Osmotic happiness

My father in law left his body last year in June. He was 81 years old and had completed all his worldly duties. He was diagnosed as being in the last stage of a terminal illness in March, a few days before his 50th marriage anniversary, and left us 3 months later in June. He left a void which was felt like an acute pain when Ninad's Class 10 board results were announced today. He would have been ecstatic. Ninad got along with him very well and it was a delight to see the two of them discussing all possible earthly issues and then laughing and smirking at their coordinated witticisms. He was proud of Ninad and we were devastated when he died. He was getting the latest medications available which had increased the longevity of other people with the same illness by 3-5 years. I wanted him to at least see his grandchild getting through the Class 12 boards.

I miss him. He was a quiet man. I know he loved me. I was the only person he wanted to talk to when he was in pain. We were mutually empathetic even though we talked only when absolutely necessary. I often sense his presence around me. It reassures me and makes me happy. I only wish he could be physically present; just to see the expression on his face when he is informed of his only grandson's achievement.

One of my husband's cousins got married in August last year. It was a lavish wedding, much anticipated. Barely had her post marital glow subsided, that she developed the glow of being in the family way. Her husband was a lovely person, friendly, considerate and easy to get along with. She was a meticulous person and I always thought how lucky her husband would be. He was kidnapped by terrorists?/goons? just inside the Meghalaya border and a ransom demand was made. His bike was found lying on the road which led to Shillong.

A few days later the police informed that his dead body had been found in the jungles bordering Meghalaya. I don't think the aftermath of shock and grief needs to be described. The story itself is enough.

A boy was born to the cousin last month. A baby that looked a lot like the father. While I, a long distance away, was overjoyed at the news, I was informed by my husband that there was more of mourning at the hospital when the nurse gave the information of a boy being born. I was stunned for a fraction of a second, and then wondered at my own lack of understanding. The father of the boy was killed in a gruesome manner two months back. A widowed mother was born. The child would have to be raised without his father.

But, and such is the irony of life, the child brought joy and life to the house whose last baby was 7 years old. The cousin would say things like 'doesn't he look like his father, bou?' or 'he sleeps just like his father' when I phone and tell her I saw the baby's pictures on Facebook or call her to just find out how things are. She talks naturally and without a trace of grief. I do not know how to react.  She had taken a lot of care of baby Ninad in the joint family of my post marital life. I should take care of her baby now. I hope I can do justice.

Tragedy and happiness intermingled in the last one year in the family. Was is a little more than a fair share? It does seem like it. But everything was as if cosmically intended. There was nothing anyone could have done to prevent the tragedies.

Ninad left for Guwahati the day before yesterday. I wept when I heard his result. It was a mother's tears of joy at his achievement, and sadness at the distance between us. But the lesson learnt is that every situation has a silver lining. There cannot be grief without happiness. It is happiness that has stronger energy and grief that is the weaker one. Happiness enters osmotically whether you want it to enter or not. Sadness comes because one chooses to consciously dwell on the tragic.







 

KIKI

This is for Kakoli and Mrinal Krishna Choudhury.

I am not geeky at all. I don't take to technology unless I feel challenged. Challenged by people who refused to make power point presentations for me after designing them on the first couple of requests. Because I kept nagging them to do things to the presentation which aren't actually possible. Like my 80 year old partially deaf father telling me to transfer money from his account to someone else's "through my computer" because he knows that all this can be done with "a computer." In the absence of an internet connection as well as a net banking account. And then giving the hurt look when I try to explain why the transfer wouldn't be possible. This is who I inherit my 'non geeky' genes from.

Challenged by children on facebook/studying/sleeping/playing computer games/and eventually even by those sitting next to me, doing absolutely nothing, who refuse to load the DVD of the movie I want so badly to watch into the player after having done it for me for the first 30-40 times.

