Grief is a cat
that enters your house unannounced.
You thought you had locked the doors, shut the windows but grief
with its feline fluidity
only needed the smallest of openings.
You are caught by surprise on the first day because
you did not expect to find it waiting for you at the dining table.
You shoo it away and it leaves without a fuss.
Next day it comes back, you chase it away again.
No one has taught you how to deal with grief,
just like no one can teach you how to handle a cat.
So you keep chasing it away and it keeps coming back,
you don’t know it yet but you have been chosen.
One day, you are sitting at the dining table
waiting for the routine to play out
but it never arrives.
You knew this day would come, you convinced yourself that
you were looking forward to it but here you are,
feeling a feeling that is really more longing than relief.
That night, you leave a window open and the door ajar,
you leave some food out.
You spend a sleepless night tossing and turning in bed and
thank your stars when, the next morning,
you find it waiting for you at the table.
You don’t chase it away this time and it doesn’t bolt at the sight of you,
so you just sit at the table staring at each other.

After I put my dog of 14 years to sleep, after I lower him to his grave with the same hands I used to wrap around him, after I mark his burial spot with a native flowering plant, I take a systematic, regimental approach to grief. You know how this’ll go, I tell myself. Don’t hold back tears, it’s good to cry. I am a modern man, I am shaped by sensitivity and I wear vulnerability on my sleeves. Of course, you are not going to be okay, I remind myself. I reach out to my loved ones, listen to them repeat the words I’ve been telling myself. “He lived a long and glorious life, he was lucky to have you, you were lucky to have him, we all have to go one day, you took the right call.” I let my routine go for a toss, I allow myself half-a-year’s worth of cheat meals over two days. I tell my friend that the work on the book needs a momentary pause, I need the time and space to grieve. All the right things, I make note. Two days fly by, I wake up feeling like grief has loosened its hold on me ever so slightly. I get out of bed, feign normalcy. Feed the cats, let them out, feel the sun on my face, admire the trees swaying in the wind. Let’s get that 30-min workout, drink a litre of water, take a shower, have my coffee, soft-boiled eggs. Sit at my desk, get some work done, reply to emails, follow up on payments, listen to interviews to transcribe, look again and again at the photographs that need work. I get up for lunch, resume my regular meal of millets, dal, sabji, wash my plate after my meal, help mom clean up, give the cats a treat, take a moment’s pause to acknowledge the grief still sitting in my chest and head out for my customary walk. I pick my music wisely, allow myself to marinate in melancholy, pick my regular route for a walk. I remember to appreciate the light falling on the houses on the distant hill, feel grateful for the breeze and pleasant temperatures even at this time of the year, take an effort to notice small details I would otherwise walk by. Past the hairpin bend, past the giant eucalyptus tree, past the cute jadoh stall, up an incline and then down another, I almost complete the loop that brings me back home and remember to stop by the grocery stop to pick up essentials for the next day. Milk for my coffee, some biscuits for tea-time, dishwashing soap, wet food for the cats, three different flavours at least, some creamy treats to go along with that and some chewy chicken sticks for Sno…oh. I don’t need those anymore. 

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The incessant hammering of rain on my broken roof, the constant low drone buzzing in my ears that has no source, the always shot nerves, the never ending ringing of the alarm bells. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Okay, I think it is time to talk about this. Why now? Because with any luck the world is about to end any time now and before that happens, I’d just like for this to be known. I thought of writing this around the time of the pre-orders for Vol 02 last August but in a rare moment of wisdom, decided against it after recognising that the time around the completion of a personal project is a time when I am an emotional mess. Someone once told me that when you put out a body of work into the world, if it really mattered to you, it should feel like your heart being ripped out of your chest. I took that personally.

Somedays I feel like
an empty glass
sitting at the edge of a table

It was just another unremarkable day in March 2015 when a life-altering event befell Praiselyson Lyngskor. He and his friend Fernando Nongkynrih were out for a quiet afternoon spin on their motorcycles when a speeding ambulance collided with Fernando. Praisely waited by the side of the road for hours before any help arrived on the scene, his bloodied and unconscious friend cradled in his arms. When it did, it was too late.

If you were to visit the quiet hamlet of Mairang in West Khasi Hills, once you’ve driven past the jadoh stall that greets you at the town’s entry point, stay on the highway for a few hundred meters, you’ll come up on a small road on your left. Once you’ve had a moment to take in Mairang’s idyllic landscape, a little distance up this road, you’ll be greeted by a small one-storeyed RCC-structure. It’s the kind of architecture that has come to define much of the new-age construction that is rampant in these hills – an amalgamation of brick, iron and concrete that is churned out in a hurried mix of straight, harsh lines and right angles. At first glance, nothing about this unassuming RCC-structure would strike you as out of the ordinary but if you pause a while longer, you’ll notice a board hanging on one of its walls. This board, in a playful, eclectic font, reads “Bawan’s School of Music: Estd. 2019.” Once your attention has been grasped, you’ll notice the sound of various musical instruments mixed with the intermittent chatter of kids emanating from this otherwise modest construction. You might think that you’re imagining things. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

I’m used to eating alone. Maybe I even prefer it. In Bombay, I’ve been living by myself for over a decade and as such, sharing a meal is usually on occasion. Most times, I even avoid eating when I am on shoot – unless it’s a food shoot, because I am not a robot – preferring rather to power through and have my meal later at home with a generous serving of solitude, as much as a concrete mess like Bombay can afford anyway.

One day you will discover that the right way of making eggs is the way you like them and your mornings will become infinitely better. Suddenly your coffee will have the perfect companion, the coffee whose right blend too you will discover.