Last Memories

Surrounded by green hills and with red and white flowers spread all around me, I am lying on my back on green grass carpet, gazing up, at the beautiful bluish-amber tinted clear evening sky. The breeze is filled with the fragrance of the flowers and is making visits now and then. As my thoughtless mind embraced the beauty of silence, I am feeling the joy of life and I wish this moment to last forever.

‘Wake up from your day dreams, you dirty boy,’ my school master’s words echoed somewhere in my mind.

I stopped dreaming quite some time back and in fact life itself is appearing like a dream now. Ten days back, I was attacked by paralysis and lost all my controls, except sight and of course my ever thinking mind. I always wished to die in sleep at my home, but you know, sometimes things don’t happen as you wish. I am surrounded by all hi-fi medical equipments, getting polled frequently by nurses, to check if I am still breathing or not. I guess the doctors have lifted their hands in my case and everybody is just waiting for me to take off – my family, relatives, nurses and even my next-bed coma friend.

I recall how I was scared about death in my childhood. I used to keep distance from the house where somebody had died and always considered facing a dead body’s final procession was a bad sign.

“The dead people become ghosts and haunt bad people”, my grandmother’s voice resonated in my ears. That was the trick used by her to keep us away from bad habits. I remember vividly how dreadful we used to feel with the very utterance of the word “ghost”.

That fear towards death changed to some kind of silent convulsion when I sat next to my father’s dead body for one whole night. Over the years, I witnessed all the elders in my family passing away and slowly I developed stoic resignation towards death. Even though I showed indifference towards death, I often wished I should die comfortably like may be in sleep.

My past visits to the Intensive Care Units have made me realize how silent these rooms were. Probably my heartbeat must be resonating across these walls. I wish my ears could hear that rhythm. I remembered how I used to listen to the heartbeat of my son, when he was in my wife’s oblate womb.

Around ten o’clock in the night, the night duty nurse made her routine visit. After staring at me for couple of seconds, lifting her fist with thumb up, she enquired how I was feeling. I flipped my eyelids indicating that I am ok. I am not sure what she understood, but she smiled and started checking the monitoring devices and the intravenous fluids. Then while leaving she walked towards me and put her hand on my forehead. I doubt whether I sensed her touch or not, but I certainly got elated by her caring touch.

“I never felt that way towards you”, Vasundhara expressed her feeling.

I wondered what Vasundhara must be doing then. I loved her sincerely and wished to live my entire life with her. She never considered my love seriously and my heart broke when she got married to some marine officer. After that I decided never to fall in love again. I even cursed myself to embrace celibacy. My mother’s threats made me to give in. I got married to my cousin Sudha, with whom I was destined to live this life.

“Take care of yourself”, Sudha’s last words filled the gaps in my thoughts.

Sudha was the best wife I could ever have. She lived all through her life in accordion with my lifestyle and I always believed that I was an unfit match for her. She loved me very much and always wished to die before me like any other typical Indian wife. Likewise, death pounced on her in the form of hypertension and took her away from me two years back in the most unexpected way. Silently I mourned her death for several days.

“Come on, We will be late for the movie”, Rao pulled me by my hand, driving me through the theatre entrance.

Suddenly I remembered Rao, my best friend. He visited me yesterday and silently sat next to me for more than an hour. He is my best friend since my childhood. As long as he sat next to me, he was telling something or the other with those unspoken lips. We shared so many beautiful memories and our minds’ mirrors were scribbled with many things we did together. My heart broke when I saw him like that and I wished I could give a good warm hug to him at least once. Before he left, he took my dead hand into his and assured his extended relationship with me for many lives.

In the depth of my memory lanes, flashed the glimpses of many other friends, with whom I shared and cherished the moments throughout the life. My numb heart yearned to meet Raghu, who studied with us till seventh grade. Somehow, I lost touch with him afterwards and many of my trials to trace him never yielded any results.

As the midnight broke, I felt a sharp pain in the upper half of my brain. I presumed it to be a second stroke and feared what it would bring next. Within no time, my fear turned to indigested satire as what the worst would fall over me. It appeared as if I got that courage which all the philosophies failed to teach me all through my life.

“You lost again”, my grandson claimed victoriously after I lost the chess game with him again that day.

The thought of my grandson took away the pain for a moment. I remembered how we cherished the playful moments when he was a kid. He was the only son to my only son and his wife. The last time I saw him was for the Pongal. I am not sure if I can see him again, as he is away pursuing his studies. My son signaled me that he had started already and would be reaching here tomorrow.

Suddenly it seems like my eyes are getting blurry now. I am not sure what is going to happen next. I presume that I will not feel any more pain. With the vision becoming blurry, in the rainbow of my life, I started seeing myself playing as a kid in the fields and then in school. Like lightning, I started seeing my younger days and how mischievously I played with my friends. I see Vasundhara standing around the corner, laughing at my plights to win her heart. On the other side, Sudha is helping me in recovering from my sickness. My son’s graduation and his marriage flashed in front of my eyes. With books in one hand, I can see my grandson waving to me. In a glimpse, I grasped my entire life, like a single frame of a motion picture.

That’s all.

-Dharmendra Kumar

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