These are
not the easiest of times.
The last
year has been a mixed bag, a collection of all sorts of emotions, professional
achievements and failures. The year will be remembered by two overlapping events
that shaped it.
One. Nani’s Death
There have been many deaths in
the family, but none as close as this one, in terms of physical proximity. When
Dada passed away I was probably 15, still immature to deal with the physical aspect
of death. Being the first child in our family I was thoroughly spoilt by him
and his passing left a void in my life. After a period of about 40 days I started
to realize his absence in the daily routine of my life, beginning from coming
home from school, to catching an English film on the television, late at night.
As I was probably protected from the event that surrounds death, his absence
has had an effect for a longing that is physical since that day. Forty days
after he passed away, I wept, for an hour, and I still do, at the times I miss
his presence in my life.
I was not so close to my Nani,
but over the last five years since she began living with us on & off, I grew
attached to her. The last three years she was not in the best of health and had
become dependent for her daily needs. She was a proud lady, who had lived by
herself for over thirty years, and I could tell she did not like this period of
her life one bit. There was a question that she used to ask me, only me, “When
will this all come to an end?” and every time the answer would be the same, “When
it has to.” In some strange way, I always felt, she asked me, because she knew
that I knew how she felt through the last years of her life. One fine day, last
year, on the eve of Ganesh Chaturthi, she called up and spoke to me. She
mentioned that she would not be spending the festival days with us, but with
Masi & Jinali, and also that she is sorry as she would not meet me ever
again. Two days later, we got the phone call! A perfectly timed death, she
breathed her last, comforted by her elder daughter, my mother, as Nani died
while sleeping with her head resting in mum’s lap. I maintain that the lady
knew what was happening to her, she knew that she was dying, and she knew when
death would come, or rather, she chose when she wanted to depart. I have had to
deal with Nani’s death physically. Nani had two daughters, and I am the only
grandson. It was her wish, that I perform the cremation.
The cremation rituals seem
absurd. The last of the rituals involve transferring the body onto a pyre prepared by
laying wood and then applying ghee all over the body. I was told to put extra
around the pectoral & pelvic girdles, knees and forehead, post which you
start the ‘burning’ by attempting to set the body on fire, from the left toe,
and later setting the wood below it on fire. The cremation ends with a long
wait for the body to burn down completely and the removal of fragments of bones
that have been left. I carried her pieces of her bones wrapped in a
handkerchief all the way to the beach where they were immersed in the sea. For
however weird these rituals might seem, they have provided a sense of closure
for me. Sure I miss her, and I will continue to do so, but, I know that she
went on her terms and what she desired has been fulfilled.
Two. Office Project
Masi & Masa bought a new
office, and they were keen that I design and execute the Inerior Architecture
work for their new space. The budgets and scale of work was of the kind that
was a first for me, professionally as I had never taken on work of this scale
by myself. Backed by my team of young, experienced & enthusiastic team of
contractors, I took the project head on.
My uncle is a sort of a tyrant,
or at least he likes to portray himself as one. There were all kinds of
paperwork and rules and deadlines that he had set out along with a very tight
time for the work to be executed and a hefty fine for the delay. He made sure
that I was in a tight box, enclosed and engulfed and kept under pressure
through-out the duration of the project. The involvement of Masi & Jinali
is what made it a lot of fun and a relief from the tyranny of Mr. Mehta walking
around on his home turf. This project came with a lot of hope, an opportunity
to prove myself to my harshest critic and a promise that if this one goes well,
more work will follow.
A short while into the
execution of this project, Nani passed away. I had to take on the role of
transforming myself into a source of strength and calm in the mad weeping and
sadness filled atmosphere that engulfed the family, all this while Mr. Tyranny himself
was trying to deal with it, by hiding from public view. He could not appear to
be vulnerable, an emotional mess, weeping at the loss of his mother-in-law in
front of family and friends for whom he is a figure of discipline and
professionalism. This man resumed work a few hours after the funeral and so did
I. I remember him walking up to me as I watched the pyre burning and reminding me of a meeting that I had to keep with him for one in the afternoon the very same
day. I cremated my grandmother and got back to work after having written the
obituary for the newspapers. I kept the appointment.
Looking back, I feel that I was
never given a moment of time to internailse her death. I was supposed to be the
strong one for the family, on whose shoulders everyone would cry and a responsible professional
working non-stop for the family, the hard-working committed individual who
doesn’t allow anything to stop him.
Anyway, I kept to the date of
hand-over, a day earlier in fact. This was a project that was executed against
all odds to the satisfaction of the company. But, I feel that this project has
been a failure. It failed to live up to my expectations of bringing in new work
and new opening new doors. A section of my peers thought it was too
conventional, or safe, etc. I however, disagree with them, as I think that the
design has worked with the material limitations that surround the making of
such a space, and yet created a new aesthetic in terms of use of material,
spatial configuration, etc. I created a wonderful, joyous & happy working
environment, but, it is a failure.
It has been a year since I started
the process of work on the office, and no substantial work has come in since
then. With the cynicism setting in slowly, I am thinking that maybe becoming a
good & successful architect is subject to your position in society and how
you position yourself to the world. Maybe it is a dream that would be left
un-fulfilled. Dadi is in the last stage of Cancer and probably living out her
last few days or months.
This July, life has come full
circle.
