The world walks with the calm listener!

The first wave is always the toughest to bear as you don’t know the intensity of the coming force. I had heard from many that the amplitude of the wave coming from this ocean is much higher and much more terrifying than the normal wave but today, I was the one standing to face it in reality.

My eyes grew bigger as I saw the wave coming. My mind was not ready to bear what was about to come my way. With fear in my eyes and courage in my heart, I decided to face the wave and so, I tightened my body, curled my fingers into fists, and fixed my feet on the floor as I could sense that the wave that was approaching me would knock me out of my breath.

I decided to face it head-on so I straightened my spine, stood up, and took a step forward towards the doctor, who had just come out of the ICU, where my grandmother was kept.

He was the same doctor, an average-looking man with big black-bordered glasses, who had been treating my grandmother for a few days. On other days, he used to approach us with calm eyes but today something was different. His eyes looked tired and he had a solemn expression on his face. He had my grandmother’s report in one hand and was wiping his forehead with the other while holding his glasses. As soon as we saw him approaching us, my father and my wife, who were sitting beside me in the waiting room, also stood up.

I asked the doctor in an alarming tone, “How is my Grandmother, doctor? Is she okay? Please tell me, she is ok.”

While asking, I could feel a lump forming in my throat but still managed to keep my emotions at bay.

The doctor stood in front of us and said in a flat tone which almost felt mechanical, “Indudeviji is facing serious issues while breathing and her oxygen levels are too low for my liking. We are trying everything we can but we need to put her on a ventilator.”

I hadn’t even realised that I was holding my breath all the time the doctor was speaking. Listening to those words felt as if I had been punched in the stomach as all the wind got knocked out of my lungs.

It was true! Like others, the first wave of COVID had hit my family hard too. Much more than what I could have expected. My knees felt weak and I buckled into the chair with my head in my hands as I simply could not believe that this was happening to me. While I was trying to gather myself, I heard my father calmly answer to the doctor, “ Please do everything you can and save her. Use any means necessary. Just save her!”

The doctor quickly passed the file to the assistant doctor standing nearby in a PPE kit and said, “Put her on the ventilator.”

We all looked like deers caught in the headlight as we were scared of what was about to come. The doctor turned towards us and said empathetically, “Kindly go back to your home. No one is allowed here due to COVID. There is no point in waiting here, if anything changes we will inform you.”

The doctor turned to leave when my father looked at me and my wife and called out to the doctor again, “Yes doctor, but is there any way these two can meet their grandmother, even if for two minutes? Sir, I will be highly obliged.”

Listening to this, the doctor started shaking his head and said with reason “It is not allowed, Sir!”

My father requested the doctor, while trying to communicate that ‘this might be their last chance to meet their grandmother, so please allow them’, but all he could say was “Please.”

As though the doctor understood the implication behind my father’s request, he allowed us and turned to the nurse and commanded, “ Allow these two to see the patient in bed 32, Indudevi.” After giving her the instructions, the doctor reiterated to us, “only for two minutes.”

We followed the nurse inside the ICU and seeing the people around me made the blood in my veins run cold and my eyes kept searching for only one — My grandmother. The nurse stopped in front of a bed and while drawing the curtains she said, “Here she is.” She just said and went to her desk.

On seeing the bed she was pointing to, I saw my grandmother who felt like she had gotten smaller somehow. She was attached to what felt like a million wires and tubes. My eyes could not believe her to be the same woman who once could run the entire house in search of me and pick me up as though I weighed nothing, now she laid in a bed looking timid and helpless. I approached the bed with caution and saw that her eyes were open. Her eyes were full of fear and pain. The tears in her eyes conveyed enough that ‘she just wanted to go home to her family and could not bear to stay in this hospital anymore.’

The conversation was silently taking place between me and my grandmother when the time showed its arrogance.

“Times up!” commented the nurse grimly.

Hearing that, my grandmother started getting agitated, shaking her head sideways desperately, and tried to lift her hands as she was silently requesting me to lift her, in the same way, a small baby pleads with his mother to pick him up and cradle him. My heart started beating so fast as I saw my grandmother fidgeting for me to hold her. At that moment, I knew I had to settle my grandmother as I could see her vitals getting disturbed. I stood beside her bed feeling helpless as I could not even hold her in my arms. So, I said to her in the same soothing voice she used every time while taking my name, “Aavitiye Nani, I will be back soon!”

