Prose before hos

I have a draft, or maybe more from October. The last one I shut down midway was so deeply painful that I chose to do everything except address what I was writing about. In a way, it felt a lot like the life I once had and then lost in the nick of a time. Even the lowest points come from a space of privilege, I am aware. 

I suppose taking writing as a day job means dolling out a certain number of words and getting your fill with them. You can ingest or throw up any more than what you train yourself to do. In my case, this page is languishing cause I am channeling all my energy into dissociating my life and trying times, whenever. 

The older I get, the more convinced I am that Prince (or was it King?) Siddharth (L*rd Bu*dha) probably needed a therapist more than meditation. Men will do everything except go to therapy. They'd rather attain salvation or blame Taylor Swift for writing album after album instead of helping themselves.

Taylor Swift, what a baller. At the end, she emerged as a winner. Kanye needs help and she's making the big bucks. A huge win for annoying people across the world globally and a big L for those (like me) who thought Kanye was really onto something until Kim ditched him. 

25 minutes for this month to end. A whole lifetime of trauma to talk about. Until then. 

 I returned home yesterday after a day trip to Rajasthan for a little something. Apparently, there's an embargo on that subject so you'll have to imagine the purpose. Anyway, the first thought I had when I walked in from the porch towards the door is to meet my grandfather, say hi and tell him all about my day. Except, it only occurred to me when I stepped in...

Other than that, I haven't had much energy to be upset over other things. I'm on autopilot which means 6 out of 7 days I spend in my room, working on my projects and doing my thing. In some ways, this reminds me a lot about being 13-14 all over again. I'm reconnecting with hobbies, brooding inwards and spending time filling that cup that needs tender love and care and all that in between. I've nothing to complain about the process. It's stimulating to consume things that I know will build me up to be a force to reckon with. I've always gained from this. 

Other than that, I feel fucking fantastic. Spring is upon us, which means it feels like fucking Summer day in the face and a chilly Winter night and I love this contrast. It feels like fucking magic each year and I feel on top of the fucking world, the best of both, if I may. 

I fucking love re-writing things, change of season when we move towards the Summer and all things that come back after a long fucking time. I love myself in the light of everything I have seen, been a part of and done and after a long fucking time I feel great about being myself. Nothing might be going my way but I'm fucking invincible. 

Probably the first time in over a decade, I've lost the urge to write here. Yet, here I am. 

My laptop died last evening. For the first time in over eight years, this bit went down, and I've got to say, it caught me off guard. I've lost touch on how to handle an unprecedented travesty and how to be prepared for those, mostly cause my laptop's been entirely reliable for such a long period now that I believed this is far from gone and has another decade to offer. 

Truth is, this was also my worst nightmare. Along with a few others, I've been keeping this thought on the back burner to the point, I didn't want to contest my cynicism with the reality that it is working for now and when push comes to shove, we'll see it. 

Push came to shove on a night I was PMSing beyond belief and had procrastinated big work deadlines. 

Big work achievement? I've been commissioned to write for one of the more prestigious fashion magazines in the world, one I didn't think I'd ever land, cause I never thought I'd be good enough to make it to the other side. I read those magazines for years, saw the author's name and wondered what would it be like to be one of them.

Cut me some slack, I was young and fed on SATC bullshit. Still, it holds value when you romanticize something and it happens. Never mind, the payment isn't great and that you're quite unhappy yourself with the style you need to follow. 

I can rant later, but for now, back to the crashed laptop and smashed dreams. I am also scheduled to give a masterclass to other writers/creators next week, which is also coinciding with the deadline, so a lot is riding on my laptop and the fact that it decided to die on me freaked the fuck out. 

"My grandfather died on me the same way. One day he was fine, at home, and the next day he was hospitalized, and soon after he got on life support and we never spoke again." I told a former Tinder man turned good friend at 3 something in the morning when I was panicking. He assured me there's no correlation and at best it might be a simple part replacement issue but my head decided to go down the anxiety route and pick on my insecurities. "M's laptop died this way and it never got back." I tried to get my anxiety to thought and he insisted on letting go of these comparisons for the sake of my sanity. Not to forget he was juggling with power outage himself and his concerns were slightly different than mine. 

