helplessness | kidsaregifts

During Saagar’s illness, I was helpless. Also, I was rubbish at asking for help. A few weeks into Saagar’s unrelenting and forever changing moods, I was baffled. I realised I couldn’t do this alone, I needed to ask for help. Most of my family lived in India so I needed to hurry up.

Looking back, I asked somewhat hesitantly, by sending a group e-mail to my family members in India. Some tried to help and couldn’t. Others didn’t try. Yet others kept mum. Some advised me to send him to India. Some couldn’t even pick up the phone. I was so panicked that I couldn’t think straight. It didn’t cross my mind that I needed support too. The fact that I was a hot shot doctor at a hot shot hospital did not help. At that point, I was simply his desperate mother.

I texted a distant uncle on Tuesday night to say I was really worried about Saagar and we needed urgent help. He lived 20 minutes away. He texted back to say he could only help on weekends. By Thursday, it was all over. I suppose none of us had the slightest inkling of the disaster that was hurtling towards us.

Helplessness was the darkest cloud there ever was. It was a humiliating beast of a thing. It had completely obliterated the way I saw myself – capable, resourceful. It had made me a stranger to myself. Again and again, it invaded from the past to leave me without oxygen. I imagined I would limp through the rest of my life, trying to get to a point of relief, of grace. There was no way of getting that ghost of helplessness off my back.

A few years after his death, on a warm quiet afternoon on a beach in Goa, I invited Ms Helplessness to sit with me. We sat cross legged on the wooden floor of the beach hut. We looked into each other’s eyes for a few still moments. With tears streaming down my face, I extended both my hands toward her, and she took them in hers, gently squeezing them and then loosening her grip. I steeled myself and looked harder into her eyes.

I hate you. I forgive you for nearly killing me once. Thank you for showing me I can’t control what happens.

Maybe there’s a power beyond us both, that rules.

Promise me, you won’t be so cruel again. Will you? She had her gaze fixed on the ground in front of us. A tearful silence ensued. Then she stood up and walked away.

Andretta is a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas. It has been calling to us for the past five years. We’ve been working towards becoming able to take it up on its invitation and finally, we are here.

I return to my country, a stranger. I am not that young lady who left and this land is different from what it was when she left twenty-three years ago. It is noisier, busier and dirtier. People and houses everywhere. The national highways used to run through wide expanses of green and yellow fields but now they are lined with messy shops, workshops and warehouses. Overweight people used to be a rarity but now obesity is commonplace, even in kids and village folk. The forests are thinner and the weather full of surprises. The number of extreme rain events has risen three-fold since the beginning of the last century, possibly due to a warmer Arabian Sea.

It was in the last century that I ventured abroad. The dreams that lived in my eyes then, are a mere story now. Those dreams had to be dashed, so I could wake up. My heart had to be shattered before it could learn to be full. I had to be completely humiliated, before I could be truly humble.

Maybe it was necessary.

Fifty-four days ago, my father walked into a hospital for an operation that he believed would improve his quality of life. He has been unable to leave his hospital bed since. Every time I turn from one side to another in my sleep, I am aware that my father can’t do that. He needs help with nearly every activity of life. He’s aware of his predicament and we all are helpless. This helplessness is an old friend from a few years back. Looking back, it might have been better if he’d not had the operation but we don’t know for sure and it’s too late now. It could be worse. I could be better. It could be different.

I wonder why things happen as and when they do? Is this a question worth asking or is it completely pointless? Some questions are unanswerable no matter how frantically the logical mind looks for answers. There are none.

This is how it is. For no reason at all.