I could go on and on with the examples but these should be enough for clarity on my issue with technology. When refused help, I make an effort to learn. Often enlisting help of people I consider experts on the subject. Usually younger people, who have as yet not known my methods of preying. I still remember calling up Pubali Borthakur, a smart HR executive in my hospital, fresh with a recently acquired MBA degree and therefore enthusiastic about her first job, at funny hours of the day; and night; to ask her things like how to save a file. I would be able to reach the 'save' window and then forget what to do. In those days one had to select the destination from the drop down menu bar. I didn't know what a 'drop down menu bar' meant back then. So she would direct me to look at the 'bar on top,' and look for the 'little arrow on the right of the bar' and once I located the arrow (I remember it took me quite some time), the rest would not be so difficult.

In my defense, Pubali was enthusiastic, not married back then and did not mind the phone calls. I hope.

I now have more knowledge about uses of the computer as compared to a lot of other people. Most of the knowledge has been stumbled upon accidently. People around me think I am very computer savvy because of the amount of time I spend on the computer. My work demanded it and now my not working demands it. I need to do something to spend time after all. But I realized today that I still have a long way to go when I stumbled upon the slides of Kiki's sketches.

Kakoli and her husband Mrinal are known to me for about 15 years. She is my husband's colleague so I get to see her occasionally and smile and say hi. She is also the younger sister of my senior, Monali, in medical college. Mrinal is my husband's friend. Their son studies in my son's school. She is a Facebook friend and Kakoli, let me admit to you now, you are a very encouraging even if silent friend though we have not had the opportunity to develop a conventional friendship. If you are wondering 'how so,' you have to figure that out yourself.

Kakoli posted an amazing piece of art, a sketch in black and white titled 'Breaking free,' by her son Kiki on Google plus several days back. She had 'shared' it from Mrinal's post. But it was only today, again accidentally and I still haven't understood how it happened, that the post with that amazing drawing revealed itself as a power point presentation with 14 sketches. They were amazing sketches and somehow I am not being able to think up a word other than 'amazing' to describe those sketches. They have all been signed by 'Kunal' and the sketches are not simply depicting human emotions, they are emoting the emotions by themselves. I am not an art expert or connoisseur, and yet I was not seeing artistic images on paper, but experiencing the emotions that one feels when watching a very powerful and well made movie.

At the end of the presentation, thumbnail icons of other albums appeared on the post. The albums have photographs of places people have seen dozens of times and yet they are completely different. They are pieces of art by someone who probably sees art where we ordinary people don't even notice anything. Shillong, Gangtok, birds, nature. These photos have been captured by Mrinal. They are beautiful and have a sense of complete harmony. I have sensed this harmony in Mrinal's and Kakoli's relationship, intuitively, a very long time back. Kakoli is also an artist, something I came to know when I asked her who Kiki got his genes from. She answered that they were acquired from both the parents. My intuition was right.

I am still trying to figure out how one identifies the person who +1s one's blogs.

 

Monica, Fogla, Eff, Alvita

My friends must have noticed that I have kind of isolated myself from my extended world as a whole and my immediate world on a need basis for almost 4 years. My phone numbers changed a couple of years back, my social networking has been reduced to a bare minimum as has my socializing in general for the sole purpose of avoiding the question 'how are you?'

It is not as stupid as it sounds. This is a question for which I have no definite answer. It is a question to which people expect you to say, 'I am fine, thank you.' Being an honest person, this answer would be a lie. The truthful answer would have to describe the symptoms felt at that point of time which did 2 things:
1. Made the other people feel I complain too much and have become a sympathy seeker.
2. Remind me of my condition again and again and further depress me.

But although I am off visible networking, like all normal females I do have the nagging need to know about what is going on in other people's lives. I sneak into facebook every now and then, keeping myself invisible and log out on a high.

Monica Goswami, pathologist, one year junior to me, now in the USA posts a picture of her one year old self and her breathtakingly beautiful mom, a black and white memory of the 70's and I think, 'what an amazing photographer!' For a moment my muddled mind struggles to remember when Monica had such long hair. And I surge with motherly love at the little child in her arms, so adorable, not looking at the camera, and her tiny hands holding on to her mother's pallu, a little possessively.

Then I see a comment posted by someone of the beautiful aunty and I realize that the mum in the photograph is not Monica, but her mom.

