I want to be alive till I am alive

If I die today, everyone else’s life will still go on. My husband might go back to work a week later? Or two weeks later? Maybe a month later. But he will go back. His days will fill up again with emails and work calls and presentations and deadlines. He will sleep in my bed. He might have trouble sleeping. But eventually, he will go to sleep. My side of the bed will be empty. I don’t how that would make him feel. It’s a large bed for just one person. There will be two kindles in the room. One won’t be used anymore. He might give it to someone else. I don’t know what he will do with my clothes. So many of them. We plan to learn French together and join dance classes too. I don’t know how he will do that. He might eventually learn French. But I won’t be there to see him speak.

If I die today, everyone else’s life will still go on. My parents will still look after my younger siblings. My mother will wake up and make breakfast for everyone else. She might miss me while making bhindi paratha but she will still make it. My father would still go to work, get my siblings educated and one day will get them married too. I won’t be there in their wedding album. But everyone else will be there. Dressed up and smiling.

I recently saw a 14-year-old die of COVID-19. I met him two months ago. His voice keeps ringing in my head. He was polite and soft-spoken. The way he greeted me when we last met made me feel like he was fond of me and it felt nice because I didn’t know that before. I wanted to talk to him but he was playing with other kids so I chose to just stay there and watch them. The world was not normal even then. I used to be mostly in my room. My only solace was to watch dogs and kids play on the road in the evening. So I stood there and watched him play. His face was red when he was sweating. I never knew a lot about him. But I saw him as a baby and then also watched him grow up. He was on a ventilator for a week. I was scared but the thought of his death did not occur to me. Then one afternoon I got a WhatsApp message from my mother saying that he is no more. It’s been two weeks since he died. I heard from my father yesterday that his father is starting office from today.

Last week my husband’s colleague died. He was 35. My husband and I have talked about him multiple times in the last two years. I have never met him but I know how he was at work. I know what kind of conversations he used to have during lunch. I have seen his pictures. I have seen pictures of his wife and kids. His last messages to my husband were mostly about how his oxygen level is not increasing despite medical support. I keep wondering if he saw it coming. If he knew he was going to die.

I am 26 years old. Thinking about death is not new for me. I got really sick once in the pre-pandemic world. I was 21 then. It was a sudden rare sickness because of which I had to be in the ICU for two days; or three days. I am glad I don’t remember the details anymore. However, I remember how it felt to be there. I remember how badly I wanted to survive and live. I remember being terrified of death. The world was normal back then. Forgive me for saying that, but it was normal for people with privileges.

A lot has changed now. Every alternate day I hear about people dying. People who are friends of friends or someone who I knew through social media, or someone who I had met but was not in touch anymore. I hear about zoom funerals. There is no pattern now. No, they did not have comorbidities. No, they were not old. They were neither careless nor unhealthy. There is no pattern. They, who died, were no different from you and me.

It does not seem abnormal to contemplate death, does it? My mind craves for hope. But I don’t know where to look for it. On some days I wake up feeling grateful. Grateful for being alive. But then it does not take long before the thought crosses my mind that why me and not them? Why do I continue to live? And why did they have to die? There are no answers. Planning life seems silly now. Living in present makes sense like it never did before. I want to be alive till I am alive. That’s the only plan, I guess?

A Love Letter to TISS & Bombay

This post is long due. It has been 9 months and 26 days of being home, of leaving Bombay. And in these nine months, there has hardly been a day when I have not thought of the city, of my college, of friends who I had to leave behind in a haste. Despite posting umpteen number of pictures on Instagram, doing so many 3-hour long video calls, I somehow don't seem to get enough of the two years that I spent in TISS. 

I wonder if things would have been different if we had not been asked to leave the way we did. 

On 17th March 2020, I booked my tickets for home after being told that we have to evacuate hostels. Amidst packing, I went to tapri with friends for some chai-maggi. My father called to discuss the logistics and I started crying. I don't know if it was the fear of the virus or the uncertainty of the future or just this forced rushed up good-bye that I was supposed to say to my college that has given me the best two years of my life. 

The plan was to submit the dissertation and the final film and then stay in Bombay for one and a half more months till convocation. Sure, it would have been hot and there was no cooler or AC in the hostel but the idea of staying and exploring Bombay still seemed nice. I was making a list of places that I would visit. I was also planning on buying a new saree for convocation. I had imagined the convocation so many times in my head but not once did I think that I would be sitting miles away from the TISS quadrangle looking at Nagesh Sir taking our names one by one through a screen. 

