Fragrant Eternity

“See, Rani, your uncle has become a face on the wall,” my aunt said with a wan smile as I walked into my uncle’s house and hugged her. This was the first time I was going back to my uncle’s house after he died last year. I’d been dreading this knowing it would be difficult because I’d been particularly close to him since childhood. He’d closely resembled my mother, and every time I saw him, I’d see a flash of my mother’s dear face. I could see her even now in the face that was looking down at me from the wall. I found myself foolishly willing him to smile or speak.

Every time I returned to India, I’d made it a point of seeing  him and he’d regale us with memories of our childhood when we spent part of our summer holidays with him, first in Bombay and later after he got married, in Poona. Memories are still sharp of my young uncle, brilliant, dashing and successful, a company secretary in Poona, newly married and romancing his beautiful young bride. Later a young father, first of a cute little boy whom my sister and I vied with each other to rock back to sleep the moment he woke up, then of a lovely little girl whom, a  few years later, my aunt and I took to the kindergarten on her first day. Years later, my husband and I attended her engagement ceremony and now she is the mother of two grown up children. I’ve, of course, kept aging with my cousins but my uncle would still caress my face reminding me of the child I’d been when he used to take me out shopping to buy crayons and drawing books.

There was one particular time he remembered with great affection and amusement. Both my sister and I had a budget of Rs 10 to spend, a fortune those days particularly for a child of four. After the pencils, erasers, crayons etc. had been bought, my uncle declared there was still half an anna left to spend. I looked around with a frown of concentration in the milling Mumbai market and suddenly my eyes lit up and I shouted, “hoovu!” – I had spotted a girl in the distance selling jasmine garlands, my favourite flower in India. For some reason, this request from a child amused my uncle and stayed etched in his mind. He asked if I wanted “hoovu” every time I visited him.  And he’d narrate this to all and sundry who had no idea why this was so amusing, but listened with polite patience to these repeated reminiscences that meant so much to him – and to me. Small moments of simple joys.

How and when did the years roll by and my uncle become old and frail and finally breathe his last?  I went to the hospital the day before he died and, in that state barely able to breathe, let alone speak, he tried to pull the oxygen mask from his face, gesturing and pointing me to the nurse. I had to gently push his head back onto to the pillow and say I’d tell her who I was and even tell her about the jasmine incident if he wanted me to. We both smiled at the shared joke. I wasn’t to know that would be the last time I smoothed his brow and told him I’d come back to see him again very soon.

He’s gone as are two of my other aunts, one on my mother’s and the other on my father’s side. All three died within weeks of each other during my last visit to India. Each house greeted me with poignant pictures garlanded and hung on the wall, reminders of not just their living breathing selves but of our beloved parents. Living abroad telescopes time in India and every time I come back, these changes hit me with mind-blowing force. Almost all my “elders” have left us now, starting with our parents, making our childhood and youth recede further with each loss. We are suddenly the older generation, the “elders” that our youngsters now look up to for guidance. Although I feel no different from when I was 40 or even 30, time has marched inexorably on and I did recently celebrate my 60th birthday. The changing numbers in my age do not affect me much as I combat them with regular gym visits, swimming, walking, eating sensibly and a healthy lifestyle. It is the picture on the wall that signals the passing of time and that someday we will become one too.

But morbidity is not my thing. I can tell myself, “Enjoy life to the full when you have the chance. Eat, drink and be merry. Spend, travel, seek entertainment and feel alive when the blood flows through your veins.” Oh yes, I want to do all this. But there is another voice that says, “You are so lucky to be alive and well at this age when there is so much of the other around you. Why do you moan and complain that you don’t have more when so many have less? They are the ones with real problems whereas yours are either imagined, magnified or self-created. Know that you are one of the fortunate ones, blessed just to be alive, with a loving family and friends, a roof over your head and plenty of food on the table. Stop taking all this for granted.” So, what now?

Having lived almost all my adult life trying to achieve just this, and having done so to a certain extent, what now? Isn’t now the time to give back a little? When I still feel fit and able, to consider those less fortunate, those who are sick – particularly the young, those who struggle without a roof or food, or those who are lonely, lacking a caring family or friends. Yes, perhaps there is another kind of satisfaction and joy to experience before I go up on that wall, the joy of sharing, of caring, of knowing that because of some small effort on our part we can make even the tiniest bit of difference in another’s life. There is suddenly work to be done and no time to be lost.

Next week is Children’s Day and our little group of volunteers, Dhvani has been invited to a hospital and a care home to spend time with sick children and underprivileged youngsters. We will do story-telling, drawing, colouring, share snacks and generally give a bit of relief not just to the children but to their care givers too. But, as it has always been the case we, the so-called “givers” are the ones who will end the day having gained the most. We are blessed for this privilege of being on the giving rather than the receiving end. I’ve taught my children to count their blessings whenever they feel low or negative and I try to do the same. If blessings mean good people in our lives and good health, enough to eat and live on, then we are very rich indeed. So as I turn 60, I look forward with gratitude to another exciting phase of my life.

Sometimes I’ve looked back with regrets on some things that could have been or shouldn’t have been; sometimes agonised over an uncertain future. I realise the past cannot be altered and I have no control on the future. But I need to make this present matter. Then maybe I will be able to accept with equanimity and serenity the fact that I too will become a picture on a wall someday – but with one wish. I’d like the hoovu on the picture to be jasmine.

Rani Rao Innes is the senior partner and lead trainer of Link Communications, a specialized communications skills company based in the UK. She has regularly presented courses and training workshops for private and public business sectors as well as students and teachers in the UK, Belgium, Malaysia, Japan and India. She has also been active in theatre for 30 years and was the director of Canterbury Players in Kent for eight years.