Goodbyes We Didn't Get to Say

With a cigarette lighter held up close to my mouth, he’d give me a tight pinch on my thighs. When I’d scream out in pain, he’d stuff my mouth with more food. “Ni romba chellam kuduthu valakre!”, he’d tell my mother and walk away pleased with his display of corporal punishment.

My granddad wasn’t really a bad guy, but he was a narcissistic fool, for lack of a better word. Our relationship was toxic for most part and estranged for a while. When I got back in touch with him, it was largely to keep my parents happy. I kept hold on the boundaries of the relationship, but he began to go back to his old ways. I’d receive a call from him, followed by my aunts in succession non-stop. I was morbidly afraid of him getting to know my address. I’d get a panic attack anytime he called, and I’d have to pull up my car, breathe and call back after rehearsing what I was going to say. At one point, I needed therapy to overcome this fear.

I was pleasantly surprised how everyone else loved their grandparents but for me, they were an object of fear. I had never received any calls from them on my birthdays. All my life I only remember being constantly put down, insulted or beaten or slandered and one vivid, scarring memory of being locked up in my aunt’s house in Tirunelveli Town. For many years, I’d even avoid anyone who was remotely associated with that place. I can’t imagine returning to that place without being remembered by people there as someone who screamed and banged the doors to be let free. What an embarrassment. I would receive more labels for not cowering down in obedience to their abuse – which is their definition of a perfect girl. My parents were also naïve, young parents and before they realized they needed to step in and put a foot down, it was too late.

They forced my parents to leave me in a boarding school, when I was only four, only because my grandfather deemed that fit for my conditioning. For many years, they’d threaten to send me back to “Pushpalatha” Boarding school if I didn’t behave. In those days, there was no direct international calling facility from Tirunelveli. They’d from a calling booth in Muscat to call an uncle in Madras who would then call our hostel and tell us that our families called and said hi. I hadn’t even begun speaking to speak properly on the phone at that age. The last time he called me and I began to panic, I cried in the office bathroom (because I am a fool), walked around my office soaking in the comfort and familiarity of my colleagues, and went back to my desk to stare at the monitor and waited for the momentary anxiety to pass. Can I tell you how much I love being at work sometimes?

He would call non-stop, for a couple of times. This obsessive calling needs to be patented to my family really. I didn’t get around to getting therapy, but I did read a lot about it and learned a trick. I totally planned to ignore his call but then I called back and decided to try this new trick – I would talk exactly like him. I sounded entitled and shot many questions before he could ask me anything. “Why didn’t you call me at all?”- This is the most ridiculous thing to tell someone with whom you’ve never had a relationship with.

“Ena ivlo melinju poite? Don’t you eat at all?”

“Why didn’t you inform me about that relative who died? Nobody invited me for that function? Oh somebody is calling me, I need to go, bye.”

My grandad was thrown and forgot what he called me for. I knew I couldn’t fake it another time. I wanted the courage to tell him frankly that I am not interested to give him information he wants. That he is not entitled to expect a call from me at all.

The thing is my grandfather did not want to mend the relationship or make a new one, which I’d be open to. I wished I could talk to him about the childhood memories we made in Muscat. I remember you bought me my first bicycle or all my clothes till I turned 5. Or the endless supplies of snacks. You know thatha, I don’t get sleep at all.

By the time I got professional help to muster the courage and even try to turn the relationship around, he died.

I hadn’t expected to feel the way I did when he died. I always imagined it would be relieving. No more panic. No more fear. Instead, I felt more grief than I expected to feel. When we lose someone we associate with trauma, we lose the person but not the trauma. We have memories associated with them, both good and bad. I briefly felt sad and soon began to feel panic. I quickly remembered that I had to meet those people I had last seen at my father’s funeral again the next day. My grief was quickly replaced with the fear and anxiety.

Though I am a person of faith, I am not one of rituals. If there is anything of Hinduism I loathe completely, it would be the rituals around funerals. There is not a moment of privacy with someone who just lost, one last conversation, just alone. What a disgrace to undress someone in public, after they demise? Oh, he has no sons, then let’s call a boy on the street to perform the last rites because daughters are well, daughters? Change them into new clothes in front of everybody. Drop a coin on their head, when they have spent their entire life’s earnings on you? Worst of all, refer to them as a body. I vividly remember my aunt calling my father that.

Let’s move the body. One day ago, he is Anna and now he is a body? How dare you, motherfucker! I used to have nightmares waking up screaming at her in choking despair. I planned to repeat these things at my grandfather’s funeral, play music on my phone and maybe call him a body, just like they had done at my father’s. I didn’t do any of that, but I did vividly capture everyone’s reactions- did my aunt refer to her dad as a body? Did she laugh and have a good time? My grandparents had a better relationship with their other grandchildren - their grief was probably genuine. But I had a hard time grieving for someone who was never there. I didn’t want to attend and show my life to a family of strangers who never had the nerve to reconcile with us when my father was alive. To be honest, the attendance on my part was only to show I take the high road and have the decency to pay respects even for someone who was absent in my life. Though I did find some sort of closure in being there, it seemed to me just like another day. A few were in grief and the rest were in attendance as a matter of duty and socializing with everyone. Unfortunately, I still had a role to play in the stupid wake ceremony as the eldest grandchild. It was less outrageous for me this time, but I couldn’t be more indifferent to this travesty of spiritual performance that Hindu funerals involve.

Nothing of death or funerals or grief, makes sense at all – immaterial of whether they were somebody we loved or hated.

It seemed to me like that all the goodbyes we get to say, are always temporary. But the ones we didn’t get to say, are forever.