Oh Captain, My Captain!

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Ckarthik%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]-->[JUSTIFY]Death was not my agenda. It has never been. My close encounters with death had been just two: my own grandmother who died of a rheumatic heart (I think) when I was in my 15 years old… and RP’s grandmother who succumbed to the Big C about 15 years back. It is not that no one died all these years… it is just that I was never around, living like an ostrich, blissfully ignorant of the implications the death of a beloved one wreaks on the bereaved.

And a month back, I was jerked out of my complacent existence. Appa, my Father in Law, passed away. I was totally mentally and physically so unprepared for it. 3 days of fever, every day of which he kept assuring me that he was fine and that I need not come down from UAE…he was only being admitted in the local hospital to be monitored… then the fateful call from Mangala, my sister in law, who had rushed down from Udupi, saying he was being shifted to the ICU in a bigger hospital in the nearby town…

There is just a blur of what happened on the following days… of flying to Bangalore and driving down to Shimoga straight from the airport… of seeing him lying in the ICU like a shadow of the Appa I had left behind in May… of four traumatic days of waiting outside the ICU…with stolen 2 or 3 minutes, when turn by turn, we snuck in and assured him that he would get better… he had better, for we all needed him…of his weak voice repeating that he won’t make it this time… of seeing him on ventilation support…. of the 3 two- hourly visits by RP on 16^th night … of reading Vishnu Sahasranamam and Hanuman Chalisa again and again on 16^th night and 17^th dawn …till the call came at 6
a m summoning us to the ICU… the breaking of the inevitable news by the duty doctor… of the next 14 days…and of life since!

Sometimes… rage fills my heart. He had no business to do this to me. He had promised to be around for my twins’ wedding which meant he’d be around for another 2 or 3 years. He did not let me even have a clue that he was going to disappear, leaving me holding his fort. Bloody unfair! I was only his secretary all these years, not his heir apparent… not even his executive assistant. I just know where his things were….not how he operated. I never thought I’d have to learn. There is no question of stepping into his shoes… they will not fit anyone, though RP stands a good chance, but he has his work in UAE and in haste, I have been crowned the regent… trying to run Appa’s kingdom… and I am already faltering. I feel I have been let loose in a maze!

Sometimes… when I think of him, a tsunami of grief drowns me. In the past two or three years, we had grown so close to each other. He started even declaring to all that I was his daughter and not daughter in law. I laughingly told him to stop making my relationship with RP incestuous. Such was the freedom I had with him! He once apologized to me for having been harsh with me and hurting me with his prejudiced views and attitude. I had accepted with grace. There had been so much of intimacy- the kind of which very few daughters in law of Tam Brahm families get.
All these want me to scream in frustration and grief whenever I realize he is no more around. My five minutes in the ICU with his still warm body haunt me. I first touched him to see if the nurses had made a mistake. Maybe he was just sleeping. His body was not cold. Dead people would be ice cold, right? All books say that… the Perry Masons, the Michael Palmers, the Robin Cooks… I kept my finger beneath his nose waiting for a puff of warm air… in vain. I leant across the bed railings and put my ear against his bare chest willing myself to ignore the big sob that was welling up from my solar plexus and listen for a faint heartbeat. Cardiac Arrest? Bull! Appa just had weak lungs, his heart was sound… he had kept so many of us in his big heart, and it wouldn’t give way just like that… When I couldn’t hear even a faint ‘lub-dub’, I realized that he had indeed gone… With the realization came the tears… which flowed hot and free when I saw that the always so neatly dressed person lying there half-covered just by a blanket… Like a defeated coward I ran out of the ICU, not wanting accept that truth that lay inert there inside. Yes, those moments still haunt me.

Sometimes I feel terrified. Of course I promised him that I’d take care of Amma and his sister, S Aunty. But can I? What if I do something wrong? What if I fail? I have been living such a sheltered life so far, letting others take decisions and run the show. Now can I rise to the occasion if life demands it of me? Will I say something wrong to any of the tenants and have a crisis in my hands? Will I deal with the banks, the maintenance people and the conservative society in general, the right way?

I feel different…orphaned…lonely… and everywhere I turn I feel his presence or rather the effect of his absence. His system seems to have collapsed after his passing away. He used to record every single call he made on the landline, not so much accounting as for tracing numbers. All we had to tell him that we needed a particular person’s contact number and he’d say in which month he’d made a call to that person and Lo! We’d locate it just like that! Now no one bothers to do that. So I have started doing that.

He used to make a note of every paisa he spends… anyone spends. Just to keep a track, he said. Now I am scared to do that. People may think that I am mercenary or a show-off to write about every little purchase I make.

