Guddi Didi

Guddi Didi

It was Sunday evening and I was reading lying down on my bed. My father called me on the phone and said, “Come home, Guddi Didi is no more” and he hung up on me as usual. It was hard for me to believe yet I knew that this was going to happen.

I started to think and remember so many things at once. The feeling was choking. She had cancer. Last stage. A couple of weeks back, I went home to see her. Everybody was telling her, “You’d be fine, don’t worry” and all sorts of thing but she was quiet, subtle. I saw her cold eyes which were as if insulting us all by saying, “You can not do anything to save me.” She was sad, really sad. She had nothing to look up to. She had nothing to wait for. Her life was like that and she had accepted it a long time ago. But she was happy once. I have seen her happy. She used to paint when I was a kid. We have her painting hanging all over the place at home. She was young then and I have heard from my mother that she was in love too, with somebody. But this love was crushed and she was married to a railways employee. She compromised. She had too. For the next 8-9 years, she had no kids. Her in-laws started to nag and torture as if she is a bad omen in their lives. And then Reymon was born. She was happy. We were happy too. Everybody was happy. We came to know some years later that Reymon had some incurable heart deformity and it cannot be cured. He became dark, weak and all bones. Whenever I used to see him, I used to wonder that why God was so cruel. What has this poor kid done? Two years back, at the age of 10-11, Reymon succumbed to death. Such a tragedy… On that day, when I saw Guddi Didi, I realised that she is not going to be fine again. everybody became busy in their lives, the whole family, but didi never recovered. Two weeks back, her husband called at my home and said, “Guddi is having cancer, its the last stage. Doctors have said no and I am going to leave her, So it will be better if you guys can take her away.” And she came home.

I regard myself a very strong person. I cannot cry that easily. But this was too much. I went home yesterday and saw her body. Dark and deformed. She was very beautiful once. My mother asked me and my cousins to put her on the ground so that she can make her ready for the cremation. We lifted her. Her body had became hard and brittle. I also removed cotton from her nostrils and a thick brown cloured fluid flowed. This is the end. It will happen to us too. We will also not look good at that time. I chose not to take any photograph. I did not want to insult a beautiful soul by taking pictures of her deformed body.

I wish her happiness and everything that she deserved in her next life.

PSP