Nothing is same anymore

Nothing is same anymore

We used to play together when we were kids. My brother used to go around the village with his brother and I used to follow him wherever he went. I remember the night when we walked together while coming back from the factory, it was a starlit night, no moon in sight and yet very bright. The stars there were more in number than in Delhi. Just like all the good things.

Tayaji and taijis home was my second home. Taiji never used to let me go out on an empty stomach. Tea and biscuits used to appear out of thin air. I used to sit in the Veda on a pidi and used to have my breakfast with my cousins. I used to watch color telly at their place rather than the black and white one at my chacha’s place.

The elder of the cousins, Babbu gelled really nice with my elder brother. They were doing all the fun around the place. Dhodha and me just used to follow them till we were tired and gave up. Dodha took me to his wood factory where I saw electrical fittings being made (I tried my hand at a few…); we made wonderful gulakks, and swords to have make-believe fights. I still have those treasures.
We were just a couple of kids; Life was great fun.

Few years later we got a call, Babbu s mother taiji had fallen sick and was very ill. Fearing for the worst papa rushed to our village. But alas womenfolk always hide their illness long enough to suffer and to make other suffer after they are gone. Taiji had suffered a heart attack and was gone.

On my next visit to our village things were a little different. We had a new taiji. Tayaji had to remarry under pressure from other relatives since his kids were young and needed a mother’s love. The new taiji was suave. She changed things around the house and now the house looked more ornate and decorated. But the bonhomie and the welcome were missing.

I heard from mom one day that babbu’s family was coming over to Delhi. I was overjoyed. I would meet dodha again. And babbu too. When I heard the reason for their coming, my heart skipped a beat. Babbu was diagnosed with a heart valve failure and had to be treated at the Delhi hospitals.

Talking was painful to him after operation and he used to gesticulate to tell us about his needs. After about two months he was slowly able to speak and talk to us and share with us his near death experience. Babbu came only once after that for his postoperative checkups. The local doctors had pronounced his operation as a success.

Babbu’s death was an equal surprise as his mother’s death. I was grown up to be taken to mourning so this time even I went along. The brief moments I could get with Dodha before the mourning ceremony, I held his hand, and I looked at him. I couldn’t utter a word. I wished I did. I wished I could. Dodha’s figure of calm and compose broke the moment he saw his brother’s picture. He cried and was inconsolable, I couldn’t cry as much as I tried, so I got up and left.
I am 22 now. I go to my village once in a while. In sorrows and happiness, as they say.
Their house is still there. I know Dodha still lives there. They still have that factory. They still have a color TV and I know I’ll be welcome when I go there. But I also know that nothing is same anymore.