Andrew Helm, Effie's partner, has a brewery in Leeds. 'The Revolutions Brewery.' I have had the good luck to sample all his varieties of beer. It was an education imparted in an English pub that sold his beers. Different beers have distinct flavors and when you ask for a Revolutions beer, you confuse the bartender. You have to ask for a certain flavor. Andy's brewery produces some 5-6 different flavors, each flavor is packed aesthetically with a different label. Andy also has a passion for music and DJs sometimes. 'Revolutions' refers to the revolution of a music disc, musical passion transferred to beer. I might have missed something here. If he reads this blog, he could put corrections in the comments section.

Effie is in Brizzle and I can see the beautiful place it is. It has a lovely railway station, is scenically beautiful and Eff looks better and better with every passing day. Beer is not wine, but Andy's better half is getting more and more like old wine.

I go into the 'GMC batch of '87' group but there activity has stopped. Santanu Deb, my paediatrician classmate and the 'mover' of this group's activity has put up some photos from the Kaziranga get together, but now all these busy '87 batch doctors are back to the routine grind; work and family.

Rajesh Fogla, hotshot brilliant cornea specialist from Apollo, Chennai and an '87 doctor, gives faculty and invited guest speaker lectures in developed countries and we bask in reflected glory. He posts very interesting photos of his visits on Facebook, each of which has a story to tell and needs to be studied well. No wonder he is such a sought after speaker.

Alvita Fernandes keeps the St Anne's site active. She once researched and wrote the meanings of all the names of our school batchmates and apologized as she could not find out the meaning of Juri. On googling, Juri is described as a male Russian name and a variation of the better known Yuri. It probably foxed her and she must have tactfully decided not to post that on FB.

No, my parents did not make a faux pas when naming me. In the Assamese language, Juri is a girl's name, too common in Assam, and means a stream. I have been baffled in the middle of busy schedules by threat calls of boyfriends of other Juri Kalita's who were mistakenly given my mobile number. I make it a point to state my full name with the Dr prefixed when making phone calls to people in Assam to make sure that I am correctly identified in the first instance itself. Alvita leads an interesting life, shuttling between countries, and I like following her whereabouts.

When I log out of facebook, I return from a world trip. It is refreshing.
 

jurithewriter

I am writing a book. It's contents are random unstructured thoughts. Much like my blogs. I need to be inspired to write. I cannot just think that oh, I haven't written something in a long time, so let me sit down and write something.

I have been away from home for 5 months now. Do I want to go back? I don't know. I am confused. I have had too much time to think. Too much idle time is a very bad thing for middle class people to have. It makes one delve into one's deeply suppressed desires and untapped potential (imagined or real). It makes one want to wonder whether one wants to return to the tame, unexciting routine which one so much needs for earning their daily bread and to pay their EMIs.

I admit to a certain kind of narcissism. I like reading my own thoughts that I sometimes put down in writing. I have written in the past. Short stories, medical articles and poems. But I have been a bad document controller and have misplaced most of my writings which, obviously, I deeply regret now. I understand that writing on your own BlogSpot is perhaps the most secure way of ensuring that you do not lose your own writings. It is very difficult to replicate one's own writings later. More so perhaps because the inspiration that was there at the moment of writing a piece cannot be replicated.

With time to kill and memories to forget, I started to write, at a rather disturbed frame of mind. I wanted each thought occupying my mind to be happy. I wanted these happy thoughts to replace in totality whatever was going on in my mind. I started writing memories of the unique childhood I had. And about all the happiness that came to me by just being a patient because of the amazing paradigm shift I had in my thinking process and about which I have written in an earlier blog.

The book needs to be completed. I have written about 45000 words already and all of these words, believe me, came effortlessly. I feel amazed that I have been able to write so much. I have always wanted to write a book. There are many incomplete books on my computer. The inspiration just stopped at a point for those books. They seemed too contrived actually. I have now realized why. I was trying to write for an audience and it just wasn't me writing. This time there has been no audience in mind. It has been all about transliteration of my thoughts into words and typing them on a computer monitor.

It can be completed only when the story of my being a patient gets over. I hope that happens very soon. I hope I can get it published. I realized that writing a book is very easy when I started searching the net for tips on how to get a book published. Publishing is what is the difficult part. Très difficile mes dears. Very difficult my dears.