My concerns are where I think the universe is conspiring against me and all the shitty things are aligned to be in my platter, one after the other. Just when I'm done dealing with one, the other explodes in my face.

I went to bed at 5 and continued to toss and turn for an hour, all the while thinking of the unwritten pieces my laptop contained, and the journey we were supposed to be on. From negotiating first job offer to writing tart over 6-page doc to men to sending a pitch to this fashion magazine while flirting with a man two continents away— the machine has seen it all with me. It may not hold memories but it has helped me make so many of them, my life is inconceivable without this.

I woke to the sound of religious processions twice, and twice again to my mother trying to locate the spare charger and giving me the call to start the day to fix the laptop. It felt like I was reliving the mornings when my grandfather was in the hospital. 

Around this time last year, I got my first international byline and I met my grandfather for the first time on life support. That moment plays in my head through the nights when I can't fall asleep and go back to reddit or some dumb game to shut off. All of that went through my head over and over, and how I lost him and how my laptop's the next one giving up on me. 

In what was a really long and uncertain episode at the service centre later in the day, my dad managed to get some temporary fix for the system. I'm writing using it, but the days of this machine in its present form are dated. I'm infact terrified to even think when and how this is going to give up and where will I be, work-wise, when that happens. 

The best way possible is to record my emotions in real-time and see if I can compensate fuelling my brain with 3000 calories but not the most frugal idea. 

In other, cheerful updates, I've felt more like myself, than I did in the last month. I attended a wedding, survived a week of the wedding without getting covid and without anyone in my family dying (no wait, someone actually passed away in the extended family). I ate more than my stomach could hold and drank a wee bit, things I have not done in a while and found myself realizing that it's possible to simulate normalcy if you convince yourself you're safe.

I felt safe all these days until my laptop gave up. 

I'm in my personal hell and I need an out. 

One of the nagging thoughts that haunted me for weeks after my grandfather died was the immediacy of separation between him and the material objects. Of course, it's a tale as old as time; material objects as we are constantly reminded, don't accompany us in our afterlives and yet we make all our lives around them. 

By material objects here and the separation, I mean day-to-day items and the memories or associations we have with each of those. I found myself thinking about the most benign things, from how he held my hand when I last met him and the nail paint I wore, and for weeks following, I couldn't remove that off because that carried the last remains of his touch on my life. Even when he was hospitalized for weeks and we were all trying to make sense of our lives without him among us physically, I often wondered if this immediate material world we are surrounded within is the last of what we shared mutually. My mind wandered to the most basic items at home- plastic water bottles, cell phone devices, souvenirs, television, even the news, and the current affairs on the television; everything at home had his touch or remarks and yet, we were aware of how it was a matter of time before change sweeps over. 

Surprisingly, it hurt me the most when I saw the old bottles were disposed of and donated despite initiating the much-needed order of change. These bottles had seen the hospital rooms far too many times. Who's to say the new ones won't but with these, there was a pre-pandemic life, pandemic life and the life that was taken away- all the transition lived through one. I've been working towards cutting people and things off but I found myself upset at the idea of retiring reusable plastic so clearly, I'm struggling within. 

If that's enough, I took the plunge towards a new phone. Unlike the water bottles, the phone has almost been an extension of my body (barring Covid), pretty much every living moment since 2018. It has travelled to countries, seen me hurt and seen me through many many things and trying times. It carries my life of a desk job, then another, then trying to make sense of the pandemic world, then finding myself hopelessly glued to begging for my grandfather's life via each telephonic update and finally, cutting contact from everyone when I thought it was it for me. I don't come from the school of thought where I replace a phone when the device is working fine and hasn't broken in smithereens and I did that, earlier this evening. 

Perhaps, there are few things as valuable as the device and the connection between the living and the dead. Somehow giving the most important part away doesn't sit right with me but life moves on. Re-sale value depreciates and you realize the world doesn't pause and mope with you. It's a lot to process and in other ways, it isn't much. 

Back when I was employed by organizations, and shit would go down, my employers expected me to deliver work. It felt surreal to work for those who felt nothing. It was something I never understood.

