I Learn That Writing About Loss Is The Only Path To Healing

Wishing my late Baba on his birthday today feels surreal. I know he has gone so far that I can’t reach him anymore. Things I wish to say or ask are impossible now. Also, it’s taboo to talk much about personal loss. But how does one heal, by keeping it all in? It’s also not easy to express these deep feelings. One sometimes tends to forget some of the special and momentous things about a person, who is no more. I recall his last birthday, and how he struggled to blow out the candles, but I still didn’t realise that this would be his last birthday, two years back on 25th June 2022. 

The memories that course through my bloodstream 

My memory holds on to a very old ailing man wearing a white sweatshirt and eating a bit of the cake to not play spoilt sport to our idea of celebrating his birthday. He knew he was ebbing, maybe. 

Today, I ponder on all that transpired in the years of he working outside India and we only maybe wished over a trunk call. Those days, during the 80s, birthdays were not a big deal for parents. 

Very few children born in the 70s or 80s celebrated their parents’ birthdays. It was not the norm. It was always the child or children’s birthdays that was celebrated. In middle-class homes, this Western concept was imbibed and parents generally celebrated their children’s birthdays with the neighbourhood kids and sometimes, if one was lucky, the school best friends were invited who came with presents. There was no “papa ki pari” kind of celebration. Children hovered greedily around the cake so that you blow the candle and then Ma would cut a piece for the kids, while in most homes, the fathers would be inconspicuous. They would be present, reading the newspaper or doing something very important on a file. One plate would have a slice of cake, chips, Bengali sweets and one samosa that got sweetened with sugar syrup and no one seemed to mind. 

My Ma made kheer as tradition, but all I wanted was the cheap sugary hard icing cake with cassata colours to bite into. Only then did I feel that the birthday party was complete? 

My parents' birthdays were no big deal ever at my growing-up days at home. It is only with my social media feed of warm reels of children celebrating elderly parents' birthdays that I learnt that I must do something special. And I remain glad for these learnings. I began therefore celebrating Baba’s birthday. My Ma’s birthday wasn’t ever celebrated as my grandparents didn’t know the English date and each time I tried to find out, she would say it rained hard and it was at night. 

I feel bereft today. As I can’t sing anymore and be the first one to feed him before anyone else could. I miss our occasional coffee and cake dates, where he always without fail spoke about leaving Bangalore and wanting to be in a place where he was heard and understood. Kolkata was his dream home. Although he never really lived there. He had a sense of belonging with the trams, the political debates and the audible attitude of the general public of West Bengal added to his sarcastic sense of humour. Baba had wit and he used to bombard me with political memes and jokes. Today, the WhatsApp profile photo remains empty. 

Baba has left behind a house full of Bengali and English books, files, pens, a magnifying glass things he used and books he hoarded. I didn’t take them to heart when he was around. It is now that I stop and touch the things he used and feel a deep sadness inside my heart. There are the doctor’s files, neatly arranged, and the pocket Bengali-to-English dictionary that he carried with him like I carry my mobile phone. They are all lying around waiting maybe for the rightful owner to touch them again. 

There is all of this and more of him, that I find excruciatingly difficult to discard. Such is the way to find closure of a relationship that courses through your bloodstream. It never ceases to exist. 

The previously regular and ordinary things, he used, now cease to remain ordinary. They are possessed by his memories and the lost magic of their rightful owner’s aliveness. The remnants are an infinite reminder of his life in fragments and not in its totality. 

It is over two years now but I still find it difficult to throw away his things away. The stapler, the scissors and the paper cutter lying desolate in his home, on the bookshelf. Some books remind me of his permanent spot in my soul. 

I know, one day I need to let them go and today I am not ready yet. If he was around, he would be a ripe old 82-year-old man and still as obsessed about my son, his grandchild, as he was from the day he was born. 

Bereft but brave I won’t ever forget 25th June in my life ever. 

Mohua Chinappa is a poet, and author who runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is also a member of an award-winning London-based think tank called Bridge India.