DEATH OF MY FATHER

 

(Photo Courtesy: Joginder Panghal)

I was hardly five year old then. Just started going to school in torn half pants. No shirt, no shoes, no books, just a slate and a running nose.

My mother was pregnant, due to deliver any time.

Like many good farmers, my father had the habit of getting up at early dawn, with cocks crow and walk to our rice fields and check the water flow in the canal, damage done by wild animals and growth of the crop. I sometimes used to accompany him to enjoy the cool breeze, sitting on his shoulders. But on that particular day I did not get up in time. I slept with him at night but woke up only to find his side empty and felt disappointed a little.  Little did I know that this disappointment is going to be a permanent one.

Ours was a joint family of 16 members and as the dawn approached everybody went about busy with one’s own duties.

I brushed near the bushes in the backyard and about to go for an open bath at the big clay water tub, when I heard a commotion and ran to the front door to see, half wrapped in my little towel.

What I saw shocked me!

Four neighbor farmers rushed in carrying my father on their shoulders. He was unconscious. He was laid down on a cot in the verandah and my uncle sent people on cycles to Bobbili, a small town 4km away to fetch a doctor immediately. There was no medical man in our tiny village Gunnathota Valasa. Clinic was a far cry.

My mother, adding to the trouble, started complaining of labor pains. My aunts and other ladies prevented her from knowing my father’s condition but promptly shifted her to a neighbor’s house on some pretext for having her delivery. An old, experienced village mid-wife was attending on her.

As the day progressed, my father’s condition became worse. Doctors from town were kept on being brought, in Tongas and bullock carts. My village had no motorable road. Doctors gave injections; people who knew administrated massages but in vain. There was no improvement. The patient was not in a condition to be moved and taken to the town hospital.

As a puzzled kid, I kept running from father’s sick bed to mother’s delivery room in the next house and was peeping through peoples legs; even though I got thorough scolding and slaps for coming in the way.

Our small house was brimming with villagers, doctors and those who came to see or help. Some women were already sobbing!

I could not comprehend a thing! I bunked the school but no one bothered. By evening, there was a baby cry in my mother’s labor room and some aunt patted me on my head and said that I just got a sister. There was no joy when she said it. Everyone was so preoccupied. I could not comprehend a bit.

Minutes later, as the darkness of night was looming large, there was a big commotion and loud wailing of women. My father was declared dead. I did not cry. I did not understand what it meant.

It was my first experience of a death. It was also my first experience of a birth. What an irony! One life comes into the world, another life leaves it. We blame the irony, not appreciating the natures beautiful way of balancing life.

But at that age I was too young to understand anything. “Will I sleep with my father tonight?” was my only thought I had. My father was very helpful to all farmers and field labourers and thus liked by not only people of my village but also people of all neighboring villages whose fields were next to ours. As the news of my father’s death spread, people from all neighboring villages thronged, filling our courtyard and spilling on to the streets and beyond, though it was already night.

Most of them came walking barefoot; few came in cycles, bullock carts, holding oil torches, hurricane lantarms, and battery lights. The village had no electricity. As it was the custom, the body was moved to the front yard and put on ground on a husk mattress. An oil lamp was lit on the head side in the direction of South. Devotional bhajans were organized to keep the vigil through the night.

Dumbstruck and totally ignored, I moved here and there thoroughly lost. Hungry but whom could I ask? Exhausted and aimless I fell off to sleep in some remote corner on the floor.

I felt like an orphan.

I woke up at dawn next day with the din of death ritual arrangements and increased loud wailing. Some relative noticed me at last, hugged me, cried and gave a glass of butter milk with starch water. I was hungry and gulped it without a word.

My mother was heartbroken as she got the news, she silently and uncontrollably kept weeping in the neighbor’s house. She was not allowed to see my father’s body. She was in her twenties being the second wife of my father, who divorced the first wife since she was barren.

Elaborate death rituals started. Bathing the body, sandal paste application, new clothing, garlands of flowers, bamboo stretcher, loud wailing, toms-toms, drums and mantras – the diversions to grief took place. People competed in carrying his bamboo stretcher on their shoulders. The funeral procession was the biggest I have so far seen in my life. It was like the Ratha-Yatra of Lord Jagannath.

Some relatives held me back from running after the procession to the cremation ground. I wailed and rolled on the ground but in vain.

I ran to my mother’s delivery room. My innocent baby sister was lying next to her but no one bothered to even acknowledge her birth! I kept staring at the tiny bundle of flesh. I was afraid to go near!

I overheard some aunt condemning the innocent new born saying “This girl is born and, devoured her father. What a devil? Chee!”

How cruel we are? I felt like beating up who ever said that. But I could not. I simply ran away far, far from that place!