I recall the death of my beloved pet dog—Circuit. I was at work and left the office after dropping a mail to my senior colleague about it. Of how I needed to be home with my grandfather while my family would go cremate him at a pet crematorium, all of which was sudden and unplanned. I don't think it was a lot to ask for. A day's leave. A day I had clocked in on time. I shouldn't have had to explain over and over and yet I did. 

I remember the first time I had a panic attack (an actual panic attack) that led to a state of breathlessness among other things and I told my boss (at the time) that I'd need a day to recuperate. They went ahead and posted an Instagram status about people feigning excuses to not come to work on Monday. It was something that was brought to my attention by another colleague, and I wish I had actually feigned an excuse on the day of, to garner that response. It broke my heart. For everything I gave out to people, they couldn't bring to deliver empathy? 

A friend confided bits about her personal relationship a few months ago. She explained something about growth and problems afflicting our partners and how she found herself to be in the same still water with him, where he was years ago when she first met him. It reminded me of me, a personal attack without her intending for it to be. 

I digress (a trouble I've been frequently writing about), but that night, just before going to the hospital, with his back towards me, he had asked, what was I up to with my life? 

In a motion of complete defense, I answered vaguely about trying to find work and working from home. He was just as unconvinced with my response as I was in concocting it, an ability he has passed on to me to gauge the effectiveness of another person's lie without calling them out.

"How far are you with the PhD?"

"It will take some time, 2-3 years I get started now with writing."

"You should complete it."

"I intend to. Definitely in the coming year."

I had lied with complete conviction; for one I was concerned about his health and not wanting to start with anything while he was in pain and in the hospital and for the second, I was convinced he's delirious. 

I reflect back on that moment a lot, especially now that I find myself with all the time in the world and fewer deadlines. We exchanged perhaps 3-4 sentences after that, of his distrust with the hospital and the rest was me trying to convince him to go. 

Six months preceding his death, he would tell us all how he'd fetch his death certificate during the subsequent trip, one he kept stalling until he couldn't anymore. 

We'd point to the inadequacy in his argument, "If you do indeed die, how do you intend on picking your own death certificate?"

He would make a face and somehow the conversation would move in circles.

A month after his demise when I went to pick up his death certificate, it reminded of me how somehow his premonition had been true. He gave me the identity I have, the name I carry and I am known by. He lives on in me, with my self and it was him who went to the hospital to pick up the paper that announced his lack of enthusiasm for life. 

I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up, the way I would before I had been afflicted by severe trauma and grief. I am sick of being tired and angry and sad and utterly hopeless. 

All I want is to be loved and only by those I love back. Nobody else will do. 

I just want to be able to sleep without overthinking shit and hating myself more than anyone else in the world is capable of doing. 

We restart the PhD seminar tomorrow, and for the first time in months, I'm actually looking forward to returning to something, anything. I have a feeling it's to make up for something I told a dying man at the cost of my sanity and for the sake of comforting. I will probably hate myself in the seminar some more but I suppose not as much as I would if I don't actually see this till the end of it. 

I miss him so much and I wish I could just hold his hand and tell him that. 

Over a month ago, when my grandfather was first hospitalized, I sported short nails. I had filed them just before Navratra began and painted them Cerulean. It's a shade I don't quite enjoy wearing much and thus reserve it for once a year, and it stays for 6 days, until my next round.  

He stayed in the hospital for close to 10 days and changing my nail paint was the last thing on my mind. When he returned home, the first order of business was getting back to pending work and classes. Mind you, this was the festive season and our biggest reason to celebrate whatever crumbs we could salvage to find was all related to him. He was back, without a trip to the ICU, defying his own premonition, "If I go to the hospital, you'll be coming home with my death certificate and not me."

He had been chanting that for a month. He and I fought each day for a fortnight leading to his appointment. He was sure he wouldn't survive it, and I, that we wouldn't have him with us for long if he evades this trip. He finally agreed to the hospital and the doctor only when I beat him in an argument, "if you are fine, then why are you hesitating to see a doctor?"

Anyway, he came back home after all that drama and the period where I was living from prayer to the next. I celebrated that with half a bottle of gin, diluted in 400 ml tonic. I wolfed down a pack of chips along, all that just to celebrate the little joy, we were going to get through this together. Another Diwali of misquoting bhajans together and giggling through it all, another Diwali with our masked selfies, another year of him fussing over how I need not worry about not being in a capacity to fund anyone but myself. "I'm your Reserve Bank of India." he would say. 