With a heavy heart, my wife and I came out of the ICU but a piece of me was left with her. The Nurse followed us and said, “Go and have some rest, Sir! We will try and do everything for your grandma. She sure has a lot of issues but she is battling with her ailments very bravely, I feel she still has a lot of fight left in her.”

Listening to her words sparked a ray of hope which felt as though it had died. I started believing that everything will be fine. These words, “Everything will be fine,” were the only ones chanting in my head. But there was something that was not sitting well within me and resulted in me tossing and turning the whole night.

The next morning, I woke up with heavy eyes and an even more heavy heart. I was getting ready to go to the hospital when I received an abrupt phone call from my father, who had left for the hospital early in the morning after a call from the doctor. When I answered the phone, before letting him speak I immediately asked, “How is she, Papa?”

He took a deep breath and I could hear him sigh on the phone and then said after a long pause, “Gappu, come to the hospital. Your nani is no more.”

Those words pushed me to the path of consciousness and I sat on the bed abruptly. I saw that my body was covered with sweat. I gulped a glass of water and then realised it was all a nightmare about the worst day of my life- The day I lost my grandmother forever. I was currently at the terrace of her house. I checked my phone and the time showed 6:00 AM. The turmoil of emotions was still strong when I got up from the bed and went to the edge of the terrace. I started looking out to the vast land around the house in the hope to get my emotions in control, when my eyes went to my house’s verandah, I found about 35 to 45 children paying tribute to my Nani’s Photo. They were placing flowers to the foot of the frame and had their hands folded in prayer. I climbed down the stairs in a hurry and practically ran to that section of our home and asked breathlessly to a man who was sitting on the chair near the photo frame, “What is this going on?”

“We are all paying tribute to our Maalkin,” he replied politely.

“Maalkin?”, I asked, still feeling a little confused after the horrible dream I had.

“Yes, Gappu bhaiya. She was the one who had been there for us through the worst of times.” The man said nostalgically.

Listening to this brought me completely back to reality and also spiked my interest. So, I immediately asked, “What had happened?”

“Our Mallah community was badly discriminated against by the Rajputs and Bhumihar caste in the Government School. So, she provided a small class near her home, where education was provided to the children of our caste.” The man told as though reciting a fable of a very brave man.

While listening to the story, I suddenly saw the movement in the back of my eye and when I turned to see who it was, the world somehow stopped spinning around me. I could not hear any commotion around me and all the raw emotions I had been feeling were now converted into anger for one man. The man, who was standing at the gate of my house, Mithu. As it was becoming difficult for me to process my emotions, I decided to take a break from everything that was happening around me and left hurriedly to that one place in this village which can always calm me-the riverside.

I needed an outlet for all the anger that was brewing inside of me. So, I collected a lot of pebbles from the riverbank and started throwing them one by one into the river water disturbing its serenity. The rippling water resonated with the restless state I was in.

I sat down and started brooding about everything that had been going wrong through the morning. I was staring blankly into the water when I saw a middle-aged lady, draped in a red and green saree, approaching the river bank. She was holding a little boy, who seemed almost four years old. The boy was dressed in white shorts and a vest and seemed extremely reluctant to come to the riverbank. His mother made him sit down along with her and dug some Mitti from the bank of the river, mixed it with water, and applied it on the child’s face. This act resembled too much with the bath scene from my childhood when my Nani used to bathe me. Within a moment, I was disconnected from the chords of the real world and was transported back to the past, to the same moment one morning when my grandmother was also mixing Mitti and water to apply on my face.

“No. Nani…Please don’t put it on my face,” I whined like a 3-year-old who was being painted with mud and did not want that.

In spite of several ‘Nos’ from my side, she applied the Mitti face pack on my face and she added “Babua! Stop resisting it. This will improve your skin and….”

Before she could complete her sentence, Mithu came running towards us which distracted her attention from me. He looked very tall but had a potbelly and his eyes were hooded due to ptosis. He was wearing a new kurta and pyjama which was torn from several places which was enough to explain that he had been in a big fight. Due to the adrenaline rush he was experiencing, his eyes were completely red which made his appearance daunting. Seeing him scared me so much that I hid behind my grandmother because I knew she would protect me from everything.

