Celebrating Life

Today is Pink Ribbon day. This day is dedicated to those suffering from breast cancer. In May, this year, I lost my maternal aunt to metastasis from breast cancer. She was one of the liveliest persons I had met in this lifetime and this article is dedicated to her.

Celebrating Life


It was the first day of the MA class. Swati entered the class late, and hurried to her seat when she was greeted by a bindi and salwar-kameez clad lady, around fifty years old of age, with a gentle smile.
“Ma’am – I am sorry to be late – it won’t happen again”, she said and the rest of the class burst into laughter.
In her confusion, she started apologizing further and the other students roared with laughter. Till someone explained to her that this fifty year old lady was not the teacher but just a student like her. And this lady went ahead and introduced the rest of the class to her.
She happened to be my mother’s sister. Jhumamashi, I used to call her. My first memory of Jhumamashi was as a four year old when I would snuggle on top of her while she slept. As a seven year old, I lost my mother and Jhumamashi, wanted to take me with her to Delhi and rear me up like a mother. Small things like wishing me on my birthday every year, remembering that I loved shammi kebabs and hence ensuring that I had a plateful the first thing whenever I landed in Delhi, gifting me my first watch, my first camera made Jhumamashi my favorite relative.
Jhumamashi was very attractive, of medium height, with a lilting voice that carried a lot of warmth, never without makeup and loved to dress up well. Her husband was very well established and she had always a fleet of cars and a posse of servants at her disposal. After spending some twenty years of her life post marriage in rearing up her two children, she decided to further her career goals that had got paused with worldly responsibilities.
She became very popular in her class and was called Mommie Angel by her fellow classmates, all of whom happened to be younger than her by at least twenty years. I had taken up a job in Delhi when she told me that she has entered college and I asked her “Why?”
She answered “Why not?”
In 2003, she was diagnosed with a tumor in her left breast but the tumor was arrested with mastectomy. Or so it seemed. But that did not deter her from completing her studies and then joining the staff of a college as a teacher in psychology. It was a matter of days before because of her positive demeanor, became very popular with her students. Whenever she would enter class, the class would gravitate around her while she would regale them with interesting stories.
After some years, I moved to Hyderabad and started seeing less of her. Still she ensured I had my plateful of shammi kebabs whenever I visited her and would still give me a call on my birthday. Our communication was mostly through jokes forwarded via SMS. In the meantime, her son grew up and left home and her daughter entered high school.
In 2009, her daughter completed her schooling and moved out to medical college. Before that, Jhumamashi went to Goa with her daughter and her daughter’s friends and they had a great time. The child in her was always smiling, always eager for a little adventure.
However around the same time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an article titled “Buddi, don’t give up”, she wrote “Just when all the kids left and I have all this time to do so much ... I don't know what test God is putting me through ... I will fight this cancer”. She told me “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger – don’t you make that sad face”.
While most of us knew of her terminal illness, she did not tell her daughter, saying “She needs to concentrate on her studies. I want to live to see her become a great doctor one day and who knows, she might cure me”.
She would be always cracking a joke and used to collect jokes on her cellphone to keep them handy to cheer people up. “I would be the first mother in law in India to share dirty jokes with my son’s wife,” she would tell me.
Her chemotherapy sessions started in late December and she lost all her hair. Her daughter, who used to call her almost every day, sometimes did not get through when she was busy in the chemotherapy sessions and used to tell her “Momma, you are so busy with your teaching that you don’t have time for me”. She replied “Darling, I am sorry but you will understand one day”.
She continued to teach and help her students with their assignments. “Give a little bit more”, she would tell them. Whenever I would visit her, she would be deep in a stack of student assignments.
I visited her in January 2010 and she was sporting a very stylish wig and she laughed and told me “See – my new hair – people ask me ‘did you change your hairstyle’ and I tell them ‘yeah’.”
“At least now I have more hair”, she laughed.
She had watched “Three Idiots” and wanted to discuss it rather than discuss her illness and I let her have her own way. She didn’t like the shoes I was wearing and rushed me to a shoe shop and insisted I buy a new set. She was panting on the way back and she suddenly said that the chemotherapy sessions are very painful but then assured me she would be fine soon. She called up my son, aged eight, and told him “Come to Delhi – we would have golgappas together.”
She ensured I had my plateful of shammi kebabs before I left.
In April, she messaged me “It has spread to the lungs – please pray for me”. Her lilting voice had become a rasp but she helped her sister-in-law with her housewarming party and still kept sending the jokes. However she stopped going to college.
She was admitted to hospital in late April. First, she would lift her hands and smile, and then she would only lift her hands. In early May, my uncle, her husband, called me and said she has been brought back from the hospital as doctors have given up.
She died in mid-May 2010, survived by her husband, her son and her college going daughter. I was amazed to see the sea of well-wishers- her students, her fellow teachers, her classmates and sundry others.
Perhaps God needed her more in some other place.

Joker's Adieu

Recently the joker has come to the news, albeit for the wrong reasons as the evil guy in "Dark Knight", enacted superbly by the late Heath Ledger. Though my poem might seem to have been influenced by Heath Ledger, it is actually not. I wrote this poem when I was in college though (actually I was 20 years, 9 months and 5 days old when I wrote it). Hope you enjoy it.

