Life
consists of a collection of different events. Among them, the most terrifying
and unbearable is death.
One day
in 2015.
“Shastri
garu’s wife is not doing well. She may not have even a few hours left.”
That was
a phone call from Dr. Bobby, my cousin, who worked at Apollo Hospital. By the
time I reached the hospital that afternoon, it was all over.
She had
actually been healthier than Shastri garu. She had never suffered from any
serious illness, nor had she caused anyone trouble because of ill health. A few
years earlier, my wife and I had travelled to Kashi with Shastri garu and his
wife, Punyavati garu. Both of them loved visiting pilgrimage sites. We did not
have the energy for such trips. Home was our Kailash. After they persuaded us a
great deal, we went with them once and returned feeling that we, too, had made
a pilgrimage.
In fact,
only a few weeks had passed since R.V.V. Krishna Rao garu and I had visited
their home and spent some pleasant time with them. Then came this news.
Shastri
garu had retired as the Director of All India Radio in Hyderabad. Hardly anyone
would recognise the name Vemuri Viswanatha Shastri. But everyone knew V.V.
Shastri.
At the
hospital, their son-in-law Sriram was taking care of the bills and other
formalities. He said it would take a few hours before they could hand over the
“body.” Until a short while earlier, she had been Punyavati. Now they were
calling her a “body.”
A person
remains a person only as long as life remains. Once that little bit of life
leaves, what remains is just another “log” to be placed on the funeral pyre.
That is all.
I took
Shastri garu aside. We found a place and sat down. I thought he might cry.
Instead, he began to speak. Everything he said was stark truth. Yet beneath
those words lay a philosophy I had never seen before.
“She
lived with me for fifty-six years. She left all the comforts for me and shared
all the hardships herself. I spent my time throwing my weight around outside
and never bothered about how so many girls were growing up at home or how our
son was studying. I boasted that I knew everything, but I knew very well that I
knew nothing. She has now left me alone, knowing that I know nothing. Apart
from shouting at people, I don’t even know how to light a stove. The hospital
has taken lakhs from me and handed my wife back into my hands like this. They
must have done whatever they could. But did I do whatever I could? That is all
I have been thinking about these past few days. My wife, who used to move
around the house all day, became unable even to move her hands and legs. I
realised that I had never done anything for her. So I started doing everything
myself. I would wash her face. I would comb her hair. Why should I hide it from
you? I even cleaned her after she passed urine or stool. I am not saying this
to make myself look good.”
There
were tears in Shastri garu’s eyes. We sat in silence for a while.
It was
true. I had known him for many years. Until he retired, he had paid little
attention to his home or his wife. After retirement, he never left either his
home or his wife behind. Anyone who wanted to meet him had to go to his house.
If someone asked him to come out, he would say, “I won’t come. She has to stay
alone at home. She gets frightened even if the power goes off for a while”
“Perhaps
I should not have made her serve me all those years. Maybe she left like this
because she did not want to make me work for her!” Shastri garu said.
This
time, my eyes filled with tears.
Eleven
years have passed since that happened.
Another
four years went by.
27-03-2019
Over the
past two days, two people very dear to us quietly got off the train of life
without warning.
One was
Padma, the granddaughter of my younger maternal aunt. It is hard to believe
that she was fifty-six. She looked much younger. None of our relatives ever saw
Padma without a smile on her face.
She would
greet everyone with a smile. She would smile as she greeted people. She gave us
all those smiles and quietly went somewhere else herself.
The
strange thing was that she had no idea that a disease had entered her body and
would take her life within ten days. The hospital staff told her family to take
her home, saying there was nothing more they could do. Padma did not know this.
Believing that she had recovered, she smiled, waved goodbye to everyone on the
staff and left.
That was
it.
The next
day, she was not at home. She was not in this world either.
Even now,
like everyone else, I cannot shake the question: can people really die like
this?
The
second person was Tajuddin. In 2005, he lived in the flat next to ours. He had
a small family. They now live somewhere far away. His wife, Anees, worked in a
beauty parlour. They had two young daughters, Ragina and Aleja. They were not
merely children. They were beautiful little dolls.
When they
were little kids, they practically grew up in our home, in the care of my wife. Taj worked for a private company. At
a very young age, both his kidneys failed. Twice a week, he would ride his
motorcycle alone from Ellareddyguda to a hospital in Nampally, undergo dialysis
and return home.
Power
cuts were frequent in those days. If the lift was not working, he would slowly
climb three floors by the stairs, exhausted. For a long time, I did not know
that he underwent dialysis or that both his kidneys had failed. At other times,
he remained remarkably energetic. He adored children.
Tajuddin
also died in Hyderabad on the very day Padma passed away.
As a
writer once said, “God is the biggest terrorist.”
He takes
lives without mercy and without reason, and no one knows whose life he will
take or when.
I never
imagined that my own situation would become the same within another four
months.
Seven
years ago, August 2019.
My wife
had a fever for two days. It was not even a particularly high fever. Her
temperature never crossed 100 degrees.
That
morning, I had gone to a television discussion and returned home. Some
television people asked me to come again in the evening, but I did not go.
After
dinner, before going to bed, we had developed a routine after our second son Santosh
and daughter-in-law Nisha moved to
Bengaluru for Jobs. We would play a few rounds of cards and then turn on Alexa
and listen to old film songs sung by Ghantasala. That day, she did not ask me
to play cards.
She had a
headache and asked for Amrutanjan. I was so ignorant that I did not even know
where it was kept. She told me where to look. I searched and brought it back,
but it was not the right one. She asked me to get Zinda Tilismath instead. She
said it would be beside the framed
photograph of my mother. I brought it, but she did not apply anything.
She asked
for drinking water. No, she changed her mind and asked for some juice. I gave
it to her with my own hands, and she drank a little. Then she became severely
breathless.
Unable to
bear watching her struggle, I called an ambulance.
When she
said she wanted to go to the bathroom and began to stumble, I supported her
there and brought her back. By then, the ambulance had arrived.
There was
no one else at home. Only the two of us.
I took
her to Apollo Hospital.
In
forty-eight years of marriage, these were the only services I ever performed
for her with my own hands.
Within
fifteen minutes of reaching the hospital, they calmly told me that she had
died.
Can
people really die like this?
(23-09-2026)