Soon, a herd of villagers came running after the man and stood near the riverbank. Even in that crowd, two women were clearly noticeable. One was Mithu’s wife, who was crying her heart out and holding the hand of her two small children very tightly and the other was an unknown lady dressed in a new red saree and wearing a lot of jewellery, standing there expressionless.

Mithu looked extremely rattled on seeing those people chasing him and suddenly started yelling at my grandmother. He said, “What do you think of yourself? Just because people listen to you doesn’t give you the right to interfere in everyone’s decisions. Who gives you the right to take the decisions of my life?”

My grandmother seemed baffled with all the accusations that were being thrown towards her and before she could even reply, Mithu continued in a very terrorizing voice, “These villagers are not allowing me and my new wife to enter this village and when asked they are saying that it is you, who has denied us entry in this village.”

Suddenly my grandmother understood the situation around her and calmly answered “Yes, that’s true.”

This calm demeanor of my grandmother seemed to rattle Mithu even more, so he asked, “But why?”

My grandmother smiled politely towards Mithu and asked him rhetorically, “Ask yourself Mithu?”

She did not wait for him to answer and continued with furrowed eyebrows, “What wrong did your first wife and their two children do to you? I am your neighbour and I have witnessed the most. It was you, who abused your wife under the influence of alcohol, even after suffering so much she never retorted against you. I have no objection to your second marriage, it is your life after all but I will not let you spoil three lives just because you wished to get a new one. You cannot just discard your old family and leave them to rot on the road.”

After listening to my grandmother, Mithu answered similar to a stubborn child who is not getting his way, “But, I don’t want to stay with her.”

My grandmother was not at all affected by the tone he was using and smiled once again and said graciously, “If you are adamant with your decision then I am afraid mine will also remain the same.”

At the same moment, one of the villagers came forward to support my grandmother and said, “Maalkin is completely right.” There was a loud howl of support from the rest of the villagers and then the villager continued, “Either you accept it or you get out of the village.”

These words felt like the last nail to Mithu’s anger and then he came extremely close to me and my grandmother and spoke in a dangerously low volume, which only me and my grandmother could hear, “Don’t you forget that more than half of the homes in this village are of my caste. Today is your day as they are listening to you but I will make sure that tomorrow they will not. After all, blood is thicker than water.”

He smiled with paranoia, looking at me, and added “There will be a day when this boy will move back with his parents to town. You will be left all alone in that big house of yours which you are so proud of and you will not even have anyone to pay homage to you after you die. No one, I repeat, no one from my caste will be there. Just mark my words.”

With these words, he left the riverbank taking both of his wives and children along with him, even if it was reluctantly. Seeing this in front of her eyes my grandmother sighed with a small smile forming on her face which left me perplexed. I, a three-year-old boy, was furious with the man’s audacity to come and say such cruel things to my grandmother, my sweet Nani was completely unfazed by the whole scene that had just taken place in front of us.

I was so aggravated with Mithu that I curled my little fingers into fists, had mitti face pack still all over my face, and asked my grandmother through gritted teeth, “ Nani! Why didn’t you say anything to that man? How dare he talk to you like this? Wait, I will have a talk with him.”

I was completely prepared for a fight, which now feels futile given I was only three years old but I still would have done anything for my Yashoda Maiya.

Seeing that my little self was completely prepared for war she simply chuckled and said, “Be a patient listener, my sweet Gappu. Ignore the words that come out of people when they are angry. The only answer to anger is grace and calm.”

My nani kept smiling through the whole process without giving much thought to all the cruel things that Mithu had just told her and started the task on her hand. She brought me in front, leaned me near the water, and splashed water on my face. The water felt real and that pushed me back to reality. Thinking about what my grandmother had said, I planned my return home as I could see that it was already 8 o’clock and the processions would be beginning.

When I reached back to the house I saw, all the people of Mallah Caste were sitting in a line to have bhoj, which is a large ceremony where people from all castes come and eat food in the remembrance of the deceased. In the whole commotion, I saw Mithu, who was not eating with the rest of his caste members, rather was standing holding a jug of water and was serving to everyone.

When I went and stood beside him. It was as if he read my mind and said,

“Sorry for everything, Gappu. Your grandmother is proof that the world really walks with a calm listener, not with an arrogant speaker.”