That which you most fear

My mother was practical about many matters, and death was one of them. She may have feared it, but she taught me not to. I grew up with what I think is a healthy attitude towards death. I don't see what there is to fear about it per se. It's not something one can somehow avoid. In a way, one actually spends one's life preparing for death. Macabre thought, you say? Only to those who don't think about it, I'm sure. You can't be so divorced from reality as to imagine that death will not come to you. It's the not knowing what follows that is scary, perhaps. The possibility that nothing follows, perhaps. Loss of control is difficult to handle, and the end of life is pretty much the loss of all control, generally speaking.

I don't fear growing old, either. And if you see me hovering endlessly at the edge of the pavement when crossing the road, you will know that I won't give traffic a chance to bear down on me so there's that taken care of.

The thing that I have actually truly feared for many years is cancer. Because of two reasons - there's no way to prevent it, and there's no way to cure it. This is not to say that it's led me to live life in a state of fluttery trepidation, but yes - if you asked me what I feared, this would have been the answer. I say "would have been" because even that fear has, in a way, been and gone.

I always thought in terms of cancer happening to me. And somehow, that was the one thing that I had subconsciously braced for. If it happens to me, I thought, such-and-such is what I will do. I never thought it would strike closer than close - that it would manifest itself in the one person closest in my universe of family, my elder brother. For those with more than one sibling and a larger circle of immediate family, this may not connect. But my parents have been no more for over 11 years now, and considering I shed a spouse along the way, it's been pretty much my only sibling, and his wife and son, who have been there for me. And with him stricken, I have not a clue what to do.

I sometimes feel a little surprised at this. I usually know what to do. I'm the girl who has a flashlight in her handbag and for many years toted along a screwdriver as well, just in case. I'm the one whom people call with questions, the one someone said is "better than Google". A "situation" generally has me thinking of solution first and reaction later. But this one has been a low tackle that has brought me down. I should have an answer, a solution, a way forward to help him with. Instead, I find myself groping in dark space where I simply cannot see ahead.

How do you deal with something like this? I don't know. There is no one answer. You take one day at a time; one chemotherapy session at a time; one uneventful night's sleep at a time; one birthday, one Ganesh Chaturthi, one Rakshabandhan at a time.

It feels like I have a fist clenched tight within me, and that if I let go I may fall to pieces. That if I unclench, it will all crash down and all I will be able to say is "More weight." At times I feel that at some level I've taken all that can be taken, and nothing can touch me any more.

But then a sparrow alights on the window, and another. They're looking for a place to build their nest. I rig up a little thingumabob for them and hope they will take up residence. A pair of pigeons seems to have occupied the box I'd left for them outside a bedroom window, and the female is apparently hatching. I don't look too closely, for it alarms them. My compost bin is thriving with little creepies. Ah, putrefaction! "Treat!" say the mynahs.

The sun shines. Somewhere I hear a bulbul. Where there is life, there is hope.

Bombay: Resilient or complacent?

The laundrywallah handed me my ironed clothes the other day and said, "I don't see you around much." "Only on Sundays," I said, "that is the haalat (situation) of working people." He agreed, and remarked, "Achchha hai, kaam karne waalon ka dimaag khaali nahiin rehta. Yeh blast karne waale - khaali dimaag waale hain." ("It's good, a job keeps the mind occupied. The people behind the blast - they're idle minds.")

It has been over ten days since Bombay saw its most recent series of blasts, at Opera House and Dadar Kabutarkhana. I was in Bandra when it happened but I could so easily have been at Dadar. Friends from outside Bombay sent anxious queries by phone, email and Facebook, asking whether I and everyone I knew was all right. No one I know was hurt, but that doesn't detract from the rage and frustration one feels at being so assaulted, repeatedly.

Twenty-four hours after the blasts, Bombay was back on track. It would have been back 100% except for the heavy rain which hobbled some of the train services and hampered road traffic a bit. A day later, however, everything was as before. We went to work, we held meetings, conducted programmes, made appointments... Bombay is a city that does not stop. It can't afford to, and the people who live in it can't afford to either.

The fact is, we may not want to. I speak as one who was born in Bombay (Andheri East, to be precise) but grew up and grew into my twenties in Goa. So when I came to live and work in Bombay it was a conscious choice. The city's energy drew me; its acceptance of anyone and everyone, on one condition only - that they work their way in and up. Bombay is a city that gives you as much as you give it.

If I wanted to kick back and relax, I'd go to, say, Goa. Bombay is a city for those who move, and where you have to keep moving. Stand still and you may get trampled. It sounds cut-throat but it's reality for countless residents of the city. These are the people who "bounce back". Mainly because they don't have a choice, they can't afford to give up a day's salary or lose a day's worth of customers.

I live next to, work with, and see these people every day.

A single mother who struggles to stay on her feet but does it, with nary a wobble. Her kids adore her and her friends love her smile. Only she knows how hard it is to manage.

A boy carrying a load definitely more than his own weight, and so big that he can barely see the road ahead. But he has to deliver it somewhere, and he'll do it without falling, no matter how many privileged teenagers lost in their cellphone screens get in his way.

A young man in a railway carriage, late at night, selling small plastic items - not particularly extraordinary, except that he is toting his baby son on one arm. Did someone say "working father"?

A young woman whose husband works in the Gulf, who has bought a house of her own, and works three jobs as a domestic so that she can earn enough to contribute to the monthly instalments on the house.

An old woman who sells vegetables and earns her self-respect in the family where she lives with her son and daughter-in-law.

An old man who carries loads on a handcart though he barely has the strength to push it.

The securityman, the breadwallah, the cleaners, drivers, peons, secretaries who keep the wheels of working life going.

And us. People like us who say "Bombay is complacent" although if you stop to ask any of these people I've mentioned, not one will say they "accept" the situation. It's true that they may be inured to it. After the first shock of the initial attacks wears off, and one gets almost accustomed to being a target of terrorism, one does learn to live around these incidents. Life, after all, has to go on. But give each of them a weapon, literal or figurative, and you will have an army that can defeat the terrorists. The trouble is that no weapon is proof against the enemy within - our own elected representatives who fail their constituents, repeatedly and miserably.

It's not complacency, it's a lack of options. Give us a viable choice and I guarantee you, we will exercise it. Till then, our only option is to fight back by carrying on with life. They call it resilience. And that is what it is, until something stronger is available to us.

Compost yourself

It all began with Orange Pekoe. My brother's mom-in-law dropped in at my flat yesterday - my first "visitor", although, of course, everyone else has been wandering in and out generally. This was a proper visit. We had tea and all. I made the tea with orange pekoe that I'd bought recently. I also have the strong CTC variety but since this was a late-evening cup, I thought I'd choose a lighter brew.

It's a leaf tea and after draining, the leaves looked so nice and, well, leafy, that I didn't feel like chucking them. My thoughts went back to the compost bin I'd had in Singapore, when I lived for a short while in a house with a garden. All one needs is a bin with a hole for drainage. My kitchen use is still small-scale, so I wouldn't even need a "bin". A tin would do, I thought. And there was one, just waiting for this opportunity - a steel tin that had become corroded in a spot on its bottom. I've bunged in the tea leaves and this morning's coffee grounds, then some potato and onion peels, and kept the tin on the terrace where it gets ample sunlight. The tin's lid serves as catchment for any liquid that drains out. I need to ensure it remains damp, and that Kaushalya - my daily - doesn't throw it out! A few weeks, a bit of turning, and if the birds leave it alone it should be a nice, dark mulch. If it fails I can always bung it at the bottom of a tree or one of the plants in my sis-in-law's garden.

If it works, I'll broadcast the results!