U2 and I

My love affair with U2 started when I was 6. That’s quite a tender age to fully understand the depth of their music, their poetry, and the complexity of their creativity. My father brought home “The Joshua Tree” cassette and that’s pretty much all he listened to for weeks. I wasn’t complaining. There was something about them that made me feel nostalgic. I was 6. What nostalgia could I possibly have? But yet, there it was. Bono’s voice made me emotional and elated at the same time. I didn’t have the vocabulary to express myself. Papa was addicted to them too! He’d put on the cassette tape every night and Bono’s falsetto would take over our little home. The sound from our trusty two-in-one would fill my ears with lyrics I could not understand, but the music I didn’t want to stop.

For years U2 has remained with me, my favourite, my go-to music, my unchanging love. And then I lost my father - my wisdom, my teacher, the ultimate bad-ass rocker. He knew more about music than any person I’ve ever known, and he knew even more about books. Authors and their books, poets, and their poetry, nothing was hidden from him. Long before books became cult classics, he’d bought them and devoured them and known their value.

When he died, I lost part of myself and for more than a year, I could not bring myself to listen to the music I had loved for years. I couldn’t even bear to look at pictures of the band. For a year I pressed on, mourning my father, craving the sounds I heard with him as a child but unable to allow myself the liberty of enjoying that music he loved so much. 

And then when I thought I could listen to them without going to pieces, I did. I was wrong. Song after song of “The Joshua Tree” began and ended and I sobbed harder with each song. The memories washed over me, drowning me, enveloping me. And I had Bono to console me.

And then 2019 happened. U2’s tour of India happened, and my first concert happened. This band that I had grown up with, and wept my heart out to, performed the songs that shaped my childhood right in front of me. I wept, I screamed, I clapped, I sang, and I wept some more. Having my father in this experience with me would have been the gift of a lifetime. But for now, I’ll enjoy this music he shared with me.

Oak Tree to Acorn

They say that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a person. And I believe them. As a mother, the thought is unfathomable. How do you live with a part of you missing? There are no words to console a grieving parent and there shouldn’t be. Nothing you can say will ever make them feel better, or help deal with the pain. But, that’s not what this piece is about. It’s about losing a parent.

When I was 11, a dear friend lost his father and I could not conceive of a life without mine. I cried my eyes out and all Papa could say was, “But, I’m still here. You still have me”. That made me cry harder. What would I do if he ever left me? As an 11-year-old, I didn’t think I’d survive a day without him. That sentiment remained with me till I was 32. Then he died. He just left. This strong, wise, funny, oak-tree of a man was gone. His wit was legendary. His compassion even more. From 600 kms away, my mother called to tell me he was on the ventilator. But I knew. I knew I’d never hear his baritone and the endearing names he’d make up for me. I knew I’d never walk into my parents’ house again and see him reading a book, dressed impeccably, his glasses perched on the edge of his nose, his silver hair gleaming. I held my 3-year-old the entire flight back home, crying. She slept soundly while I wept. I was holding a piece of me in my arms, but I had lost a larger part of me.

The 11-year-old me resurfaced. All my fears about not being able to go on without him were not irrational. The pain of losing him hurt physically. I remember every minute of his funeral. The sheer amount of people in attendance was mind-boggling. It was as if no one could believe he had gone, and they had all turned up to see for themselves. I wasn’t alone in my disbelief. Yet, I was the only one in my consuming grief. My little girl kept asking for her Nanu and I had to make my peace with the fact that she’d have to grow up without his wisdom in her ears. Without his advice. Without him.

Staring at life without Papa and a long-drawn divorce and custody battle, I felt ambushed. It was just round one of the biggest fight of my life and without my greatest supporter. But somehow I found the strength to push back. Years of litigation followed, but I never thought of giving up or backing out. My prayers were punctuated with sobs, and my Bible pages stuck together with the tears that fell on them. I pushed on. He would have wanted me to.

After 6 long years of standing my ground, stubborn like my father, I won. I got my divorce and my child was old enough to understand what it entailed. It was Win-Win. Papa wasn’t physically present to see me win. He wasn’t waiting for me outside the grimy court. He wasn’t there to shake my spectacular lawyer’s hand and thank her. He wasn’t at home expecting me to walk in the door with the best news he’d heard since the birth of my child. But he was there. 1708 days after I lost him, I walked out of that court, victorious. The strength it took to not falter, not waiver, not give in, not yield, could have come only from his testimony. His faith, his trust, his immovable belief that what we ask for we receive, was in me. When we ask of a Living God. He answers.

My oak tree had gone, but he’d left his strength behind for his acorn…

Loss

You will never be "old enough" to handle the loss of a parent. You shouldn't be expected to. How do you cope with the loss of a part of you? How you do come to terms with the realisation that your parent will never see your little daughter grow up?

