Immortal for a Moment by Natasha Badhwar

Author:Natasha Badhwar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2018-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

27

My heart remembers what I seem to have forgotten

It took us less than a week to realize that there was no time to break the news gently to the extended family. One week, my mother told me on the phone that Rajendar, my father’s youngest brother, was visiting with his sons to get some medical investigations done. On the next call, she said he had a tumour in his liver and had returned home to Jalandhar to pursue treatment. The next week, she mentioned metastatic cancer. Chachaji had very little time left.

The emotions come first. I am surprised at the waves of grief. The black hole of shock. A frantic desperation kicks in, as my cousins and we begin to search for ways to comfort him physically.

Then the lost memories begin to emerge, one story after another.

The first one is from my early adolescence—the year I turned 13. I had spent eight months that year going to the Holy Family Hospital in Delhi every day for electrical muscle stimulation and physiotherapy to revive the muscles and nerves of my right arm, which had become paralysed from a severe injury.

On most days, my father would take me to the hospital, but it always made him late for work. Some days, my mother and I would spend half a day changing public transport buses to commute to the hospital and back. During the summer break at his college, Rajendar Chachaji came to visit us from Jalandhar and volunteered to relieve both my parents by driving me to the hospital and back on my father’s scooter.

Chachaji and I were an odd couple. It was hard to tell who was leading whom. He seemed fearful and lost to me as he struggled to navigate the crowded hospital systems and unfamiliar traffic of Delhi. I would guide him about alternative routes on the road and lead him from one counter at the hospital to another as we paid bills and waited in queue for my turn.

Chachaji was there to protect me and I had the same reaction towards him. Watching his determination despite his raw nervousnesss knocked me out of my own self-pity. I was distracted from my pain, and, instead of feeling helpless like a victim, I began to feel I could take charge of our situation.

As we pooled our strengths to negotiate the city every day, I felt competent. I felt loved and useful again.

In contrast to these memories from Delhi are the ones from our earlier childhood, when we would travel to Punjab to visit my father’s family every year. Chachaji was the hero of those visits.

He was the youngest among the significant adults of our life when my brothers and I were children. He was the most openly loving. His presence protected us from the tense authoritativeness of our grandfather and father. He made everyone, specially the vulnerable, feel strong and important.

Rajendar Chachaji is the one who sneaked in the ice-cream breaks and took all the children to the movies and for boating.

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