Bereavement

That was a day featuring another typical onslaught of ruthless winter!
Gusty wind blew across the Shire carrying the biting chill from Snowy Mountains, plucking down a cluster of leaves, flowers and branches in its savage fury. A flock of wild cockatoos suddenly started fleeting round the distant paddock, crowing under a spell of delirium. Never before, I noticed such an emotional outcry from those birds.

In this leafy suburb of Sydney, it has never been unusual to sight a plethora of colourful birds wandering from place to place amid the lush thickets with their occasional cooing, chirpings and crowing. On the contrary, it was quite unusual, on that occasion, to hear such an eerie, emotional crowing from an incredibly large number of sulphur-crested cockatoos.

Obnoxiously amplified version of cacophony, unnaturally changing tone of those wild birds’ desperate cry had something in it to stir my curiosity and I pulled open the front door of my tiny abode unfolding a vista of nature’s abundance. Nearby, under the fading shadow of a huge gum tree there lay a carcass of a sulphur crusted cockatoo. Suddenly I discovered the source of the screeching noise. Perched restlessly on the branches of the tree, looking downwards to that defunct parrot there I found a multitude of its live counterparts crying loudly;
-reminiscent of a rustic village funeral, back in Kerala, in which the corpse being kept at rest, surrounded by a number of wailing mourners…

- I could hardly banish the phenomenal response of those wild birds, merely treating it as an outcry of senseless creatures. Wasn’t it rather a sentimental outburst for a lost soul?

Call it anything. One thing though I perceived unmistakably out of that quirky episode was of an intense response to an eruption of emotions, a melt-down of acute grief in those wild birds. Very much akin to mankind, the behaviour patterns of other living creatures in response to the sudden turn of events seem to have the same common thread of attachment and compassion…
Deciding not to plumb deep into the depths of the mystiques of life, shoving off all the ponderings of the obscure philosophy enshrouded in a priceless bird’s ultimate journey that ended nose diving into a patch of earth’s filthy soil, having to abandon its rotten remains ultimately for the spiders, maggots and bull-ants, I went back to my study. My laptop beeped reminding there was an unread fresh message that just came through. Hurriedly I opened the message.
Coincidentally, it was a message of another death!
- A death of a human being.
The deceased was my friend’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Thara Shetty, a middle aged lady, a long time widow who had recently been staying with her son in Sydney.
Returning to Poona where she had been living, a few weeks later, she collapsed after a short but enduring bout with renal failure. The news of her sudden end was indeed beyond my comprehension…
I still vividly remember the waving of her hand, greying hair, the radiance behind the innocent and intimate smile and those glistening wet eyes…

I made an urgent call to her son living in an outer suburb of Sydney, but it was of no avail.
- A few hours too late…
He had already left his home and was on his way to Poona. Undying memories surrounding his beloved mother’s joyful moments had hardly vanished from his loving, caring mind. After expressing my sincere concern to his wife, I immediately rang my friend’s wife Mallika Shetty, the younger sister of the deceased. Little did I think I would be able to deliver the balm to quell her rising grief, but I knew for sure I could deliver a condolence message in a few words. Certainly, it helped. I could help hold her sobbing for a short while at the least…

Next day, on Wednesday, after I came back from work I wanted to pay a visit to the bereaved. As usual my wife also insisted that my son who had just decided to call it a quit from his university course and was therefore free from his studies join us on our proposed visit.

When we suggested the idea of the planned visit of the day, our son has grinned and coyly said: “Well, I am afraid I can’t make it. I have planned to go for a birthday party of Satheesh Shetty organised by him, at a restaurant in the city.”
Thunderstruck, I retorted: “What…?” I couldn’t hold my composure. In disbelief, I suddenly became vitriolic in my tone: “Did Sathish know his auntie’s dead body is still at rest waiting for tomorrow’s burial at her hometown in India?”

“That’s exactly the concern I raised too, but Satheesh wasn’t very serious about that. He reckons the atmosphere is not that bad at his home.” I couldn’t pick any hint of resentment in my son’s voice as he continued, “All his friends have already been invited much in advance, and he doesn’t want to make them unhappy now.”

I did not want to put up an argument with my son against Satheesh’s objectionable deed. However, I felt as if somebody delivered a punch to awake me from a nightmare in which I found myself trampled by a bolted Trojan horse that had lost its control and ran amuck. Satheesh has been coltish indeed in charging himself away out of a territory that now becomes alien to his raw emotions and intangible, existentialist behaviour.

Should it be laconically stated as just the frivolity of a reckless youth rather than the exploits and excessiveness of today’s indulgent, wayward youth?
It doesn’t really matter. But, somewhere along the line, something is amiss!
I vainly attempted to identify the cause of this fatal ideological confrontation that crops up with this untameable free will of the young generation, the remarkable mismatch of those links that were supposed to be welded seamlessly aligned with the familial bonds of the Orient.

Satheesh who fitted himself to a tee into a permissive social outfit, as a thriving young man perhaps had succumbed to the fascinating exotics of the outside world.
- Result of an opprobrious, blatant refusal to accept wisdom in the face of a rich tradition that has been built up by his sagacious forebears. Embracing the basic principles of morality and cultural values his predecessors with open arms beckoned him fondly to draw closer to share and feel the warmth of their unwavering love and affection. But alas, the little Devil that gleefully lurked in his conscience urged him to scoff away the absolute sanity that was on offer.
In a sense, another woeful demise - Premature demise of a glorious culture!

Who is there to bemoan…?
Having got the choice between sharing the grief of his aunt’s death with his nearest kin and enjoying his pleasure-filled birthday celebration along with his companions in the luminous atmosphere of a restaurant, he opted for the latter without much ado. Against all odds, he accepted a dare to hang out with those rapaciously awaiting pals in his own arranged birthday party, leaving behind the melancholic atmosphere of his village-home…

By such an oppugning enactment perhaps he simply lifted the elements of radicals beyond the conventional confines which most of the youngsters in our society would have emulated, being exposed to the blindingly grotesque environment out there.

After a long drive, having reached our destination, I along with my wife was struggling to find a convenient parking spot. A long way along the street on both sides there were too many parked-cars.

We didn’t have to ring the door bell. The door was left open. There were many mourners, more than that we anticipated, all of them the family friends. I could hear voices in various tones, all filled with the conversation of the same theme:
Death!
The scene, though without presence of the dead body revealed a vacuum created by the sudden departure of a soul elsewhere and imparted a vague, tearful reminder of mortality instantly rewinding my fresh memories to those bemoaning parrots I noticed outside my home the previous day…

I did not know whether the bereaved lady of the house knew where her son had been at that particular moment…
But, I knew.
And, I really wish she didn’t…