I lost my father 2 months ago and I haven't grieved for him. Not because I wasn't close to him or being a parent myself, I'm old enough to handle it, but because the minute I break down and sob for him is the moment I will have to let him go. And I'm not ready to do that. Letting him go will be the most difficult thing I will ever do and I know I do not have the strength for that. 

I am the second of two daughters. Indians are largely son-crazy and my father was the happiest man alive with my sister and I. He never desired a son, nor did he rue that one of us wasn't a boy. It's tradition for Indian men to distribute sweets the day they become fathers. Very few do this when they become fathers the second time... to a second girl. He did. 

The loss is unbearable. Like an open wound that will not heal, that will not close, that will not let you forget that that part of you is not whole. There is no how-to for this. No quick fix. No five stages of grief. Nothing. It's sorrow at its darkest and worst. The light in this is the privilege of being the daughter of a man who respected her, loved her, protected her and will not leave her.

The one you can't have...

My latest love in music is Adele. I never really made an attempt to listen to her when she won all those Grammies, but somehow she found her way into my playlist a couple of days ago and man, I cannot get enough of her. I saw this video of her singing in Royal Albert hall, and she was so emotional about her song "Someone Like You". I must admit I cried a bit when I heard it for the first time. But listening to her talk about the song and the man who inspired the song is heartbreaking. She's sold millions of records, made millions, won Grammies, but she cannot have the one thing she really wants... It really broke my heart to see cry on stage. Seeing such a beautiful, talented, successful person cry over a relationship we sometimes take for granted kind of jerks things back into perspective right?

Check out the video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9zmAv5bNug

Schumacher doesn't need your SEO-optimised letters...

Michael Schumacher emerged from coma and the world let out a sigh of relief. Websites tripped over themselves to write about it and linkbacks to older stories they'd done on the legend peppered the update on his health. Every single SEO-friendly word was in place, tags all perfectly done, keywords shoved in, published with perfect headlines to grab the attention of the reader and of course search engines. I stumbled across one such "letter to Schumacher" and couldn't decide whether I should be crying for the state he is in, or for the fact that when he is able to sit up and read, he'll read these pseudo "we-love-you-schumi" pieces, or at the pathetic sample of SEO-journalism.

The soul behind reporting or even writing an opinion  is lost. And the saddest part is at times the job is so shoddy that you can actually see the words are just slapped together to make a vaguely coherent sentence, but one that a search engine might immediately pick up.

I cannot even bring myself  to be in his wife's shoes for the tiniest bit. The pain and anguish she feels right now is something no wife should ever have to experience and yet there she is living her worst nightmare. Her heart might have pounded with fear every time he got behind the wheel and to think a holiday is where he stopped being the Schumacher we know.

So I think "reporters" need to stop writing letters to him and dissecting his life. You've got enough hits for your website on his name. Now just leave that family alone and let the man recuperate. He doesn't need your stupid letters to get him through this.

I like the new Honda advert for not texting while driving. It's effective, speaks to you and is very current. While it gets the message across that texting while driving might kill you, I would like more people to address the possibility that while you might not die, because you're in your car, you just might kill someone else. In a country like ours, where two-wheelers sometimes out number the cars on the road, something like this happening is a very real thing. I have seen drivers checking their phones while driving slowly veering off course and jerking back once they're done, while bikers who ride behind them get pushed towards the divider or the curb and run the risk of crashing when the driver suddenly jerks back into his lane.

How does one deal with this attitude of selfishness and complete disregard for rules or others' lives for that matter? If someone dies under the wheels of a car whose driver was texting is it not as bad as murder? I think these campaigns should carry a message of the probability of severe jail time. Can we have some campaigns to teach people to be mindful of others or is it too late? If they are so callous with their own lives is it a futile effort to make them aware of the lives of others? Should we start at the grass root level and have compulsory sensitivity training in schools to make children learn the importance of playing fair? Seems like something we should consider and quick..

Everything but the truth...

MH370 is a number that will not fade from our memories for a very long time. We lost a plane with 239 people on board. It's as though one minute they were there and the next minute not. Not one iota of information coming from governments can be believed because there's absolutely no proof backing it up. From a suicide mission to the plane being in Afghanistan, every single possibility has been thrown up ...everything but the truth. How is it that no one knows? To say this smells fishy is an understatement and one that is extremely insensitive to the people on board and their families struggling to make sense of this situation that none of us ever want to be in. My route to work is right past the airport and everyday I see at least 3 planes land. And every single day I feel immense grief for those families waiting at the airport for MH370 taxiing in.
Not finding a single piece of the plane is news I just cannot believe. From oil slicks to floating debris, every single lead has ended in nothing. Absolutely nothing. It took some countries days to come out and accept that they had tracked the flight on their radar. It's becoming amply clear that there is information on the flight, but is deemed too sensitive to release. That is the only explanation to searches ending in rescuers invariably barking up the wrong tree.