Strange

The Year of Baba

Dr Santimoy Dasgupta (1939-2018), M.B.B.S, rose grower, thinking Bengali

Ever since Baba died I watch my mind working. It comes from an instinct for self-preservation; hardly do I want to be assailed by a giant surge of sorrow, or stab of remorse striking me unsuspectingly, when I am not looking.

It is commonplace for the human mind to be afraid of contemplating the result of tragedy — grief. I am not absolutely certain on this count but it is logical to assume this.

I have always been up for a challenge, but for the same reason, I am not prepared. This is despite the fact that, between his two stints at Mission Hospital and since his kidney tests sounded the first real warning of his ending, Baba took well over a month to die.

Ma says I changed his mind at the very end so that he had found a purpose to continue living simply by visiting him.

This is my first serious bereavement. When my maternal uncle died, I was eleven and did not mourn his passing even while I was fond of him.

Twenty-one years have passed since I last lived with Baba. My feelings for him had long ceased to be urgent, even if they still ran deep. Will my feelings of loss, therefore, quite overwhelm me?

Curiously, I watch myself as one moment turns into another.

What am I feeling? What is the thought that the feeling originated from? Was the trigger action or circumstance? How did I present myself in feeling the way I did? Was my conscience on board with my showing? Did I do right by Baba?

This last question is the critical one.

I must confess I am a little afraid of what its answer might be.

I believe that with my last words to him — which I meant as a promise, a gift — I killed him.

It is guilt that potentially frightens me out of the two feelings that I have been anticipating. Sorrow. Remorse.

But Baba made a fool of death by dint of his intelligence and beauty. Right till the end, he held his own. His death, too, was an exercise of his will, seen in this light.

The morning of March 28, 2018, had been softly energising. Below the ICU window at his back, birdcall from the trees stirred up the hospital parking lot. The lone tree tucked away at the back of the interstate bus terminus of the city of Durgapur not too far away had been full of stars.

Alone went Baba boldly where none of us in the family had gone before. In dying so openly and without theatrics, he taught me not to fear death, and to bear one’s cross with dignity and grace. It was his last lesson to his oldest offspring.

His death is the cross that I must bear now.

The evening I burn him at the crematorium and return to his flat, my colleague at the law magazine texts me his condolence, and I write him: I do not want this day to end, this night to break into morning. Quick as a catcher in the gully, he replies, get a grip, lady, everyone loses their father eventually, nearly as soon as I finish typing. I realise I have succeeded in discomfiting him.

Now, every day that I awaken, it is the first thought on my mind; he is dead, my Baba. On days I rise in a blank, I remind myself of Baba’s not being. And as I watch, my mind goes tick-tock, begins working. I never tire of this routine.

Ever since Baba died I watch my mind working.

#

I made the fourth-day offerings to the departing spirit mandated for daughters. Ma had asked me to perform the eleven-day ritual typically attended by sons, but even though I had completed his mukhagni which is the rite of the flame, I declined, saying I shan’t fire my gun of feminism from Baba’s shoulders. This while as a Hindu atheist, I do see meaning in daughters occupying these emotional and social spaces hitherto they have been kept out of. An uncle, Babuakaka, will now fill in as Baba’s honorary descendant. I wonder if had I agreed to be present he would still have been asked.

The hemp stalk that I had touched poor Baba’s mouth with had been smoking but not aflame. Before the contact took place, I had already noticed a blackening of the lower lip which also appeared thin from the seventeen days of staying contracted in order to accommodate the breathing tube of the ventilator. It made for an unusual look. For, Baba’s lips are just like mine, dry, full and prone to chapping.

When my sister and I return from the crematorium, the neighbours welcome us with fire, iron, stone, water, grain and white rossogolla, Baba’s favourite dessert. Balls of strange love in a moment most fleeting. But at the fourth-day spirit worship, the priest keeps massaging his ankle suggestively as he chants his mantra when he notices that I am staring too long at Baba’s photograph. Why are you making me do this, Baba, are the words passing through my mind. I am not ready to say goodbye.

When the time comes to hand the rupee to the spirit to give to the boatman across the Baitarani, my sister claims my submission, by indicating it with her hand during the ritual chant. It is a small shock.

This then is the verdict that comes from my family on my 21-year part-estrangement.

I have no choice but to accept it.

I am out of time. There is no point in changing anyone’s opinion of me. Not anymore. I have failed to be the good daughter, most importantly.

Still, I am both free and constrained to refrain from participating in a sexist discussion on the way back to the flat that occurs between my sister-in-law-cousin and sister on the doubtful smuttiness of going without sleeves — the women are discussing a kurta given to my sister to wear to the ceremony. Once inside, my sister remarks to my mother that the priest pronounced our gotra name the wrong way — it is moudgolya and not modgolya — she says and it is — but I find it odd and just a little offensive to carp about an activity in which we both are supposed to have whole-heartedly volunteered. After all, the man mispronounced the word the first time only or else we would have corrected him. But my sister goes on and on, elaborating for effect, so I stop her and say so; and she brushes aside my observation, suggesting that by staying outside my state I have lost my Bengali, a school subject in which I, and not she, had never failed to score outstandingly. This irony is additional to my political sacrifices, that are unrecognised, too, but the belittling of our prayers that is consequent upon her words is what bothers me. I am not about to rescind them. So when my sister-in-law follows me into the kitchen to watch for my reaction, I spit on the floor by the way of registering my disdain as I have seen done by working class male misogynists. I am not pleased to see anger widen her eyes.

