time of my life

I stumbled across Victor Hugo’s portion from ‘Les Contemplations’ once when I was hopelessly trying to refresh my French with Do-it-Yourself French, French-in-a-week, About.com posts and the rest. All were in vain, though. The only thing that mattered was my heart and what I chose to learn with it. It had nothing to do with the tool but it had everything to do with the content that appealed to me the most.

I have been unconsciously looking for any piece of literature even remotely related to death and loss. Let me also update you on a recent development of mine. I have only recently begun to acknowledge and use words like ‘death’ and ‘grave’. The day my son died was always a day when he had ‘left’ me. His grave was always a place he ‘lived’ in.

His room ‘was’ always ‘is’. He was always ‘is’and all the verbs in Sharaf’s case had an additional: ‘ing’ to them. Neither my youngest daughter Tanisha nor I were ever in the mood of using the past tense that spelt reality for either of us.

Yet I was always opening books accidentally on pages with special verses like the one quoted here:

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

(Victor Hugo: Les Contemplations)

Hugo had lost his daughter and had written it way back in 1847 in the month of September. He wished to leave and reach his daughter’s grave, close his eyes to the daylight, wanted to cross the mountains and rivers…just to place a wreath on her grave of fresh holly-sprays and flowering heath. The line that haunts me the most in the poem is:

No longer can I keep away from you: Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Five years after his death, I now have the courage to utter absolute words with absolute terminality. After all these years, I have learnt to howl,throw my hands up in the air and use obscene diction to curse anyone I sense is insensitive to losses.

Clifford with his red fur has been Tanu’s friend in bed for all her Sharaf-less years. A tiny dog has been my travel companion for all my Sharaf-less moments. Wamiq, till date, dreams of her baby Sharfu. Navid often while comforting me, wipes a tear or two away, deviating from the statement of his towering manhood.

40 kids from ’sharafer pathshala’ will come home tomorrow to enjoy a magic show,some music, a drawing competition,

and a lovely software of a Bengali version of Danish fairy tales.
Tanu and I will be busy decorating the cakes just like we did on his last birthday in the basement. The simple chocolate cake was decorated with cones and smarties and it had soon become a castle…for Sharaf. The birthday photograph of the birthday in 1999 had Zaima by his side in every picture…the girl he had a crush on and the only girl to whom he had given roses on the Valentines Day.

We have planned on doing up the cakes in the same pattern tomorrow. On top of the all the other frills and fuss, Tanisha has come up with two additional requests: She wants me to paint, with my own hands, one of her walls ‘red’ and she also wants one hundred red balloons to go with the celebrations tomorrow. Mind you, no stripes or mosaic are allowed in the balloons. They have to be simply red. Red was Sharaf’s all time favorite- till the end.

He has ended and so have I, partly.

All that he could have been is gone. Sharaf concluded his division well while I have been cursed with an odd remainder of ‘1′ that forces me to breathe and move on, yet which offers me neither a solution, or a truth.

 Sans Sharaf,

Rubana

When I first started to grey, I wondered if it had anything to do with my genes. Maybe someone, somewhere in the family genealogy has some pigments missing in their system. I was wrong. It was stress that had killed me; it was stress that had made my hormones go berserk. And then I started to lose my hair. Lacking in proteins? Naaah…I am still the healthy, robust 43-year old who probably has another 20 great years ahead. Hold on…perhaps not!

With stress, you lose every bit of yourself: your enthusiasm, your spirit and even your conviction. For the last month or so, my spirit has sunk to an absolute low just because we tend to procrastinate, butter bosses, flaunt efficiency (if there is even a wee-bit of it in us), cater to ego and engage in an endless stream of political pursuits. What’s worse, with free speech and democracy, we have set our subconscious free. We say whatever we feel and to do that, we often do away with our tact or grace.

At a work environment, all of us are actively into our own worlds. We try and show the best that we have in us and what we are capable of producing. All of this is done with a lot of noise and we hardly every tone our vocal chords. We are quick with criticism, quicker even to align our views with whichever side we feel worth aligning with.

We are not a humble face in the globe. We are not the best performing. Yet we, Southasians are the noisiest. Maybe Southeast Asia would be better this time.

After a very hectic stressful launch of a private media initiative called “Southasian” in New Delhi, I moved on to Hong Kong with my daughter, Tanisha who was all geared up for her Spring break. Three days in the Harbor city can have a maddening impact on all. Hong Kong is no more expensive as it used to be. The city is all about dirt cheap prices in order to confirm to the Chinese practices. The Economist, this week, has the best quote when it refers to the copying tactics of the chinks: they copy everything but their mothers. The Honda CR-V’s are Chinese SR-V’s. The Chinese automobile producer Shandong Huoyun Electromobile even copied Daimler’s two-seater Smart car and are currently being sued.

In Hong Kong , the hotels and restaurant services are getting worse while, shops selling electronics are surprisingly far better. Perhaps the Chinese need to sell more products these days while the service sector probably can afford to do away with the courtesies. Is this what happens everywhere? While you experience your growth curve, your sensitivities ebb at the lowest? Is this the final irony that keeps the world in a balance? Is this why there is no absolute good or absolute evil anywhere?

My philosophy came to a halt at Hong Kong airport at Lantau island. My Hong Kong Delhi ticket needed to be reissued and therefore it needed Air India ’s nod. Well, AI nodded with a quick endorsement stamp at aisle J, while TG took its own sweet time at aisle E to say NO to the reissue and guess what? While running in between E and J, I had lost a couple of pounds. AI ended up telling me that they couldn’t reissue the document as they would have to give me a refund. And TG maintained their stance by saying that it was AI’s job to do so. The simple fare calculation and re calculation were stressful enough for both the parties to resolve my problem. My dire need was to get on board flight TG 603 to Bangkok and connect to TG 321 to Dhaka . At last AI gave me an option of adding another sector to my ticket : Kolkata-Dhaka, without quoting the fare. Then they came out with an additional charge of USD 392.00 for that single sector one way ticket!!! When, like an idiot I offered them my master card, they refused it as the only acceptable plastic was AMEX. I ran to the nearest exchange and like an absolute (who said absolutes did not exist?) fool and changed into equivalent Hong Kong dollars. While running back to Aisle J, I realized that this was something I wouldn’t do. So, with my feet planted firmly to the ground, I hung on to my HKD, changed them back into USD, incurred a loss of USD 44.00, yet refused to pay AI the extra USD 392.00 for reissuing for HKG-DEL ticket into HKG-BKK-DAC-KOL ticket. AI gave into my screaming lungs, yet refused me a refund.  I plan on looking at the fare calculation at some point and make sure that even it was a measly USD 2.00, I’d still like to get it back.

TG played better with the small courtesies. I ran to the gate 44, skipped looking at the lovely duty free and made it to the aircraft 12 minutes before departure. In 2 minutes, the doors would have closed and I would have missed my flight. TG is ruthless with closing doors. Even Thais….have lost the caring touch.

With self importance reigning at an all time high, with stalling gaining more strength, with commerce favoring the region, I wonder how long it will be before we crumble to the dust. All of Asia is at an all time high now. The Dragon, the Elephant and even us, the Tigers are racing to our dream limits. Beware Asians: of ego, mistrust, aggravation, lack of grace et al.