of my living room as midnight crept into dawn on the same sheet I and he blanketed around us on cold nights. During summer in India, we did not need blankets. We had ourselves. I did not know what he was thinking nor was he thinking at all as I slouched there next to him. My mind was blank and so were my responses to all that hazy crying that had emerged right when the doctors in the hospital declared something out of the blue and he was transported home. Here .To me.

It was January 14th, yes my dear South Indians. It was the day of Pongal. The day when we natives enlighten our labors by thanking the lord above for the harvest that reaps in our lives. And it was on that day, I recollect, I prayed but could not thank. I prayed to all the lords above in the universe to make him as he used to be just a fortnight ago. To make him clutch that racket and take a shot at me snickering again. To make him strong enough to smash the cooked rice pouring curd with a pinch of asafoetida and salt or “rasam” with hot tomatoes and tasty liquid into it, as he fished it into my mouth making me gobble it all up. (That was the most delicious cuisine in the world.) To make him sing nonstop with me during the dead of the night. To make him yell at my sister once more. To make him climb trees with such an elegant swing. To make him do yoga once again and to make him peer into my face every morning I wake up. And finally to make me not grow up without him. I could not bear him being so weak all of a sudden, his gracious face troubled and sallow and needles stuck up like a pincushion. But as it seems my prayers must have taken lot of time to travel up in the universe, search for the lords I was addressing to and convey. Because, by that time he was dead.

And he was laying there just the same as before in the heart of my living room, I still had not stopped my prayers as I slouched next to him. I did not touch him. And I did not look at him. Yes. I couldn’t. He scared me for the first time in my life. Even so, I had to do something! He should not be afraid. No. Oh no! He mustn’t. I swooped low carefully near his ear, not touching him still, staring at the opposite lamp, and whispered a few words of console. I told him there ain’t anything in this darn world he should be afraid of, and everything is going to be alright. Little did I know then that he was no more in this darn world and that he had faced death with ease and it was me who yearned for console. I was blind, deaf and dumb to everything else that was happening around me. For that painstaking moment, I hugged myself. Goosebumps had erupted all over my body. I jammed my eyelids close. A tear slipped through the corner of my right eye and slithered down my cheek. It lingered for a moment on my chin. A hesitant mortal afraid to jump from the tip of a valley 10,000 feet high, even after deciding to die. And then it fell. Just like his life… Time trickled by, when I smelt something terrifying and nauseating. Red roses. It was the sickly smell of roses! An embodiment of love. An embodiment of funeral. An epitome of mockery mostly. And it was the confirmation that he was gone. Away. Far away. And I fell down there. Next to him.

Soft sunlight stumbled and fell over me as I woke up with a jerk. Like all times. And I smiled. My jaws felt like hard rocks on the surface of the ocean bed. “Why?” I wondered and sat up. Bizarre! I blinked umpteen times and hugged myself. My hands recoiled from my legs as if stung. My feet were like the ice frosts that clung on the edges of frozen leaves. I sat upright waiting, my eyes half closed. Waiting for him to peer from the crevice of the teak door. The thought of ‘him’ evoked a languid humor to my heart. It beat frantically and thrust an awful sapor within all of my sense organs. And then a canon blasted within the boundaries of my mind. Not literally. But it seemed literal. I wailed and whimpered. Moaned and mourned. A lament that shushed any movement in the vicinity. The crowd that had gathered during my slumber stood, petrified. The clogging of my eyes somehow exerted intense pressure all the way down to my throat, such heaviness indicating I’m either suffocating by controlling the urge to cry, or had swallowed pebbles. Going along with the sane conclusion, I staggered and scurried down the eternity of steps…halted. In a terrifying reverie I breathed face to face with a glass box. My breath fogged against its surface, at first making my mind painstakingly calm for a moment. Keeping in mind the totality of events occurred; my instincts warned me of something huge. Through the transparency of the glass, I saw his face. A shade of the lightest grey had tinted his lips. Captured, he lay upon a hard steel surface, bitingly cold to even stare at. But I could not tear my eyes away, even as the sacred men appeared to do the sacred rites. They surrounded the alienated box, sat on the wet floor and lit a fire in the midst of my home. A little drop by drop, they poured oil into it, and the flame flared more, reflecting my interior network of thoughts. A cold sense of burning.

I crouched under the gloomy stairs, laid well off from the hints and taunts of what could be. The charcoal atmosphere presented me with the utmost gift of ignorance. Even the solar system’s jewel refused to throw some light upon the proceedings, seemingly pronouncing it guilty. Of all residual happenings, this added up the final summation. My fellow mortals, it was the day of solar eclipse. Devoid of any further thoughts, I rose out of my judgmental art and traced my steps back to the living room only to find it vacant. I further drew my steps out to my lane, only to see every one of them cooping their palms to receive a handful of grains and drop it back into his mouth. It was no graceful act. The grains slithered down his chin, onto the leafy bed upon which he slept. Someone nudged me and gestured me to do the same. The moment the grains dropped over him, I dropped near him and touched his familiar face one last time. A rude someone pushed me away and lifted him and his leafy plantain bed, along with other some-ones and carried him past me, into a huge air conditioned vehicle emanating an air of modern year-2010. But there isn’t anything exuberant and modern about death in the modern era, is there? The sun and the moon had arrived to bid farewell along with us. But the moon, in its overwhelming grief lapsed over the sun at 11:45am, as it eclipsed this finite scene of his infinite living. And the car glided away into the known streets, which he and I had trespassed with enduring amusement over and over.

Although the solar eclipse occurs every year, he never occurred anymore.

But I keep having a perfect dream, that makes perfect sense when I’m asleep, but a perfect nonsense the moment my eyes opened owl-ish wide, as he keeps taking a peak from the n’th world that I know not about.

He, my grandfather.