Thatha

My grandfather died.
He was old and he died.
Like all other old men do. Die.

His eyes, unblinking, he stared at some point in infinity.
His lungs, aided by a rusty oxygen cylinder, he took in air to keep himself artificially alive.
For his son, American son, who he referred to in his diary, Dr. Shivakumar,
To be accompanied by his daughter-in-law, who he referred ironically, informally as Anu.

His grandchildren, also his grand nieces, shook him and shouted at him.
As if it was a game. To see if he would respond. Perhaps utter a sound that spoke of recognition.
He didnt. He simply took in air. Loudly. Painfully. Deathly.

His son, my father, dressed in impeccable blue and black, striding and conversing about ambulances and ventilators,
Walked in and stood behind his father.
Called out to him- Appaji, Appaji- words rarely uttered to the dying man's face in earlier years.
He gasped and suddenly it dawned that they were sobs.
Of a child, my father, crying for his Appaji's life.

A phone call, few hours later announced that Thatha was "serious".
The doctors, life-keepers, who assuredly had announced he could kept alive for a couple mpre days,
They said, "he's serious. Less than an hour he has".
Men who grew up with him burst into torrid sobs.
Passing of a familiar figure, death announcing their own sunset perhaps.

Two more cell phone updates later, my father, his son, sank into a sofa.
He held his face in his hands and sobbed. His face contorted, he wept.
While his wife and two children, not knowing a response to this unfamiliar emotion,
Sat and ate. Guiltily. Confused.

He lay there. Limp and lifeless. Sleeping his last sleep.
His mouth slighlty parted like someone sleeping a deep sleep.
Hands and wrists curled up like the paralysed man he was.
Bound to a chair with infected legs.

His son, my father, touched his face, caressed his sparse but thick hair ( a little detail perhaps no one knew till he lay there limp and lifeless).
Composed in his conversations with doctors and in his driving to the hospital,
He broke down. Loudly.
For a moment, he laid his head on his wife's shoulders.
His wife, my mother, knew not what to do.
Sensing no warmth but only confusion,
My father and his loud sobs left the sterile ICU.

My father, whose only emotions public were Indifference, Frowns, Pearly smiles and cricket happy face,
Wept his middle-aged orphaned tears. Crying his fatherless tears.
I held him and told him that he was not alone. That he had us.
But face covered, his body shook while he pulled away from me.
And I held him again, uttering consolation again and again.

Opening his face, revealing his blood-shot eyes, he wiped my tears away
"That s all he was meant to live. I must control myself"
And then he stopped. Became the man I knew.
Covering up his fatherless silences with mandatory phone calls.

It was time then to say my final goodbye.
To the man of my childhood.
The distant old Thatha who offered flowers that I picked out from the garden to the Gods.
Who wore a red panche, a linga, and worshipped in semi-darkness.
Who eagerly but distantly awaited our arrival every Deepavali
So that he could take down our marks and tally who scored the highest among us cousins
Who sat patriarch like and old man like and soaked in the lights of the festival
Through our cracker bursting and who next morning diligently swept the courtyard of the polluting remains of our fireworks.

He lay there with an old bedsheet covering up his mangled infected remains of a body
His face that of an old man, sleeping his final deep sleep.
Goodbye Thatha. The only one I knew.