the past year

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.