Soul Contracts and Birdsongs

While being chastised by my husband for not writing enough, or at all, lately, I had an epiphany. I found refuge in writing to release the teenage angst that was too much to bear and process for my adolescent heart. As luck would have it, the moments of despair increased proportionally to my age through my twenties and I wrote to survive those tumultuous years. 

Thirties however, sang a different tune. I laid the foundations of wedded bliss and was busy setting up home and hearth while the pain, though there, seemed to move to the background. For the first time in years, I started to jot down happy thoughts and my writing moved from its whiny overtones to dropping nuggets of joy and wisdom till mumma passed away. I lost the most ardent fan, editor, proofreader and critic of my writings.

After mourning my mom and applying the coping tactics of pouring every feeling I had on paper,  I lost the will to write since I felt I didn’t have anyone to read the unique combination of words I stringed anymore. When a few select friends asked me why I wasn’t publishing my blog posts, the answers would vary from, “Not feeling inspired these days.” to “I read and write so much at work that penning for the blog no longer feels like a fun thing to do.” to “Instagram reels have ruined me forever. I cannot seem to sit in front of the laptop long enough to write.” and many more low-effort non-creative banal statements.

The version of me who never lost a chance to announce her love for NCR and particularly Delhi, could have never imagined the 40-something me taking the drastic step. In my defense, the city of my childhood, teenage and even my 20s and 30s had long disappeared. I felt I had outgrown the neighbourhoods where I grew up. Driving through the wide roads of central Delhi or Greater Noida no longer brought joy. India Gate was no longer a happy place where I had spent hours trying to figure out life with my best friends and also the ice cream flavours I loved most. It was time for my love affair the capital to come to an end and since the city couldn’t care less, it was up to me to take that decision.

Well cemented into my forties, with a substantially white haired crown adorning my face, my husband and I, after months of discussions which surely increased the number of whites on my head, decided to move our roots from NCR to Nashik.

It’s been exactly 7 months since we stepped into our house in the outskirts of the Temple City. The milestones we celebrate (read as post on Instagram) include installing the first hanging plant on the porch—a dream I harboured and pestered my husband to fulfill for years!  

Living in a world taken over by AI, I find myself happiest when surrounded by nature and indulging in the most hands-on projects related to my garden and potted plants these days. To enjoy 15 minutes of creativity each day, I take on 15-20 mins water colour projects almost every evening. The outcomes though are nothing to write home about, bring me a lot of joy!  

This morning, while enjoying the birdsong that has become my favourite thing to do to begin the day, a voice in my head that sounded a lot like mumma, observed, “You have been so busy realising dreams that you’ve lost touch with penning them.” She reminded me, “Soul contracts last lifetimes and I believe that a part of you will always shine brightest while expressing yourself through the written word.”

If there is one thing my mother taught me is to listen to her always—even when she’s not around. So, while I live this life that I hadn’t even dared to dream of, where I live in a house (not an apartment), surrounded by enough flora and fauna to hold my interest for hours and enjoy my personal National Geographic-like environment, I find myself writing purely to express gratitude and a heartfelt joy of fulfilling my soul contract to write!

 

 

Be Nice!

Five years since maa breathed her last and I am often pulled back to those last days I spent with her in the hospital. Since then I have, unfortunately, witnessed one more death in the family and several others in the extended family and friend circle. I have witnessed last interactions in some cases and in others have heard the survivors who succeeded the deceased lament about how they would have behaved better had they known.

Having lost my father at a young age and not having very happy memories of my last interaction with him—he was hallucinating on my last visit to his bed in the hospital. He did not recognise me, his 15 and half years old daughter but kept calling out foar my brother who was just 5 and a half. My teenage heart could not forgive his hallucination-induced forgetfulness for the longest time. And as I grew older I spent many a days wondering what I could have done differently to make that last meeting a meaningful one for me.

As clichéd as it sounds, much later in life, I read somewhere—maybe in an SMS or email forward or a self-help book—that ensure that your goodbye/farewell is sweet because you never know if that is the last time you’ll be talking to that person. It stayed with me. To the extent that even after heart breaking fall outs with former friends/colleagues, I spent my last day in the company treating everyone and leaving heartfelt thank you notes for all of them.

I am glad that the sentiment of having meaningful goodbye stayed with me when the doctors told us that maa would not be leaving the hospital alive. Akshat and I took turns sitting by her side in the ICU. We massaged her feet and hands lightly, applied thick layers of moisturiser to her limbs as that was the only thing that gave her some relief. I made an effort to dress up smartly for my daily visits to the hospital because all my life maa had laid a lot of stress on me dressing up smartly. She would say, if you dress up smartly to meet someone, it shows them that you are giving them importance and value them. Even now, half a decade since she’s gone, I still make an effort to dress up smartly for occasions that are and people who are important to me. She loved looking at the sky and trees, so we requested the hospital staff to move the position of her bed in such a way that she spent the last days looking outside the window.   

Five years ago Akshat and I and all of my mother’s Twitter friends were trying hard to fulfil her wish to meet Shah Rukh Khan. There were online comments by strangers saying they did not understand why a 60-year-old dying woman wanted to meet SRK. How come her children were not bothered about keeping her alive and battling cancer and were instead focusing on reaching the message to SRK. I am sure offline too people, we know and love, must have wondered the same, even though they maintained decency and never asked this of me to my face.

It was a genius masterstroke by mother. And I wish more children in our shoes are as lucky. Why do I say that? Well, we spent our time trying to figure out how we could help realise her dream, her last wish, rather than sitting and crying and anticipating dooms day scenarios. She gave us a task which seemed impossible to achieve, so we put in all our energies to accomplish it. Through it all we learned that:

1.       If we set our mind to it, we could achieve anything! Even getting SRK to record a video message and then call to talk to her.

2.       We can rely on people, known and unknown. We won’t be alone even with her gone. We miss her but we are not alone.

3.       When it seems that you cannot change a situation, get busy doing something constructive.

4.       We must employ all the tactics in our arsenal if we really want something. And we will be rewarded.

5.       Being nice pays in surprising ways. She was nice to people on Twitter. Be it being nice while RTing beautiful images or sentiments, knitting sweaters for babies of her Twitter friends, sharing daily, blurry updates from her small green patch or penning a thread on why she liked people from different regions. She went viral because she was nice on Twitter. And because she was nice, everyone who interacted with her rallied to spread her last wish to the point where the story was picked up by news outlets and finally reached SRK’s team.

Even if your last interaction with your parent was not something that you are proud of or happy about it’s not too late. Be nice to your siblings, spouse, in-laws, children, help, co-workers. Even if they are in the wrong, even if you think you know better. Fight if you have to but be nice. If either one of you is staring at death, you won’t remember all the times you proved a point or won an argument. Trust me, you will regret not being nice when you had a chance.