Mealtimes are no longer what they were when he was around. For the past 26 years it used to be 8.45- breakfast, 12.45- lunch, 3.15 -tea and 8.15 - dinner. Now, we eat when we want, where we want. We’d never have dared to eat our evening snacks or dinner in front of the TV in the living room had he been here. It is just a month… and the old order hath changed…

I miss that teasing smile… those little chores he’d do for me, like closing the windows of my bedroom at dusk and switching on the All Out unit saying, “ I have to take care of my daughter’s comforts”… the Rs.100 he used to put in his God’s Box whenever anyone reached home or their destination safely ( I used to tease him that he was corrupting God by offering bribe for such trivial matters…) I miss his incessant ribbing of our driver Wilson… I miss his love for his grandchildren, especially his bonding with my twins… I can never forget the joy in his voice when he said that the twins had increased his lifespan by 10 years when they both surprised him with a visit… this just 15 days before he died…

As a child I had been protected from Death. We kids were never allowed to see any dead body. Even when my grandma died we were allowed to just fall at her feet and were ordered out of the room. When my husband’s grandma died, the twins were down with chickenpox so I was with them… Appa’s has been my closest encounter with Death. And I realize that I am not equipped to deal with it. It has taken me more than a month to bare my soul like this. This again, is at the insistence of my son to whom I confessed that I was still unable to come to terms with the loss. “Blog, Mummy,” he urged me. “Only then will you become normal again.”
I hope you are right son, yet I don’t know if I shall be able to erase certain pictures from my heart…of your hugging me and crying with me, of your twin arriving just in time to kiss Thatha goodbye… of your father looking bewildered and helpless when he said, ‘Viju, it is over.’…of your cousin bursting into tears and my hugging her and consoling her, all the time crying myself…of the brave face put up by your grandmother… she has spent 50 plus years with him, for him and for nothing and nobody else…How much she will be hurting…and missing him.

I suppose I should be thankful that I can express my grief at last. Life has undergone a sea change. Now I am not just a carefree blogger, mother of twins, spendthrift wife… I am a dutiful daughter in law of Bhadravathi home, doing all that Appa used to do. I am the standby captain… till the new captain takes over.

Somehow, as I ran out of the ICU on 17^th August morning, tears streaming out of my eyes and heart, one phrase kept ricocheting in my heart : ‘Oh Captain, My Captain’

I am no Walt Whitman… no R. L Stevenson…
Poetry and mourning don’t go well in my world. In fact, life is so unlike Bollywood movies, where Death demands a sad number by Rafi or Mukesh… Yet, I promised myself that morning that if I write a piece on Appa, I’ll do a ‘Oh Captain, My Captain’ in his memory. The following is a hackneyed effort. Please don’t be put off by its seeming triteness.
He was my one-man fan club, my PRO and emotional sponsor for my writing. He loved my writing, kept print- outs of my blogs which he forced on the visiting relatives ( may be that’s why many a kith and kin stopped visiting Bhadravathi!). He promised to finance and get my writings published as a book. I started writing with his encouragement and I hope to do him proud in future as well…
Here, I dedicate this poor excuse of Walt Whitman to him!


Oh Captain , my Captain, my fearful trip has begun,
You’ve abandoned our ship and left me facing the gun!
The joys have been shorn, the home’s so forlorn,
My heart is so heavy and gloomy that you’ve gone!

Aah! My emotions tear themselves asunder,
Even as memories of you meander,
The mind’s nooks and corners and by- lanes,
Throb with unshed tears and ‘unlocated’ pains.

Oh Captain, my Captain, do not leave me and vanish,
For I can not tackle obstacles or e’en try to vanquish,
And these mammoth tasks and chores,
Are for me untested waters and shores,

Ah there! Captain, dear father,
Do you from somewhere watch me?
As I stumble, totter and clutch for support,
Is that your last laugh, your chuckle? Glee?

Oh! That garlanded, laminated smile,
Of my father, my Captain,
Cruelly doth scream ‘Thy sire is no more
He is dead, and now, a legend, a lore!’


[/JUSTIFY]

 

Hello RRG,

Thank you...and I, like you, am amazed by Amma's strength. Compared to her I look like a emotional weakling. IT is taking me a lot of effort to come to terms with this loss!
Once again, thank you.

 

Oh Paulina,

So kind of you... But I felt it sounds a little contrived... I have always loved the lines of Oh Captain.... but versifying is hardly my cup of tea. My efforts at writing poems, seem pathetic to me!:hide:

 

Hello VASE,

Thank you for your words of comfort. I know it will take time to come to terms with his passing away. My only source of diversion now is, blogging. I hope I can do that regularly now. HE would have wanted me to!