On Rakshabandhan

Today is Rakshabandhan and there is one rakhee less on my wrist then on the previous years. That rakhee is missing because the person who would lovingly tie it on my wrist, or courier it from Rajkot, Bhavnagar or London for me to tie on my own, is no more. She passed away on 12th July at 6:46 pm this year. She wasn't my real sister, or cousin, or ‘moohboli behen’, or even a friend; she was my 'Nani', my maternal grandmother. And she was 82 when she left this mortal world, maybe for the time being, maybe forever.

It was a ripe age, having seen it all, leaving ten children with their spouses, and grand children, and a few great grand children. She spent her final days in an ICU under supervision of my youngest brother, an Intensivist of repute, who finally removed her oxygen mask, felt her last pulse, and signed her death certificate. People commented how lucky she was, even medically looked after by her own blood, and to be officially certified dead by him.

I am a deeply religious person, or atleast my core is, even if over the past years it has been gradually shrouded by a layer of insensitivity towards spirituality. My feelings come as much from the teachings my elders gave me in my educated, upper middle class but deeply religious family as it is from my own passionate reading of Hindu theology apart from philosophies from the civilizations and cultures from all over.

As my Granny’s soulless body lay in front of my eyes, that religious bent of mind refused to let me believe she was no more. Like a true believer in the immortality of soul I felt, or believed, or rather took it for granted that she was hovering around in her ethereal form, looking at the goings on, observing how everyone was taking her death.

And I wanted her to feel happy with what she saw, how much everyone loved her, the human legacy she was leaving behind. I wanted everyone around to be good [though there was never any doubt they would be because everyone adored her] and I was conscious of how I was behaving. She loved me a lot, being the eldest of her grandchildren and younger to her youngest offspring by just a year, she treated me like her youngest son, and I wanted to make her realise how special she was for me.

For the fifteen hours that her body was around me, or rather me around it, and while she was getting cremated and even after that, I was at my best, not as a put on act, but because I felt that way. From there on till her barsi I felt that way, believing that she was casting her benevolent eyes and newly acquired powers in the nether world on her dear ones, and that would even bring luck to them and sort out their worldly issues for good.

Though post her barsi I was not so sure, believing that being a beautiful soul now she has disconnected from her worldly karmas and relations and has joined the raaslila of Shree Krishna in that eternal dance of bliss, or she is already reincarnated somewhere as someone’s child or child to be.

But today, on Rakshabandhan, I miss her worldy touch, her rakhee which should have been around my wrist.