Pause

1st Feb, 2021

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There is a singular sensation that can make you wish for death and life at the same time, sometimes. The sense of a helplessness induced by an inexplicable connection with another human being.

You suddenly desire Death, because there is extreme anxiety, discomfort, fear, restlessness that you wish weren't there. You are responsible for what you love but then you are so very helpless. One doesn't need to go through this. 

And then you desire Life, because only this vulnerability lets you experience undiluted love. Makes you a little more than your self. You can almost touch tenderness in that moment of truth. Even as you try to rationalise objectively that every connect in life is a give and a take, be it parent or child or a friend, love seeps in silently from underneath.

No exchange, no expectation, no negotiation, numbing pain and rare pleasure, still ... love. It is such a thing. 

As I put Rhea to sleep early for the morning surgery, singing her favourite song, my voice echoes strange in the indifferently white hospital room, and that singular sensation floats in again. I dodge for a while, then deny, then smile and let it flow. And settle. The view of the night garden just outside the window brings in a soothing quiet.

Love, it is such a thing.

...

2nd Feb, 2021

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Fearless never works for me. I am afraid of things. Things that matter. But I do try to keep it aside and do what must be done. So it appears to onlookers as though I am fearless. But you see I never really am. I only choose to defocus.

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Post surgery, tonight is a moon's crater sleep story lent by a friend. Thousands of craters creating the unique lunar texture, each with a name, an aura, a sight to see. Rhea watching them all in her mind, through a telescope from Earth. She listens thinks questions almost reaches the moon travelling across the silence of spaces. It really is the Moon right now. She wants to jump high pick heavy stuff easy and vacation on the Moon. Mars is still uncertain but Moon is quite a friendly neighbourhood. She can even pick a crater and build her city in it and a house on top of the hill in the centre. And watch Kolkata with a telescope and maybe see her first Earthrise...

...

3rd Feb, 2021

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Three lights are on throughout the day and night in a room two levels above us. That is the topmost floor of the hospital building. To me they look like "Akash Prodeep", the 'Sky Beacon'. Those lamplights that stay aflame on Earth to guide those in the sky. 

The midnight silence of the hospital is both clinical and deep. Somewhere in that quiet there are deaths, there are births and there are lives breathing in between. All foliated beautifully by life.

When Rhea slowly goes off to sleep, holding a hand of mine, so I dont go anywhere away from her, leaving her alone in the scary bed full of wires and dials, I kind of see my purpose. Seeing the girls off to their lives. Seeing the parents off to their endings. Then stepping out and seeing my final self off, to silence. 

...