The Final Cut

....and you're gone into the night.

Hours spent waiting,and waiting.And waiting some more,with a familiar sinking feeling.
Of loss?Or what else?
Did I already know it,and perhaps prepare myself for a rip in the mesh of my carefully constructed universe?
At first,it was a perturbed sensation.Why you didnt call.Why I feared that Id lose your presence at the worst of moments,when I most wanted you gone. Why,during a presentation on Goya's black paintings in class,that I blinked and saw myself in the artists' deafened world,engulfed with the blackness and sorrow and self-involved madness. My dreams deafened me and kept me from sleeping for many a night.
Worse yet was Bobo's funeral in May. I saw it happening.I felt a linkage,and kept my eyes and mind open for every single little thing,telling myself "you're going to be in this again sometime soon.And you know with whom."
Thats why I didn't go for the cremation today. An oven,blackened smoke,the creaking of gears,the heat and rippling terror of what is about to come. The final cut.

Waiting.

For Friday night to end and the rambling conversations,unnecessary packs of chips and cake("you must eat!")and abrupt,fearfully tight hugs to stop.
For sleep to evade me on the flight;it never did.
For the 11am call in Chennai-to resolve the confusion.My grandmother says-'say your final goodbyes.' The doctor says-'Hes gone.'
I say let it be,and sing a sad song to make it better.

Waiting.

To tell myself that that waxy yellowskinned man is not my father, that when I kissed his cheek it wasnt the stark,soiled bandages that were dead and cold to my lips.I pressed my lips to his face once again to make sure.
Those eyes didnt move under the film of tape when I spoke,clutching the now bony,fuzzy hand.
Thats not my father, he moved on a long time ago.
This is but a body,whose chest is being artificially pumped with a ventilator.
Exactly what kind of life support,I asked myself.Waiting for an answer and stiffening my features to look into my sisters eyes.

"A face to meet the faces that you meet".(TS Eliot)

I masked it well,perhaps to the point of seeming heartless.In response to the emotional irrationals of those around me,in response to that little voice that sang "no I wont break down.."

Why do we sing these ridiculous songs in our heads at times like these??

Waiting. To hear family friends say "you're too young" when someone had to sign the permit to take him off life support.

Technically holding that power in my palms,if you call it that. So i went into that blindingly white room all over again,where men strapped into faded white beds thrashed and moaned and frantically fastened their eyes onto anything around.Or simply lay still.Alive. Until I reached a corner with a lone red sign-'Handle With Care'.
I thought my first glimpse would be my last,but its inevitable that we have no choice when we want one most.
Thats not he,and so I signed.A mere formality.

Waiting till I fell asleep in a strange,impeccably cleaned apartment with neutral toned furniture. Knowing that we were all waiting for that blue zigzag to become a clean pure line,so that smoke would be all that was left.

I waited no more,and we caught the next flight at 3 the next day. Not before going to the house,and gathering some of the last remnants of a man who left no trace,wherever he went. We're alike in that way.
Numbly,eyes stretched wide open and polite nods of the head mark my departure.
Ambling in the Mysore house,crickets chirp and foods a mockery.

I dream of campus, and otherwise feel as detached as ever.

Years ago,Jazz told me-" We all face obstacles we think we cant face,at some points in our lives.Yours are just earlier."

A silent,rustling undercurrent at the belly of the sleeping monster.