The Chaos Within
It’s been a funny few days, weeks even. Not ha ha funny. Funny peculiar. In truth, I have found that recently the ha ha funny transmogrifies into the funny peculiar without any prompting from me. Not that I generally prod and poke the ha ha funny towards funny peculiar. Although I must admit that for me thin partitions do divide the two.
Now, what has been so funny peculiar?
The answer is mortality. Yes, you read right, mortality - The undeniable fact that all of us, one day, will die. Cheerful, am I not?
Why is mortality funny peculiar? In fact, why is mortality funny at all?
If you saw what the DISHA team saw at the SAHARA care home for the dying, the majority of whom have HIV wasting disease and advanced cases of tuberculosis, mortality is not funny. Why did I call it the home for the dying, why didn’t I attempt to use the more politically correct ‘hospice,’ or ‘palliative care centre?’ Simply, because it is a home for the dying, it is a place where people come to die. Similarly, if you were with us when we went to the government morgue at Sassoon General to pick up Usha’s body, ‘funny’ would not be the word you would associate with that experience. Usha, vivacious, big grin, reduced to the ashen, huddled-in-pain form that left her two children behind on the 18th of July… would I say funny? No, I would not.
Yet, it is Usha’s grin that has remained with me these past few weeks, albeit a grin that was reduced to a grimace at the end. She was in pain. She knew she was going to die. “Look after my children father!” She made me promise, she made us all promise. She sometimes called me ‘doctor’ too. I have nothing that resembles a medical degree and although I came perilously close to being ordained once, she could never have known that. Usha would have grimaced with me if she had to walk into a freezer room in Sassoon General to collect a pristinely wrapped corpse. This was no Egyptian burial chamber. The smell of decay was fresh. A rat scurried across the juicy floor. Bodies in various stages of decomposition lay haphazardly about… ‘man is but grass’ - this fragment from Ecclesiastes muttered repeatedly inside me. I shook my head in disbelief. Usha should not have spent her last night here. The family refused to claim her body from SAHARA, and with no other choice, we were forced to house her in the local morgue - Rs.60 for the night.
A hint of the funny peculiar begins to surface.
Usha would have smiled wryly like I did when the professional mourners began their cacophony as her body was carried into the crematorium. “Where were they when I was alive father?” This was the same question that kept breaking upon the barrier of my grief. Where were they when she needed them? A new sari was unfurled and it was laid respectfully upon her mummified form. I turned to Avinash, my field supervisor, who was close to tears, “She would have loved a new sari when she was alive. What’s the fucking point of giving her one now to be burnt to fuck?!?” He shook his head wordlessly. He understood my anger, but the profanity was alien.
My wry smile turned to a harsh laugh and then a glare as I stared at the wailing hypocrites who shunned Usha when she was still with us, when all she wanted was reassurance that her children would be looked after, reassurance that she received only at Deep Griha Society. The community brings up the child. How often have we heard this? How often have these statements been nothing more than meaningless platitudes? It is our hope that the tight-knit Tadiwala road community is the exception, i.e., that they do not resort to platitudes, that they walk the talk! (Sorry, I’ve wanted to write that line for awhile now, and it seemed appropriate.) Deep Griha must never forget that we form part of the community now, we have been here since 1979, generations have known us, and have cared with us. We have to help them care for those living with HIV/AIDS. It is the greatest challenge we have faced yet.
So, why is mortality funny peculiar?
Rats feeding upon the unwanted dead, yes. Hypocritical professional mourners, yes. Yet, nothing appears to be particularly peculiar in the funny dept. Well, the answer lies with mortality itself. Mortality is funny, because suddenly everything I do seems to be determined by it. It is in my face day after day after day. I sometimes sit for lunch with the clients and look around the nutrition centre and think, ‘fuck, next year she may not be here.’ Nowness is so important. The moment is bound up with vitality, but mortality is the fuel that appears to drive us.
Something has gone wrong with my insides. For so long now I have tried to determine my actions and thoughts and feelings by the fact that I live, that I was born, rather than the fact that I will one day, inevitably, die. In affected fashion I used to refer to myself as a natal, and this was before I read of Hannah Arendt or ‘natality.’ For me death was a given, and I chose to focus on the wonderful randomness and certainty of my birth. I live! Now, I am forced to look upon death like many others who live their lives obsessed with when and where and of course the all important what next, while birth is the mere given. The argument that my colleague who does not have HIV can be hit by a bus tomorrow does not comfort me. Four of my colleagues are in stage II of HIV/AIDS, two of them have CD4 counts below 200/mm. I broke accepted mores after Usha’s death and hugged one of them and kissed her on the forehead. She did not pull away. Her eyes that had filled up overflowed.
Mortality – funny peculiar, or is it funny ha ha after all?