I imagined my convocation to be on a humid sunny day when everyone is running around, taking pictures even with people who they don't like much, showing parents around, and absorbing the beauty that TISS is for the one last time. And here I was sitting in layers of clothing in my bed watching the convocation that seemed nothing like a convocation. There were no hugs exchanged this time, only screenshots taken on the google meet that I reluctantly joined thinking that it might be better to laugh it out with friends than cry alone. 

I have thought about writing this blog many times but there were never enough words. I don't know what it was about TISS or Bombay that thinking about it still gives me heartache. When I look at old pictures I think it was my short hair. Haha. Does that make sense?

I miss the person that I was. I miss how TISS and Bombay gave me the confidence to just be. There were no frills. There was never any thought put into how I was looking and what people are thinking about me. Bombay was too far from the familiar. From North India. From the kind of people, I have lived around all my life. Bombay was different from anything that I had ever seen or experienced. It embraced me and gave me the kind of anonymity that was liberating. 

There is something about your hair not covering your neck. It feels light as if the weight is gone both literally and metamorphically. 

Everyone I met was kind and somehow knew that I was new in the city. I remember my first cab ride from the airport to the TISS campus. The driver was a chatty fellow. Being from Delhi, I had a kind of cynism that pushes you to have your guard on in front of strangers. He asked me where I was coming from and I reluctantly told him. As soon as he got to know that I was new, he told me about the weather, what I can expect and the places I should definitely visit before leaving. 'Bombay is the city to be seen in the night', he said. 

Getting into TISS was a dream I had been living with for two years. So when P told me about the history of TISS and how old the college was, it charmed me. In the class, AnJ talked about their journey and how TISS has been an integral part of it. Both of them were newly married when they came here, they had their daughter on the campus and now they retired in 2020. The library, hostels, quadrangle seemed like places where so many stories like mine must have unfolded. I watched women who are now in their sixties talking about what TISS meant to them in the eighties and nineties on Youtube and imagined myself doing the same someday. I was beyond happy to be a part of this institution and that happiness never faded in the two years that I spent here, not even on the longest days. 

I remember sending an audio note to R and telling her about how much I loved the classes here. I liked the course so much. The realization that I had chosen something that finally fits hit me on the very first day. I was in awe of most of the things that I was reading in the class. My world suddenly seemed to have become bigger and complicated but also simple. I was getting my answers. I was reading definitions and names for things that I have struggled with for years. It was humbling to know that everything that I feel has been felt by so many people who have come before me, and they have written about it. 

There was just so much to learn and unlearn from everyone around. I met students of all kinds, from all parts of the world, teaching me just by being. TISS pushed me. I pulled all-nighters to finish assignments, learned how to shoot and edit despite being supremely uncomfortable with technology. I started writing and publishing. I became my own person. For the first time, I knew what I want. And as someone who has been indecisive all their life, it was a big thing. TISS also gave me the courage to clearly see and separate the things that I really wish for and the things that society has conditioned me to desire. None of this happened in one day and if it did I can't pinpoint which day it was. Everything flowed and the change was so gradual that it never announced itself. 

My gallery is filled with pictures of sunsets taken at the Marine Drive. I can't even begin to describe how it was to see the sea for the first time. Most of the people don't remember their first time or they have just been familiar with the sea all along. For me, it was about imagining Bombay all through my growing years and then finally seeing it only to realize how all those beautiful poems and songs written for and about Bombay are true. 

The city gave me a 24-hour clock. Nights were not unsafe for the first time. I was happily surprised to see families and children and friends chilling together at Marine Drive after midnight. There was nothing not normal about it. This is what they have known all along. Bombay is kind and gentle and accepting. For someone like me who has been used to rushing home/hostel at 8 PM because that was the curfew time, nights outside were more like a forbidden fruit. 

Also, in Bombay, the world seemed to be less like a man's world. I never found myself alone. There were always women around. Women of all kinds, of all age groups. Just knowing that they are around was comforting. And so me being anywhere at any point in time never attracted attention because there were many like me, who looked out for me by merely existing.

Two years in Bombay were also about seeing pain and misery very closely. And on somedays also living with it. I was a part of a community where people every day were struggling to wake up and make a difference, to do something that makes them sleep better at night. TISS taught me that kindness does not come easy but we still need to strive for it. It humbled me in so many ways to be aware of my privileges. I learnt the meaning of solidarity, and what it is to be there for each other. 

There is no end to this blog. No concluding line. 

I have no two lines to sum up my experience. There are still big and small details that are missing, that I want to put together. 

So I am going to leave it here hanging abruptly and would come back to it someday. Till then, just want to put it out there that I am very grateful.