Joker's Adieu
The joker took the centrestage,
For twenty years, nine months and five days
He had been doing just so -
Always appearing at the wrong moment,
Fumbling on the ropes, mumbling through the lines
All with a painted white face.
"Always wrong - never right" -
That was his watchword
For twenty years, nine months and five days.

This time, too, he came on the stage
When Bozo was juggling the hats -
The audience loved to see him that way -
"Always wrong, never right"

This was to be his last night -
He said he couldn't do it anymore,
So he came to the stage with a painted face,
"Always wrong, never right" -
Fumbling, mumbling, he told them all -
His final, parting speech:
"Last night, I tried and tried in vain
To solve a jigsaw puzzle, part by part,
Sometime in the morning, I would try again
To solve it right from the start
Till that day, my friends, I bow to you
And with a smile, I bid adieu..."

Perhaps he had some more to say
But the poison encroached his silly heart -
He fumbled, rushed through the lines
and stumbled, stuttered and fell to the ground,

"Always wrong, never right",
The audience burst into laughter,
They loved to see him that way...

To Sirs (and Madams) with Love

I know this site is mainly for stories and poems but then the wise men (and women) say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I recently completed a yearlong long distance (via satellite) course in Business Management from IIM Calcutta and during the year, it seemed to people that I had taken a lot of notes. Now that the course is over, I am letting people take a peek at the notes I have taken and bask in some fond memories of our teachers ...

The Way of the World

When I was 15 years, I had written "The Way of the World" and it had fetched me a medal at the Shankar's International Children's Competition from the hands of the president of India (Mr R. Venkataraman). When I wrote it, I didnt know much of economics and now when I read it, I realize, I had tried to exemplify the concept of demand/supply of microeconomics and then extend it to aggregate variables of macroeconomics and thereby touch upon the basic measures in macro-economics. Well, lets get on with the poem:

The Way of the World

(The story of the Johns and Josephines)

Flowers were blooming and the weather - good,

And under a pine, sweet Josephine stood.

She wriggled and swayed on that day in May

And then John noticed her wriggle that way-

"Ah ... such heavenly grace.... wish she was mine"

And he approached her slowly under the pine.

Gallantly he performed all the great acts -

Revelling in revealing all his bitter facts,

Then one fine day, he blurted out the question,

She gingerly smiled at its mention.

That was all - at some church they tied the knot

And soon they were found near the baby cot.

The newly wed couple were very pleased

But then the world population increased

And the venerable PM's brows creased:

The taxes were raised and foreign debts scaled

And people's angry, hungry faces paled-

All because John noticed, one fine day,

Josephine wriggling in an artful way.

Axel de Fersen on the demise of Antoinette

So much for contemporary history - I decided to go some centuries back this time. In 1990, I had read the synopsis of a book titled "Louis and Antoinette" by Vincent Cronin. This book, while it chronicled the lives of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI on the backdrop of the French revolution, it also talked about a character in the king's court, Axel de Fersen, who was in love with the queen but could do little when the juggernaut took over and watched helplessly while the queen was guillotined.
I had written this poem on reading the synopsis. Hope you like it:

October 16, 1793
When a page softly broke the news,
His face fell, his eyes were aghast:
Lips stuttered, and cheeks changed their hues
And he wept, chewing on the past,
"I shudder to think how she's gone,
Parted by the ominous blade,
Leaving behind me to atone
Memories that never fade ...

Memories haunt this guilty mind:
I loved neither king nor his throne
But his lady, she drove me blind
And left this weak heart to atone
For all those sweet, fleeting moments
'Oh God! Why did she have to go?
Make me bear such fiery torrents-
I cannot face their whipping flow.'

'Forgive me, o departed prince
For worshipping your wife divine,
The loveliest of all the queens
That enraptured this heart of mine'
But alas! I cannot find her
For she left me to start anew ..."

And his heart was torn asunder
And he too, couldn't start anew.

An ode to Lorena Bobbit

Recently a friend of mine had run a quiz on orkut by showing a photo of Lorena Bobbit and asked folks to identify her. The clue said that she represented a violent form of feminism. Answers ranged from "my ex" to "Mona Lisa with a makeover". Somehow the whole stuff jogged a chain of memories and I was compelled to pen a few lines on her. Agree that Lorena Bobbit is not the ideal thing to start a blog but somehow I felt that people should remember her just like they remember Jack the Ripper, John Lennon, Babe Ruth or (even) Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So here is my poem offering to Lorena Bobbit, hope you enjoy it:

Not long ago, in an American state

Started the trial of someone whose mate

Suffered at her hands, a curious fate:

The legend of Lorena Bobbit.

To a prison she was sent

And on an on, her trial went

When she blurted out,"For all he did,

I just let him have it!"

As lawyers let the gory facts roll by,

The aghast judge heaved a sigh,

"I dont want to hear the rest,

Why dont you just cut it?"

To a renowned bishop, the judge did send

And she told her tale till she reached the end

Said the troubled bishop in front of the nuns,

"Its okay, my child, to do such things once

Hope by God, it doesnt become,

a deadly feminine habit"