Now, what has been so funny peculiar?
The answer is mortality. Yes, you read right, mortality - The undeniable fact that all of us, one day, will die. Cheerful, am I not?
Why is mortality funny peculiar? In fact, why is mortality funny at all?
If you saw what the DISHA team saw at the SAHARA care home for the dying, the majority of whom have HIV wasting disease and advanced cases of tuberculosis, mortality is not funny. Why did I call it the home for the dying, why didn’t I attempt to use the more politically correct ‘hospice,’ or ‘palliative care centre?’ Simply, because it is a home for the dying, it is a place where people come to die. Similarly, if you were with us when we went to the government morgue at Sassoon General to pick up Usha’s body, ‘funny’ would not be the word you would associate with that experience. Usha, vivacious, big grin, reduced to the ashen, huddled-in-pain form that left her two children behind on the 18th of July… would I say funny? No, I would not.
Yet, it is Usha’s grin that has remained with me these past few weeks, albeit a grin that was reduced to a grimace at the end. She was in pain. She knew she was going to die. “Look after my children father!” She made me promise, she made us all promise. She sometimes called me ‘doctor’ too. I have nothing that resembles a medical degree and although I came perilously close to being ordained once, she could never have known that. Usha would have grimaced with me if she had to walk into a freezer room in Sassoon General to collect a pristinely wrapped corpse. This was no Egyptian burial chamber. The smell of decay was fresh. A rat scurried across the juicy floor. Bodies in various stages of decomposition lay haphazardly about… ‘man is but grass’ - this fragment from Ecclesiastes muttered repeatedly inside me. I shook my head in disbelief. Usha should not have spent her last night here. The family refused to claim her body from SAHARA, and with no other choice, we were forced to house her in the local morgue - Rs.60 for the night.
A hint of the funny peculiar begins to surface.
Usha would have smiled wryly like I did when the professional mourners began their cacophony as her body was carried into the crematorium. “Where were they when I was alive father?” This was the same question that kept breaking upon the barrier of my grief. Where were they when she needed them? A new sari was unfurled and it was laid respectfully upon her mummified form. I turned to Avinash, my field supervisor, who was close to tears, “She would have loved a new sari when she was alive. What’s the fucking point of giving her one now to be burnt to fuck?!?” He shook his head wordlessly. He understood my anger, but the profanity was alien.
My wry smile turned to a harsh laugh and then a glare as I stared at the wailing hypocrites who shunned Usha when she was still with us, when all she wanted was reassurance that her children would be looked after, reassurance that she received only at Deep Griha Society. The community brings up the child. How often have we heard this? How often have these statements been nothing more than meaningless platitudes? It is our hope that the tight-knit Tadiwala road community is the exception, i.e., that they do not resort to platitudes, that they walk the talk! (Sorry, I’ve wanted to write that line for awhile now, and it seemed appropriate.) Deep Griha must never forget that we form part of the community now, we have been here since 1979, generations have known us, and have cared with us. We have to help them care for those living with HIV/AIDS. It is the greatest challenge we have faced yet.
So, why is mortality funny peculiar?
Rats feeding upon the unwanted dead, yes. Hypocritical professional mourners, yes. Yet, nothing appears to be particularly peculiar in the funny dept. Well, the answer lies with mortality itself. Mortality is funny, because suddenly everything I do seems to be determined by it. It is in my face day after day after day. I sometimes sit for lunch with the clients and look around the nutrition centre and think, ‘fuck, next year she may not be here.’ Nowness is so important. The moment is bound up with vitality, but mortality is the fuel that appears to drive us.
Something has gone wrong with my insides. For so long now I have tried to determine my actions and thoughts and feelings by the fact that I live, that I was born, rather than the fact that I will one day, inevitably, die. In affected fashion I used to refer to myself as a natal, and this was before I read of Hannah Arendt or ‘natality.’ For me death was a given, and I chose to focus on the wonderful randomness and certainty of my birth. I live! Now, I am forced to look upon death like many others who live their lives obsessed with when and where and of course the all important what next, while birth is the mere given. The argument that my colleague who does not have HIV can be hit by a bus tomorrow does not comfort me. Four of my colleagues are in stage II of HIV/AIDS, two of them have CD4 counts below 200/mm. I broke accepted mores after Usha’s death and hugged one of them and kissed her on the forehead. She did not pull away. Her eyes that had filled up overflowed.
Mortality – funny peculiar, or is it funny ha ha after all?
posted by Deep Griha at 4:49 am
1 Comments:
Hey Hans,
Talie sent me this link a few days back and I was just looking through it. I had no idea this was the kind of work you guys were involved in. Am more than interested... How do I get about volunteering. It may not be immediate but, as soon as I can anyhow. Hope you and Ashlu are doing ok. Tc and see you around!
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