Before I could remove the Cerulean, he was back in the hospital again. 

It started with bloating which was followed by swelling. There was uncontrolled nausea and finally, it was something huge. He couldn't urinate for half a day and we deemed it serious enough to return to the hospital. My dad had sat me down earlier that evening before any of this had happened telling me to be brave and be prepared for anything. I wrote that off as banter, one of those things that people say without thinking much, after-effects of drinking on an empty stomach. 

The night this happened, we had rushed him to the ER. His doctor had told us that this was a minor inconvenience borne out of the catheter and that removal would mean the passage would clear. An hour into the ER trip, I received a call that he has pneumonia and that he couldn't breathe. He needed to be hospitalized. 

I was sick in my stomach and cried for hours straight. Our last interaction before he was rushed to the ER was me trying to rationalize this hospital trip. "You'll be back in an hour. Mom's spoken to the doctor. It's nothing."

The next morning his doctor told us how his recovery won't be easy and that his kidney functioning has been compromised completely. My mom had called me crying and my dad was evading all conversation. "He's not okay."

He was shifted to the ICU soon after and the visits were limited, two people per day, for half an hour each. A day after this, during one such visit, he started sinking and they had to revive him with injections and CPR. My sister saw that happen and she was immediately asked to leave the ICU. I was home alone and it was complete pandemonium. I just remember a lot of crying and insecurity of being left-out and not having met him, not enough, and certainly not at a point where he was swinging between life and death in this motion and I was barely able to comprehend the pace of this. 

From that day up to the day he passed away, there was a terror. A complete and utter horror story that the four of us lived through together. With every ring of the phone to every action, it was stretched, painful, and terrifying, that trauma is something we are all carrying deep in our veins now. 

Naturally, Diwali was nothing like I had imagined. We slept at 9 pm, empty stomach after a brief family ritual that we carried out. It felt like death even though he was alive, very much so, and undergoing dialysis in the renal ICU while being on the ventilator through the evening. 

At some point between this trauma building, I began to normalize my life. When my grandmother was detected with cancer, the trauma we all carried turned into our lives. We all normalized her chemo-cycles and radiation days and our lives were compartmentalized into her pain vs our collective lives. On the days she would be in despair, none of us would really do our jobs well and on other days, we'd scrap through. All of us spent four years in this routine and we got accustomed to living our lives with the burden of seeing our family members go through so much. For the most part, we were alone in our grief and each of us still bears the marks in our personal lives. 

I had imagined our lives to go back to that. We would spend 12 hours in the car parking together and speculate on the dialysis routine or how long it would take for things to go back and fix themselves. During those days, my dad refused to shave and I refused to take my nail paint off. It seemed like a marker for change and we weren't ready to make any change that was to change things radically. Changing my nail paint seemed radical. What if I were to lose him and his last bits, would our last memory be attached to the erased Cerulean? I didn't want to imagine a life where he wouldn't see my nail paint colour of the week. Especially not when things were bleak. 

It was some form of morbid fear that internalized over those long afternoons and walks around the hospital ground. My hands carried with me the last of his memories and I did not want to tamper with them in any way. 

It took a week and lots of individual breakdowns for me to convince my dad to shave. Consequently I decided to take things in my hand, change my nail paint and visit him in the ICU. I'd sit meters away from the ICU door and not have it in me to see him in the state he was in. 

The day before he passed away, I visited him in the ICU with fresh nail paint—lavender and gold. It occurred to me later how I'd worn the same on his birthday and we have photographs together with me wearing that colour. There was no planning, no thought. I just wanted to break out of my stupidity, my dumb thoughts about holding the last of him in my skin and my memory in this way. Doing a change would mean that his memory would be above all this cursory shit. 

We held hands and I felt like things were in control. It was heartbreaking to see him like that but he'd been a fighter all his life through adversities and some dumb kidney couldn't break this man down. He was active and conscious and I told myself later how he would fight through it. 

The most unfortunate bit of all of this is, he was right. We did come back without him, we did leave him there and instead got a death summary back. 

