My daughter was born on 28th December 2016. I lost my sister-in-law (younger and the only sister of my wife) on 24th January 2017. She was 29.
In less than 4 weeks, I had seen the two extremes of my life.
I was there to witness my daughter step out in this world. I was in the same city when my sister-in-law breathed her last.
What did I learn during those 4 weeks?
What did I learn in the last one year?
One thing I learnt is that we don't have any, and I mean ANY control on our time of entry in or exit from this world. In a sense it is so obvious. Basic knowledge stuff. General knowledge stuff.
But general knowledge is not all that general and the various complexities of life ensure that we forget or ignore or become oblivious of this plain simple fact.
When everything is going fine, a sense of being under control or in control develops in us. A sense that we are in control of things around us. We can control our emotions, control our feeling, control our career and all these probably lead us to believe that we can control our lives. In some cases we believe that we control our lives.
But what the two extremes of life did to me was to emphasise that what we know about our life is a fraction of what we don't know about our life.
We have been to the Moon but we don't know exactly how and when one develops cancer or diabetes or pancreatitis (the Goa CM Mr Manohar Parrikar has been diagnosed with it recently) or neuroendocrine tumour (Irfan Khan has recently been diagnosed with it). My sister-in-law was treated in the three best government and private hospitals of Kolkata in January 2017. None of the Doctors across the three hospitals were able to identify the reason for her ailment and the demise. I collected a test-report after her death and even that did not identify any cause. Why did I collect that report after death? Probably to give solace to us that we at least know what she was suffering from?
Till date we have at best conjectures and surmises. More about probabilities and less about certainties.
In a sense isn't it all about probabilities? After all that's how Earth was formed and how living beings came to life: a little bit of here and there and the Earth would not have adequate Oxygen to support lives, a cell here or there and you probably don't get born or get born with some deformities.
The last 14 months have also reinforced one my one long standing beliefs: unless we know how good things can be, we won't know how bad things actually are. And vice versa.
There was joy for some days after 28th December but since my sister-in-law was not keeping well, we had to hold back our emotions in the hope that things would soon become normal. And then 24th January.
What to make of the thoughts and emotions in my head? What to say to my wife? To my in-laws? How not to let our grief and agony affect the new born?
Life has not been the same since.
In less than 4 weeks, I had seen the two extremes of my life.
I was there to witness my daughter step out in this world. I was in the same city when my sister-in-law breathed her last.
What did I learn during those 4 weeks?
What did I learn in the last one year?
One thing I learnt is that we don't have any, and I mean ANY control on our time of entry in or exit from this world. In a sense it is so obvious. Basic knowledge stuff. General knowledge stuff.
But general knowledge is not all that general and the various complexities of life ensure that we forget or ignore or become oblivious of this plain simple fact.
When everything is going fine, a sense of being under control or in control develops in us. A sense that we are in control of things around us. We can control our emotions, control our feeling, control our career and all these probably lead us to believe that we can control our lives. In some cases we believe that we control our lives.
But what the two extremes of life did to me was to emphasise that what we know about our life is a fraction of what we don't know about our life.
We have been to the Moon but we don't know exactly how and when one develops cancer or diabetes or pancreatitis (the Goa CM Mr Manohar Parrikar has been diagnosed with it recently) or neuroendocrine tumour (Irfan Khan has recently been diagnosed with it). My sister-in-law was treated in the three best government and private hospitals of Kolkata in January 2017. None of the Doctors across the three hospitals were able to identify the reason for her ailment and the demise. I collected a test-report after her death and even that did not identify any cause. Why did I collect that report after death? Probably to give solace to us that we at least know what she was suffering from?
Till date we have at best conjectures and surmises. More about probabilities and less about certainties.
In a sense isn't it all about probabilities? After all that's how Earth was formed and how living beings came to life: a little bit of here and there and the Earth would not have adequate Oxygen to support lives, a cell here or there and you probably don't get born or get born with some deformities.
The last 14 months have also reinforced one my one long standing beliefs: unless we know how good things can be, we won't know how bad things actually are. And vice versa.
There was joy for some days after 28th December but since my sister-in-law was not keeping well, we had to hold back our emotions in the hope that things would soon become normal. And then 24th January.
What to make of the thoughts and emotions in my head? What to say to my wife? To my in-laws? How not to let our grief and agony affect the new born?
Life has not been the same since.
