A winter's tale

I don’t know how long I was sitting there for. Hours, probably. I just held the card in my hand, too numb to even weep. It was short.

Mummy,

Reached safely. It’s beautiful here. Megs and I are having a blast. Hope you and Pa are well. See you soon. Don’t miss me too much.

Love you,

S

If the picture on the postcard was anything to go by, yes I’m sure his honeymoon was fantastic. Though the card was over ten years old, it wasn’t faded, the ink hadn’t smudged. It was like I had gotten it in the post a few days earlier.

I don’t even know why I had dug out all the letters and cards he had even given me. It was pure masochism. Maybe a part of me thought it would help my grief. It didn’t seem to though. It was only making me feel worse. I was not only re-living every moment I ever spent with my son, I was also re-living how I found out he had died.

It was a perfect nightmare. Roused from the deepest of sleep by a shrieking telephone, only to hear your son had died in bomb blasts. Unexpected bomb blasts in a crowded market. On a perfectly normal weekend. Later people said I was lucky he was even found and identified. Many people are still missing or have not been identified. Lucky me, indeed.

I wasn’t even sure if I had heard the nurse right. Nurse or whoever she was.

“Hello?

Uh-huh.

Is that Mrs Chaturvedi?

Yes. Who’s this? Do you know what time it is?

Yes Ma’am, I’m sorry to call you so late, but it’s about your son.

What about him?

I’m calling from Nehru Hospital. I’m sorry Ma’am… your son was wounded in bomb blasts which took place in the evening. He suffered bad internal injuries. We couldn’t save him.

……….

Hello?

Yes.

I’m sorry Ma’am, your son passed away a few hours back.

……….

Hello?

Yes.

Are you ok?

Are you sure it was him? How can you be sure?

His wife was with him Ma’am. She got hurt too, but she made it. She identified him and asked us to call you. She’s in the Emergency Room getting treated for second-degree burns.

Oh. Ok. Which hospital did you say?

Nehru.

Ok. Thank you.”

And that was that. My old fool of a husband had slept through the worst moment of my life. I sat there wondering what to do. Then I woke him up and told him. He cried like a baby while I held him. And we went to Delhi to bring home the corpse of our only child.

I sat in my study three weeks later, after all the ceremonies were over. Poring through letters he had sent me, gifts he had given me. The big scrawl I nagged about his entire life was all that I had left of him. My son. I had given birth to him, nearly lost my own life in the process, and lost him 38 years later. Who am I to grieve, I thought sometimes. Meghna was left to live her entire life without him. She had to bring up Dhruv also alone.

“Hema?”

My husband’s concerned voice shook me out of my thoughts. His eyes were still red, but concern was etched on his forehead as he examined me from the door. As if he was waiting for me to fall apart.

“Yes. I’m fine. What is it?

Nothing Hema… I’m just worried you know. You’ve not eaten, you’ve not even cried.

I’ve been busy, Ved. Who do you think organised everything, right from ice for the corpse to where the ashes would be dumped, and what food the funeral guests would eat.”

And I turned back to my letters.

He crept away quietly. I couldn’t blame him. He had lost a son too. An only child. He didn’t want to lose his ageing wife to the grief as well.

I put away the letters in a plastic folder, careful to fold them as my son had folded them. I sighed. There was nothing I could do. Nothing anybody could do to bring him back. Or to ease this suffering. I stood at the window and watched the snow fall outside, covering everything with a blanket of white. All the blood, the tears, the charred bodies, the bullets and wailing babies, women… It was going to be a very cold winter for us in Darjeeling.

Meghna and our grandson were in Kolkata with her parents. Luckily Dhruv had not gone to the market that day with his parents. And luckily his mother was bargaining with a shop owner while her husband wandered. Otherwise he would have lost both parents. Meghna suffered minor burns. It was more psychological and emotional damage she had suffered.

I could hear Ved watch the news. The political statements and usual hoo-haa had begun. In fact it was almost over by now. Only people like Meghna, Dhruv, Ved and me, people who had lost loved ones in the blasts… only we remembered it. Only we thought about it everyday. Our resilient country had moved on already and forgotten about it. Sometimes I wish we weren’t so resilient. That the capital would collapse after such attacks. At least they would do something about it then.

Sometimes I even hoped there would be bigger terror attacks in our country. Just so that people would not forget about it and move on. Then I would remember… I’m not a terrorist. I’m a 65-year-old mother and Congress supporter. Why am I thinking such thoughts? Because your gods, your government, everyone has failed you… I’d push the voice away and continue grieving. I suppose that’s how terrorists were born. Those who let the voices get to them. Each had their own stories of grief, loss, sorrow to tell. Everybody suffered. Everybody hurts.

I continued to watch the snow, hoping it could blanket my grief as well. It was going to be a long winter.

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Since nobody in my country has been able to talk or think about anything else since last Wednesday... This is in memory of everybody who died in the Mumbai terror attacks last week.