Death is such an intelligent entity, isn't it?
It was Winston Churchill who said that one mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon people he meets; and another is so to have handled matters that the course of after events is continually affected by what he did. A.V.Subramanyam - loved and respected by hundreds as Subbanna - fulfilled both these hard tests.
If greatness consists in the combination of character and intellect of the highest order and if it is to be measured by the lasting value of the solid work done in the fields of thought and action, my maternal grandfather - Subramanyam was beyond question one of the outstanding men.
The man died in 2007 because of Cancer.
Flow through -
I am luckier than most people. I knew that he was dying. I was, you could say, ready for it. He was old, but could have lived a couple of decades more. He was born in the third decade of the last century. He had seen everything the world has forgotten now. - the coming of the first radio; typewriter.
We had provided the best medical care. Multiple degrees holding doctors, state of the art medical equipments - I believe the journey will be over at the predestined hour, irrespective of the medical care which money can buy. He lived with his grief for 2 long years till the Cancer mercifully took his memory (and to an extent, I guess) his pain away. He stopped recognizing me and all those around him and lived, like a frightened child, in a dark fearful world of his own surrounded by phantons he alone knew and could recognise. Once in a while, a window would open for a moment and the light would come streaming in. He would recognise me and say a few familiar words. Otherwise, he would lie down in a dark corner and cringe. Nurse after nurse came and went. Likewise, the doctors. It was an unbearable duty.
He would be hospitalised now and then. But I can never forget those terrible days when he lay in bed, a small, crumpled, little figure, shrunk to half his size, combating pain and suffering without anyone by his side. For he recognised no one; he did not even understand where he was and why there were so many tubes and needles poked into him. I could see the fear in the eyes. I could see the pain, the helplessness, the complete lack of understanding as to why he lay strapped to a bed for days and none of us around him would set him free.
Everytime he was admitted to a hospital, he came back home smaller in size. And even smaller in spirit. More lost than he ever was. More confused. More bereft of hope than I had ever seen him. The big banyan tree under whose shadow we all played and grew up had shrivelled into this tiny, dry plant whose twigs seemed as if they would break off at the slightest rush of wind. He was so frail, so frightened that I left him alone. There was no communication possible between us. It was only love that kept us bonded. When he cried out loud we would go up to him and take his face between our hands and he would keep quiet. Even though he did not recognise us, there was something in the way he responded to our touch that told me he knew he was in safe hands. It was like hiding under a bed during an earthquake. It gave him some hope but that was all. Fear hijacked his entire life.
Fear of what? I do not know. Doctors say that it is a strange, all encompassing, never leaving fear that all patients suffering from a mysterious cancer feel. An inexplicable, unknown miasma of dread that eventually destroys their will to live. I could see that happen to him. He would occasionally disappear for days inside a huge, ugly smog of hopelessness and not speak, not eat for days. We would plead, beg, shout, scream, threaten him. In fact, do anything and everything to wake him up to the world around him but he refused to budge. You could describe his world as virtual, sick. An imaginary world induced by the illness he suffered from but for him it was the only world he had, he knew.
I sat beside him for long days, watching him die. It was an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The helplessness, the pain, the desperation of watching someone you love more than yourself dying before your eyes and not being able to do anything about it. I prayed. But what can prayers achieve in the face of death? I could not even cry. I cried, in fact, a whole week later when I realised that I would never ever meet him again. He was my best friend, my only confidante..
He is gone now. He died yesterday or was it today, who knows? All I know is he is dead and I am left no wiser about life and death, happiness and sorrow, joy and anguish. The pain, ofcourse, will ease.
My Grandfather personified the courage never to submit or yield. You could truthfully apply to him the great words of Milton:
"...Unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth or change his constant mind"
I wish his mordant wit runs like a SILVER THEAD throughout my life.
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