The Chaos Within - A Flame
I lost another client – a child, a baby. He turned one on the 15th of August. India’s Independence Day.
This will be Thursday’s post, but I lost my client today, Saturday, not two hours ago. I sit now in the sterile atrium of Inlaks & Bhudrani hospital waiting for the family to pick up the little dead body that would fit into a travel pillowcase. The chair is moulded plastic. Uncomfortable. It reinforces our transience. It is not meant to hold us for long. It makes our backs ache and our butts numb, always moving us on. But some spend hours and hours and hours in chairs like these, in hospitals not too different, waiting for life to begin, to continue, to end.
For the little boy who just emptied himself to death – he died of chronic diarrhoea, a common cause of death in India for HIV+ babies under 18 months - life has only grief left. The grief of a mother, siblings, family, and people like us, caught up and affected. I visited the family’s home with Avinash to inform them of the boy’s death. The grandmother’s grief-ridden wails filled the narrow alley. They filled us. They still echo faintly… and not so faintly. It is dark outside now. The darkness creeps insidiously into this brightly lit atrium.
It is growing dark inside us. ‘Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls…’ The metaphysical poet’s words have often been used, Meditation XVII is crudely cello-taped on to the DISHA office door, and, yes, again, death has diminished us, it robs a glimmer of the light inside us. It cruelly extinguishes a flame. The candles inside us need to be lit again. (Some will ever remain unlit. Those flames will not dance again.)
The name Jyoti is derived from the Hindi word for flame. Jyoti is my client with the shattered thigh and defiant smile. Yes, another defiant smile. Smiles have to be defiant here. We have to defy circumstance. We have to defy choices made and decisions taken. We have to defy eyes that watch and tongues that wag. Sometimes, we have to defy the gods, or more accurately, the gods that the god men preach. And life, maybe the greatest paradox is that life itself must be defied, if life is to live in and through us.
These hard plastic chairs make for confusing thoughts… or is it intuitive clarity that confuses our everyday confusion?
Saved. The answer will have to wait. Here comes the family to pick up Jyoti’s son…
That was Saturday. The baby’s ashes have been carried by water and wind to places we cannot go… yet. Some would say that the child is part of life again. He is. He lives in Jyoti’s eyes. The candle has not been lit, and maybe it never will be again. But he does remain with her… how do I know? I just do. It is one of those things that you do not speculate about, or question, you just know. It’s that simple.
Her smile struggled to smile, but it was there when I met her two days later. I thought that her smile would have run away to cry, to grieve, to be lost for a while. Maybe it did… maybe it had just got back. It was still defiant. It needs to be. The days ahead will not be easy for Jyoti. She is an advanced stage III. She is frail. She knows that years will not be decades.
Fuck! I am being optimistic. Without antiretroviral therapy ‘years’ sounds hollow. Bleak!
Courage, determination, strength, character, all these are words. Clichéd and tired. What I saw in Jyoti’s eyes as I said goodbye (we sent her to City of Child) has no name. How I felt as I walked away has no name either. It doesn’t need one. It helps me breathe. It makes me smile.
‘Bleak’ or should that be 'death' juxtaposed against ‘smile’ – it is our reality.
A candle in my innermost place has fluttered back to life.
This will be Thursday’s post, but I lost my client today, Saturday, not two hours ago. I sit now in the sterile atrium of Inlaks & Bhudrani hospital waiting for the family to pick up the little dead body that would fit into a travel pillowcase. The chair is moulded plastic. Uncomfortable. It reinforces our transience. It is not meant to hold us for long. It makes our backs ache and our butts numb, always moving us on. But some spend hours and hours and hours in chairs like these, in hospitals not too different, waiting for life to begin, to continue, to end.
For the little boy who just emptied himself to death – he died of chronic diarrhoea, a common cause of death in India for HIV+ babies under 18 months - life has only grief left. The grief of a mother, siblings, family, and people like us, caught up and affected. I visited the family’s home with Avinash to inform them of the boy’s death. The grandmother’s grief-ridden wails filled the narrow alley. They filled us. They still echo faintly… and not so faintly. It is dark outside now. The darkness creeps insidiously into this brightly lit atrium.
It is growing dark inside us. ‘Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls…’ The metaphysical poet’s words have often been used, Meditation XVII is crudely cello-taped on to the DISHA office door, and, yes, again, death has diminished us, it robs a glimmer of the light inside us. It cruelly extinguishes a flame. The candles inside us need to be lit again. (Some will ever remain unlit. Those flames will not dance again.)
The name Jyoti is derived from the Hindi word for flame. Jyoti is my client with the shattered thigh and defiant smile. Yes, another defiant smile. Smiles have to be defiant here. We have to defy circumstance. We have to defy choices made and decisions taken. We have to defy eyes that watch and tongues that wag. Sometimes, we have to defy the gods, or more accurately, the gods that the god men preach. And life, maybe the greatest paradox is that life itself must be defied, if life is to live in and through us.
These hard plastic chairs make for confusing thoughts… or is it intuitive clarity that confuses our everyday confusion?
Saved. The answer will have to wait. Here comes the family to pick up Jyoti’s son…
That was Saturday. The baby’s ashes have been carried by water and wind to places we cannot go… yet. Some would say that the child is part of life again. He is. He lives in Jyoti’s eyes. The candle has not been lit, and maybe it never will be again. But he does remain with her… how do I know? I just do. It is one of those things that you do not speculate about, or question, you just know. It’s that simple.
Her smile struggled to smile, but it was there when I met her two days later. I thought that her smile would have run away to cry, to grieve, to be lost for a while. Maybe it did… maybe it had just got back. It was still defiant. It needs to be. The days ahead will not be easy for Jyoti. She is an advanced stage III. She is frail. She knows that years will not be decades.
Fuck! I am being optimistic. Without antiretroviral therapy ‘years’ sounds hollow. Bleak!
Courage, determination, strength, character, all these are words. Clichéd and tired. What I saw in Jyoti’s eyes as I said goodbye (we sent her to City of Child) has no name. How I felt as I walked away has no name either. It doesn’t need one. It helps me breathe. It makes me smile.
‘Bleak’ or should that be 'death' juxtaposed against ‘smile’ – it is our reality.
A candle in my innermost place has fluttered back to life.
posted by Deep Griha at 7:26 am
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