Ashes and Remains | Diary

Time works. In sequential order.

It doesn바카라�t erase or fade anything, actually. It just goes on. You realised it while mechanically going about things after your uncle passed earlier this month. In fact, you lost your sense of tense. And of time바카라�s linear march.

The scar on your uncle바카라�s face, they had said, came from a fight where someone sliced his cheek. You only found out later that he was born with it. Back then, they had to operate on him to fix things on his face. Plastic surgery hadn바카라�t evolved then. The scar ran like a deep river across his face. He was younger than your father and worked in the police department. His face, which you see differently now, was like a calm landscape after the rains.

You are now preparing for the moments that will slaughter you, split you into a million pieces and you will try not to cry or to despair.

For as long as you can, you will stretch time. But the orange is turning into blue already. The sky is alert. You aren바카라�t.

You billboards, road signs, everything just to be in the present.

You will go to the airport, buy a cup of coffee, read a page of a book you are carrying about a woman바카라�s loss of speech and a man바카라�s loss of vision. You will board when you are called to and you will be lifted in the air and you will try to sleep for a bit.

You will touch down and you will go home and you will never be the same again. We are made up of people we know. That바카라�s what the writer you met yesterday had said.

Out of 11 siblings, including my father, five are now gone. The rest will live with the agony of the loss, the pain that unsaid things bring, the whole subtraction process that won바카라�t stop until the count is zero.

It must be hard to lose a younger sibling. Your father is a man who speaks little. But you saw him cry that afternoon when he bid the final farewell. He sobbed like a child.

***

There were stories. Small little fragments that people shared about the dead. His photo was kept in the place where his body had been the night before in a glass case.

When they began to share the stories, they didn바카라�t think they would remember so much that they would cry and laugh at the same time.

Someone remembered that one time when he had given money to treat someone in the family. Another said how he had continued to send him a stipend of Rs 150 for many years because the person had lost his father.

A cousin recalled he had bought vegetables for her marriage function. He had checked the stock in the kitchen and found that it wasn바카라�t enough. She remembered the amount. It was Rs 7,500. This was many, many years ago.

You didn바카라�t share that once he had got you a badminton racquet. You used to play that sport as a child, and you remember that the house-help came with the racquet and said it was for you. You were so happy. Your father was struggling and your uncle remembered that you had wanted a racquet.

Some time ago, he said you should come by his house too. And you said you바카라�d go, but you never made it.

We grow up and we grow apart.

Maybe there were more than 32 slots at Delhi바카라�s Lodhi Crematorium, but how do you count pyres that are lives, dreams and losses burning in heaps? Long after the families leave, the ashes will be numbered and handed back. People end just like that.

The crematorium is a busy one, and all burning and rituals are to be completed within the dedicated time slot. One hour or so. A human with all those years and stories confined to a square and a deadline.

The pits are designed to accommodate as many dead as possible. Your uncle was 바카라�Number 26바카라�. You were handed a little stick doll with a face made of rags. You placed it at the body바카라�s feet, as instructed. Then, you placed the logs like everyone else. They say that바카라�s how you release the dead. By burning them, so they return to the elements they came from.

Your cousin brother lit the pyre and that old crackling sound began. You saw your old and very fragile father wipe his tears. They say siblings are your soul mates. Your uncle바카라�s son, standing there, suddenly seemed so calm. It was like he had just crossed over to being that man who now had witnessed his father바카라�s death.

바카라�Papa will now be only in the photos,바카라� he said.

You didn바카라�t know what to say. You sat there with him and watched your uncle burn.

You instinctively took a photo. They say you don바카라�t keep photos of pyres, but you kept it as a final keepsake.

To lose a father must be a difficult thing.

You still wake up in the middle of the night and think about all that you have lost.

You still have not cried.

Your uncle is now a memory.

Your father hides his pain. You haven바카라�t spoken about any of this.

But your father came to the airport to see you off.

And every day, your mother reminds you to take your medicines.

We all know we will lose each other. Pyres will be lit and ashes will be committed to the river.

We will never come to terms with any act of leaving.

You wish you had said to your uncle that he was a gentle soul and that scar made him look so beautiful.

You will forever live with that unsaid bit.

Chinki Sinha is Editor, Outlook