There is so much on the cursory level that seems to have settled—immersion of the last of him and the phone calls that no longer mean anything—and yet there is that unending grief, a sense of vacuum and the feeling where your chest tightens with sorrow when you realize how hopelessly alone you are in all of it. Everyone and everything is meaningless and how we are all counting our time down until our end. 

And yet, I can't get myself to change my nail paint and lose the last of him. 

Over a week ago when my grandfather got on the ventilatory support, and we thought we were losing him, I revisited a friend's beautiful ode to her mother. She had penned that two years after her mother's demise, it was heavy and heartbreaking, at the time. I re-read that in the dead of the night (as I do with most of my reading) and howled until I couldn't anymore. 

Somehow next day, I remember texting her out of the blue and sharing with her the details of my grief and his sickness and how reading the ode about her mother was hitting in a different way than the other time when I did. This was the first time I shared this with anyone, most of which I had skipped from my friends or anyone else who was enquiring. She was gentle and graceful and offered me the sanest bits to hold on to. I recall her telling me details of the prayer ceremony that followed and shared her ways of expressing herself, including how she held tight to the things her mother was fond of, from the colour of her nail paint to others. 

One of the most beautiful things she shared was her experience of leading her mom to the end of her life. She told me that when it's time for him to go, I should hold his hand and communicate to him, to be brave and that he will be loved forever. She gave me the analogy of going to the school for the first time and being dropped by a parent. Both the entities are scared and terrified of parting and yet they must. That's how I should take it and send him off with all my love. 

Somehow, each time that week I thought of this, I ended up crying. It was the only thing and the way I could cry other than listening to certain numbers. 

During the week, things looked up, perhaps the one time he came off the ventilator. Even if it was for 12 hours, it was a ray of hope, a sign that he wasn't ready to give up just yet and I held my belief that he will pull out of it. 

Except he didn't. 

He would tell me daily, over evening tea, how my grandmom entrusted my responsibility to him before parting and how it was on him to be responsible for me and take care of me. My grandmother passed away years ago, and I feel, I have grown leaps and bounds since, as things ought to be. Yet, there was this sense, this burden he carried about being there for me. 

This hasn't been my year, for anyone who knows me, and somehow, he didn't know or understand the magnitude of grief and trauma I have been carrying for a while. I spent the majority of the year cooped up alone and only met him once a day at best, only when forced out to meet him when he'd summon for me. He would say the same things, "Did you eat breakfast? You should not starve yourself for so long. How is Ph.D. coming? When is your freelance payment expected?"

I remembered all this and more, when I saw him for the first time in the ICU, a day before he passed away. Literally, 24 hours before it happened, I went inside the ICU and howled infront of him. I  begged him to get better and fight his kidney failure. He was conscious, oriented, and communicating via his eyes and shrugs. He was restless and expressed how he wanted me to remove his tubes and the injections and he wanted water. He wanted to be home and did not want to be in the ICU. He held my hand as tightly as possible and pinched me hard every 30 seconds. It didn't hurt, instead, it felt like a disservice on my part. How much he wanted to get out of where he was and how hard he pleaded for me to make it happen. I held his hand during the duration and cried throughout and managed to tell him that he has to be brave and continue to be my inspiration so we could enjoy the treat I owed him from my first international byline. He had been waiting for that and would follow up daily until he was home. 

None of that happened. 

Instead, 24 hours later, I held his hand and stared at the monitor when his heartbeat was dipping. I told him to be brave and to go to his new abode lovingly, that he will always live through me and the name I carry. It was time for us to part in this life and if we were lucky, we would meet again, in a world where there are no calories or sugar content and an uninterrupted television with a cable connection that we could stream. I thought of the things he wouldn't know, from the minute he shut his eyes and wondered if he'll ever know how much he meant to me, something I felt I never communicated enough, despite the world knowing all about it. That's the big problem with me, I can't ever let anyone know what they mean to me, not even after they're gone. Only, everyone else will hear me rave all about it. 

I bid him goodbye and hoped he is happy in his new home and that it was loving and comfortable and right up his alley. 

I am so proud to be his granddaughter and so lucky to have been named by him and raised by him and carry his blood in my veins. He was the most fantastic father-figure, a role model I grew up with and I am incredibly honoured to have been chosen to carry his legacy forward, till however long it lasts. 