On 1^st April, the train will carry Siddhartha and me past Durgapur and on to Delhi. My Ma wants me to take fruits to nourish myself on my journey. Fruits are a common favourite of Ma and mine, but my senses are full of failure — I could not help Baba,  craftiness — I have promised away my book of stories to him even if he did not want it, is there now no way to take it back — and worry — did I kill him? So I make my refusal, knowing that Ma does not care to know the reasons behind my feelings. When my father died, your grandmother gave me fruits to carry home, Ma makes her case, hoping to change my mind, and I win the argument.

#

March 28, 2018, is Chaitra the 13th, san 1425, Madanpuja and Baman Dvadashi. Vishnu, whom Baman is an incarnation of, and the lecherous Madan are two gods who have comported themselves in such a manner that they aren’t in Baba’s good books most definitely. Is the date of his death then a celestial rebuff? For having had children who did not produce heirs?

Friendly and sullen by turns, Baba expected approbation despite being unsocial in his own status circles. He liked to mix outside them, with people unlike himself. They are destined for failure the ones that aim too high or too ideally.

We catch our train from Sealdah. Baba grew up in Beliaghata close by before moving to Ballygunge and he went to Calcutta Medical College in the storied College Street. When I first came to Kolkata, I would try to see the city through his and Ma's eyes. My own memories of Sealdah and Kolkata I have since created independently, but they feel all raw and tender at this time.

The young Bengali mother aboard Rajdhani Express is an extrovert, plump, fair-complexioned and attention-seeking. She has a four-year-old son, lives in C.R. Park and is married to a Punjabi. She also has her parents wrapped around her finger. Siddhartha finds her pretentious. So do I, but not particularly.

I disagree with her, for instance, in my mind only because I am not bothered to speak, when she says women can never be like her uncle who could disembark at any station that caught his fancy on a railway journey and start living there.

But she is not without compunction and has a talent which, unlike the troubles with her marriage that she wears on her sleeve, she does not display to everybody. I come to be privy to it when she sings her son to sleep at night with my kid sister's favourite tune from Frozen, “Let It Go”, hitting every chord and half-note very easily and mellifluously. Her voice is low so that it does not reach the lower berths and I, myself, can hear it barely. But I do, and I find myself being moved under the covers. Is the message of the song for me personally? Siddhartha has mentioned it and so she has come to know that I have suffered a family bereavement. Shall I let it go, really? Even the suggestion is unthinkable.

Hours ago, the rain hit the platform of Durgapur railway station full force accompanied by thunder and gusts of wind as we passed over.

#

When I reach our Janata bedsit in Kalkaji, I place Baba’s photo on my study table and sort out the stuff from my travel bag. A camera shot of this table had been requested by Juggernaut two years ago for my only writer’s interview when I had published with them three short stories.

"And so, he returns, in photograph only," announces Siddhartha, and, contrary to expectation, I am not saddened by his words.

For, the presence of Baba’s fine, wasted face wearing its familiar appraising look has filled some hitherto-unacknowledged emptiness on my premises. The actual sight of him in my surroundings is itself comforting. That and the fact that I have finally been able to give him pride of place in our house.

I collect from our miniature first floor balcony three weeks worth of old newspaper editions sitting there since the newspaperman deposited them. He had been delivering them right through the time we had been gone.

Being an atheist I am not a believer in astrology. Neither was Baba, who nevertheless had developed quite a reputation as a reader of horoscopes until he gave it all up because he could not find a physical explanation.

But Siddhartha has got me into the habit of looking at the horoscope column of the newspaper. It is by Peter Vidal. I have been unable to consult it all of these days.

Driven by curiosity, that is thereby illicit, I surreptitiously turn over the pages. This is what I find.

I find that Jupiter turned retrograde for me on Sunday the 25th. On Tuesday the 27th, I was supposed to rethink a decision — the only one I took on that day regarding what I was going to say to Baba. On the 28th, Wednesday, Vidal’s column predicts I am to take an emotional disappointment. Thus making his death sound agreeably prosaic.

Baba said I was born under a retrogressive Jupiter in the tenth house. The tenth house is ruled by the planet, Saturn, and it governs the father and family, although, according to some schools, it is the mother that is covered by it. How can this be, Baba had said before my XIIth class exams, for the house also covers one’s achievements and career, and he was wholly invested in me to do well. How can this be, for I am your guru, your teacher, your Vrihaspati? I am the biggest Jupiter in your life, he had declared.

You don’t worry, he had gone on to promise me. Whatever it is that is weakening this planet here, I alone will more than suffice to counter its influence. I will see you through it all.

Sunday was the day I ended up not signing the consent form for dialysis for Baba. Sunday was the day then that we decided to let him die. But no one thought to ask for his opinion or avouchment.

So far, I had been worried about losing my book and the probabilities of having caused his death. This is a new source of guilt.

I climb on the bed with this fresh dilemma in my head while intending to nap. The white tubelight continues to glare on the yellow walls of our one-room apartment. Siddhartha asks if I want it switched off. Leave it on, I say. It feels right, the ugliness and starkness of it. Before I sleep, I hear my landlady coming up the stairs. She enquires after me; Siddhartha tells her I have high blood pressure, and that I have gone to bed. I sleep.

Photo description: The very last photo taken of Baba, courtesy his wife and my mother, Mukti Dasgupta