It’s funny how things have a way of working out. But the true hilarity is in when things don’t. For those of you reading this, the first sentence should be indication enough that this is most definitely
(and most defiantly) a pity post. And I am of the opinion I deserve at least one.
(You are free to disagree – but really, I don’t need another person to argue with, so shove it “somewhere polite”.)I was 14, just finished with my Class X Board exams and I had enough on my report card to qualify for the Holy Grail that is the science stream for my Higher Secondary. But like most geniuses, I had a plan. I chose arts, did phenomenally well, and conquered Acute Stress Syndrome
(or ASS – pun intended – a hang up from when I lost my mother.) I was going to become a journalist with exciting places to visit, people to expose and features to write.
The English Honours from the University of Pune at the Symbiosis Society’s College of Arts and Commerce is really called the English Special course. It isn’t really special; they make you go through the torture of studying the same Romantic poets and their works throughout the three years you spend there. But I enjoyed the Liberal Arts course and the Gender and Development extra credits along with watching the English Drama Circle put up some truly magnificent performances. My Masters in Defence and Strategic Studies
(I really do love International Relations – trust me, nothing gets me going like Obama’s AFPak Policy) turned out to be the single most disappointing chapter of my life. Cancelled classes, racist students, teachers who couldn’t tell the difference between the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China…
And then my dad fell ill. Horribly, terribly and suddenly ill. My grandmother and him were duly brought to Pune and installed at Jehangir hospital
(the dubious honour of the first swine flu death is credited to them) because believe it or not, we have family there. They certainly don’t act like it – oh sure, they gave us a roof over our heads, but I was just the one person with a sick father and a hypochondriac grandmother with asthma. Between making sure my dad was fine during his many dialysis cycles and taking my grandmother for her blood tests, I needed about four bodies and at least a dozen hands. Thankfully my amazing friends – sisters and brothers from other mothers – and my gorgeously perfect fiancé stepped in volunteering to bring food, spend the night at papa’s bedside, drop grandma home, etc.
Dad was eventually diagnosed with sudden Acute On chronic Renal Failure, put on peritoneal dialysis
(Google it if you’re that curious) and told to get a transplant. Hence, any plans of him staying in Siliguri alone with my grandma to take care of him flew out the window.
Two weeks after I dropped them back home and returned to Pune to begin to wrap things up, my grandma – the woman who had raised me since I was ten, fought with me like any mother does with her wilful daughter – passed away.
So I quit. I quit my studies; I quit the life I had built over four years in Pune and moved home – no regrets; which is not to say that I don’t feel like an utter loser sometimes.
Everyone tells me I should be proud of myself because I did something that a lot of people wouldn’t have had the guts to do. My friends who have jobs now – amazingly exciting jobs
(but that’s probably just me because the grass is always greener on the other side) – tell me the same thing. Then why is it that I am so horrifyingly jealous?
I loathe it, truly hate it when people call me up and tell me that they got into a fight with their boss, they defaulted on their rent, their car broke down and they got a puppy that has now proceeded to systematically chew through all their shoes. It’s so damnably normal and so deliciously routine.
I lost my mother when I was ten to cancer, I lost my grandfather a month before I started college to old age, I lost my grandma to a broken heart and now my dad stands on this huge precipice of organ acceptance or rejection. If it takes four pillars to hold up a roof, I’m the architect trying to balance the centre of my life’s gravity on just the one.
And the thing is I was doing a fine job of being emotionally stable until now.
My dad has his transplant in two weeks’ time and I have my wedding to plan for December this year. I don’t know how it’s going to pan out with my dad’s recovery – I am told the post-transplant medicines have a lot of side-effects. I don’t know how much money we will have left over and I have no clue how I am going to hold it all together. I have no one to help me with it (this is where my awesome friends will strongly protest and remind me that they are only a phone call away, but I’d rather have my mother over you – no offence), I have no one to tell me about the secrets of married life and reassure me that the “pain will give way to pleasure” (if you catch my drift). I won’t have my mother supervising every little thing and making sure that it’s perfect for her baby girl, she won’t be there over my shoulder when I look in the mirror to tell me that I look beautiful even though I weigh a hefty 86kgs (a whole 13kgs lesser than I was two months ago – yes, I weighed that much, get over it!) and can’t carry off a bridal outfit any better than I could hurl a 10 tonne boulder into the sea.
Between being terrified and weeping one minute and being depressed but pretending to be happy the next, I have turned into a nervous coward who just for once wants someone else to fight this God-damned battle for her.
Someone told me that there are road blocks but we’ll get around them. But after so many road blocks and badly paved detours, wouldn’t it be nice just to cruise on a freaking cross-country concrete expressway as smooth as the proverbial baby’s buttocks? Why must there be so many compromises to be made by one person, surely even God (if he exists) thinks it’s unfair?
Would it be too much to ask Him for a tiny inch of mercy? Would it be too much?
