Life Reduced to Ashes!

I felt myself being moved roughly.

He held my shoulders and shook me. I was in deep slumber.

I did not want to get up whatsoever.

"Wake up Abhi! Wake Up!" he whispered with his voice heavy.

I finally opened my eyes with a lot of effort and looked up at him. It took me minute to get my eyes to focus on the room. I looked at the window. It was dark out there.

I held up my watch and looked at the time. It was about 4 a.m.

I glared at Ankit fiercely. Why did he have to wake me up so early?

"Yeah...What?" I said.

He looked at me for a minute, his face strangely blank and his eyes filled with tears.

"My dad....is dead."

I turned over and kept my head back on the pillow."Shut up!!!Bakwaas Mat Kar!!", I said angrily. "And let me sleep."


I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep almost immediately.

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It feels strange to start this story.....Because the room in which I'm sitting right now, writing this story is the very room where this story ends.....This is a true story.....And very close to my heart. I release a heavy breath as I begin.

***

You love your dad?

Silly Question.

No matter how many times he doesn’t give you your pocket money, no matter how many times he shouts on you, no matter how many times he forces you to study, you still love him.

But now the person I'm talkin about didn’t force his kids in anything, neither did he shout at them or stop giving them their pocket money.

Now about 6-7 years back, he used to give his children 8 Dirham(Dubai's currency) everyday. That rounds up to about Rs.105....and that means about Rs.4000 per month.

So there’s no doubt his children loved him SO MUCH!!!

But one bad habit this person had was that he was a chain smoker. Cigarettes were one thing he couldn't resist

Now, in my opinion people who smoke are weak.

I’ll explain....

People say that a person who smokes is probably going through a lot. They say, a smoker has a lot of tensions in mind, so he smokes to relax. Smoking gives them pleasure.

Now, every smoker must have a family or at least one true friend.

Or anyone with whom they can share everything.

So, why the HELL do they need a smoke to relieve their tensions?

What are we guys for?

So coming back to the story, the person had everything one could have wished for.

A nice (read as highly paid) job in Dubai, a great wife, two sons and a loving family, who used to wait for them every year, to spend their holidays in India.

So it came as a shock when a tumor was diagnosed in his body.

Its like, god grew jealous of the "Perfectness" of that person's life.

The person was my father's elder brother.

He came back to India, got a surgery done in Fortis.

The surgery was thankfully successful and he went back to Dubai.

Life came back to normal.

But did it really?

Two years later, it was found that the tumor had been cancerous and the cancer cells had spread all through his body.

"So what?" he thought. "We have the best doctors in India. The cells will be destroyed in no time"

But sadly that wasn’t going to happen.

He came back. He had many treatments.

He was admitted in the best Cancer Hospital in Delhi.

He went through many medical processes, most of them were more painful than you can ever think.

He had completely changed. He had grown bald and thin as a stick, thanks to "Chemotherapy".

It’s a treatment which burns body cells. Terribly painful.....And it sucks out all your energy for a lifetime.

But he stayed happy through out this time. Joking all the way, making others laugh. That's how he had been but life had it's own ways.

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[JANUARY 24th,2004]

We used to stay in S.J Enclave during that time. We had been regularly visiting my Tauji at my Grandmother's place but that particular day, everyone’s morale's were down.

I was told earlier that he was going to be perfectly fine. That's what kids were told. 

But that evening, from what I got to hear, his condition was worsening by the minute.

I still remember. He was lying down on the bed, a nurse by his side.

His eyes were unfocused. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular. His body had become very frail, very contradicting to his usual appearance. A typical bulky Punjabi, who loves having food and wants to have fun in every moment of his life.

He was going through pain. A lot of pain.

When we came to him and sat by his side, he made some random noise.

My dad told me, that the cancer had spread to most of his body, and he wasn't able to recognize anyone anymore.

He wasn’t able to speak as well, nor understand anything.

He was just lying their, writhing with pain. He had no clue about anything. He just felt pain.

My cousins (his sons) were called urgently from Dubai that evening.

That could not be a good sign.

They reached by night.

We had dinner, talked for sometime and then went to sleep.

Me and my elder cousin were made to sleep in the drawing room, because a lot of people were already their in the house.

But we were suddenly woken up. My mom and taiji woke us up and shifted us to a bedroom in the middle of the night.

I was half asleep at that time, but I remember that they were both crying.

I was not shocked at this, because they were crying a lot since a couple of weeks.

We were made to lie down in the bed and we immediately fell asleep again.

****

[JANUARY 25th,2004] [4:00 a.m.]

I felt myself being moved roughly.

He held my shoulders and shook me. I was in deep sleep.

I did not want to get up whatsoever.

"Wake up Abhi! Wake Up!" he whispered.

I finally opened my eyes with a lot of effort and looked up at him. It took me minute to get my eyes to focus on the room. I looked at the window. It was dark.

I held up my watch and looked at the time. It was about 4 a.m.

I glared at Ankit. Why did he have to wake me up so early?

"Yeah...What?" I said.

He looked at me for a minute, his face strangely blank.

"My dad....is dead."

I turned over and kept my head back on the pillow."Shut up!!!Bakwaas mat kar!!!", I said angrily. "Let me sleep."


I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep almost immediately.


***

The next morning I woke up to find me alone on the bed.

I turned around and saw a couple of relatives sitting in the room, looking at me mournfully.

I got up and opened the door.

I looked out.

There he was lying down peacefully. I had not seen his face at ease since a long long time.

He was covered in a white sheet. My Grandmother resting her head on him and crying hard.

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This was, sadly, the end of a perfect life......The end of a happy, complete family, and to some the end of everything.

It’s been 5 yrs now, and all of us have moved on. I still sometimes sit besides Ankit sometimes and all he says is, "The most beautiful journey in a guy's life is when he transforms from a boy into a man, for me that journey was traveled in a few seconds." and I am rendered speechless.

Life has slowly come back to normal and we have started living our lives to the hilt again.

But there’s something which I wont be able to forget ever.

A son saying, "My dad...is dead"

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I don't know whether this story or not. I just hope you like it and at the end what I wanted to convey is conveyed. :)