This day will come every day.
Dada died today.
I’m writing these words to make them sound real to me.
He didn’t suffer, the doctors told us, the LPG blast would have been too quick, and too severe to be felt.
I disagree.
Between Dada’s realization of the blue spark, and his heart coming to a stop, Dada would have felt everything. The second Dada would have switched the light on in that living room filled with LPG, and seen that spark billow into something more, he would have been filled with horror. Dada would have wondered how it could be, the fire, the din of the blast, and then the force crushing his body. In the first few microseconds, Dada would have taken it lightly, thought the flame would be little and brief, but in the very next moment he would have thought otherwise, his body floating, golden flames licking every part him. He would have felt the searing heat, he would have felt the skin melt off him, his organs would have singed, every tissue Maa gave Dada in her womb for nine months shrivelling, charring. Dada would have felt the unbearable physical pain of his body disintegrating. Fists clenched, jaws locked, vocal chords strained, he would have screamed. And then the pain would have become too much to bear. The brain would have cut off the pain synapses. And he would have looked inwards. Dada would have realized these were his last few seconds. His thoughts would have turned to Boudi and his child. A tear would have come to his eye, evaporating instantly in the heat. The entire life of his envisioned future would have passed in front of his eyes like a flip booklet. His heart would have grown heavy, he would have said a little prayer, he would have hoped for a miracle to see his baby grow up, to love her, to love Boudi, to live a life full of joy and sadness and success and disappointment. He would have made deals with god. ‘Make me live, anyhow, crippled, burnt, half dead, but make me live,’ he would have said. His bones would have cracked and melted under the heat. He would have thought of Maa–Baba, he would have thought of their sadness on his death, he would have imagined Maa going mad, Baba growing quiet, he would have thought, his body now getting charred, about all the things Maa–Baba forwent for his happiness. He would remember things he had long forgotten, coming to him in rushes of memories. Of the times when he was three or six or twelve or fourteen, of the days Maa–Baba were younger and capable of loving things other than their sons but chose to love them. His organs would have been shutting down by now, shredded apart by the vigour of the marching fire, and his thoughts would have turned to me, the stuck-up, strange brother, the brother whom he dearly loved from the first day he would have seen him, but who only looked at his Dada as a competitor for Maa–Baba’s love and affection. With his heart slowing down, he would have managed a smile thinking that his brother would now get all the love from Maa–Baba since he would be . . .
With his heart now shutting down, his thoughts would have turned to Boudi, the feeling of being in love so irrevocably, of the feeling of it having happened to him, he would have muttered an apology for leaving her alone, a confession of his love would have escaped his lips just before the lights of his eyes would have gone out.
Darkness.
Dada left us.
5 March 2000
The last four days have been a haze, a toxic, strangling daze.
Every time I blink I wish this to be over, for this to be a substitute reality. It’s hardly believable or fair.
Maa–Baba have been inconsolable. Maa has been to the hospital twice after fainting, her BP swaying wildly and dangerously, and every time she has wished she would die of it. Baba is mostly quiet, like me, trying to wrap his head around what happened, to make sense of it, to wait for things to go back to what they were before, to know if it’s even true or it’s an elaborate sham and Dada would come out of hiding and shout, ‘Got you.’
Didimaa has been hysterical. The one day we saw her she started laughing, beating her chest, crying, all at once. To everyone’s surprise, she got up from the wheelchair, and slapped Maa, and fell back on the ground. She was taken away. Maa had cried out, ‘Why didn’t she die instead?’
Relatives have been pouring in and out every day, trying to console Maa–Baba. Over the years, their envy of our relative prosperity has rankled them, but their grief over the death is real, their tears are real. It is not that they loved Dada as much but because they feel the loss. They have imagined losing someone close, they have put themselves in our shoes and then cried a little inside. They know what it feels like and they have been doing everything for Maa–Baba, Boudi and me. But even then, I know these distractions will end soon. Everyone will leave our house and slowly they will get absorbed in their own lives and they will forget about Dada, not miss his presence, not be able to feel the pain any longer till the time someone else dies. I don’t resent them for it, it’s just the way it is.
I wonder if Baba’s doing what I’m doing in his silence. If he’s lining up the perpetrators behind Dada’s death. It was we who killed Dada, every one of us. If eye for an eye were an acceptable justice protocol, we should all have been shot in the head.
On the 29th of February, exactly five days ago, Boudi had asked for the charger of her PowerBook. Then she had changed her mind, saying that it wasn’t really needed, like a dutiful daughter-in-law should.
But Maa said, ‘No, no, Anirban will get it. You must get bored sitting at home and doing nothing.’
Had Boudi not asked for the charger, Dada would still have been amongst us, and how apt, killing the person you most love. Living for each other, dying for each other, that kind of thing. Absolutely romantic and absolutely revolting. Was she thinking that none of this would have happened had she not fallen in love with Dada? Had she not moved from Bangalore?
Had her parents accepted her, her pregnancy would have been their responsibility and not Dada’s. She is quite clearly the culprit. I hope she knows that.
But then there’s Maa, my lovely, lovely Maa, the mother of three children, of whom only one survives now and that too barely.
Had Maa not acted about how concerned she was about Boudi, Dada would have still been alive, counting days backwards to the birth of his first child. Had Maa not been acting to keep up the charade of the concerned mother-in-Law, Dada would have still been here. Does she care if Boudi is bored? No, she doesn’t. If it were up to her, she could have put Boudi under sedatives for the entire duration of the pregnancy, deliver the child herself, taken the baby and raised her or him like a good Hindu Bengali citizen. She clearly murdered my Dada.
But why only her? My hands are stained too with Dada’s blood.
Had I not judged Maa for her behaviour, had I not ruined my relationships with Rishab and Sahil and Brahmi, had I not been wallowing in my own pain, I would have gotten up, told everyone that I would get the charger instead of Dada, had gone to their old home, unlocked the door, switched on the lights, and waited for that little spark of the switch to ignite the room full of cooking gas and it would have been me instead of Dada. I wouldn’t have minded that one bit. Who would have missed me? In the longer run, no one really.
But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is had I gone right then, the room wouldn’t have filled up because it wasn’t until two hours later that Dada reached the flat.
But Baba can’t claim innocence either.
Baba and Dada had both gone to pick up the charger. Baba had chosen to stay down and smoke, something he rarely does. He had asked Dada to go on alone. I wonder what Baba feels, almost literally pushing Dada to his death? But had they both gone? How would that have ended? Does Baba think that if only he had more things to talk about with Dada, he would have gone up with him, and died with him? Or maybe he would have smelt the LPG, having had more years of experience of being in the kitchen?
Like me, Maa has been shifting blame. First it was mostly herself and then it was me.
‘You should have gone instead! YOU!’ Maa had screamed at me for an entire hour, the same sentence over and over again till she fainted.
Then it was Baba.