I just hope and wish he knows this, where ever he is today. 

There's a lot to be grateful for. It's never too late to express your gratitude, even in the worst of times. 

I saw a call to action post on social media, by a former classmate, I'm assuming for a loved one in her family. Her friends/our other classmates were sharing it all around—requesting anyone who has any information about an available bed for COVID. Breaks my heart every time I see someone struggle to get medical attention, especially as someone who's spent half her life in and out of the hospital. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing the lack of resources for people, everything else including your personal politics and bitterness, etc aside, nobody should have to deal with seeing someone suffer. I have seen people plead, beg and cry for a hospital bed, for ICU and ventilatory support these last few days and while my grandfather may never come out of there alive, I hope people realize what we are signing up as individuals to live in a city where the diseased have no hope to seek treatment, regardless of a pandemic or not. 

Around the same, I saw a middle-aged gentleman climb a tree, in front of us. What started as a giggle, "oh look he's chasing a squirrel", soon turned into watching him scramble to pluck branches off the Neem tree. People use it for medicinal properties and as someone who's had a friend drop a giant branch of Neem tree leaves when I had chicken-pox, I understand more than ever. Someone once did that for me and I'm eternally grateful for that gesture. But more than anything, I don't want to imagine what his circumstances must have been to have walked all the way to a hospital parking compound and do this. In fact, I felt pathetic for texting a friend at the moment, while live-updating her my state of being.

I'm grateful to every single motherfucker who has abandoned my family and us in these trying times of dealing with immense pain and shock. You realize the magnitude of damage as you grow older, no matter, how many times you've seen people repeat their patterns. There's a very good reason my family raised us to be independent, even in times of grief and despair, for they have dealt with it themselves on numerous occasions. The variables may change but in the end, the conclusive result remains the same, people are massive arseholes, cunts of the highest order.  They are invested for as long as there is a spectacle to watch and treats to enjoy. Everyone wants a free meal, a glass of whiskey, or whatever else. Nobody wants you to hold you when you are bawling alone or watching a person die infront of your eyes. I've been there and much as I want these fuckers to perish in hell, I don't want to wish these trying times on anyone, not even those who have done us and my family wrong. We are living through hell and this, I hope, nobody ever gets to see this in their lives. 

Nobody can save your life and nobody can rescue you from living through the grief, but what people can do is have your back. There are a few people I am grateful to, especially this time when everything is difficult anyway. They have stood with us like rock and been family to my parents, more than the actual fuckers we are related to by blood. I hope the latter rot in hell, regardless of what becomes of my grandfather. 

My grandfather was orphaned at age 5 and he would tell us all daily, how nobody in the family has achieved the success he did, despite not being given 2 rupees to buy books. I wish he could have given every one of these motherfuckers a piece of his mind if he were conscious to see the shit we are dealing with. I truly wish he could see the vultures we have been living among, or hope he gains health for him and I to bond over this conversation. 

Every phone call seems like a thousand needles pricking inside my body, every minute. 

I don't know when this started but I became paranoid about death and the inevitability of it when my grandfather was escorted to the ICU with code blue a few years ago. He was sitting with us and chatting and the next minute he collapsed, his vitals dimming and the staff rushed him to the ICU infront of our eyes. It's an experience that takes a lot out of you, and I can't say I haven't been lucky to see him get out of it. 

He fought through it and many other similar dips and episodes. Each of these had one thing in common, the intimation was a phone call. That's the only thing my grandfather managed to learn using his cell phone despite our collective efforts. He has called us in the dead of the night, only for us to learn his glucose level is dipping and he needed to be fed something. 

On a good day, he could read an SMS and delete but he was very comfortable with phone calls. So much so, he would summon us by calling on our respective phone. I've had a few scares during dinners and other outings when I'd receive a call from him, despite my family being there, only to learn he dialled accidentally while trying to call someone else. 

Over the last few years, I stopped taking phone calls from most people. I think I was saturated after having spent my school and two colleges talking on the phone, and living through this hell didn't help. I stopped taking calls on the landline as well, the only mode of communication that works inside our residence. This was far more shocking to process because as a kid I was massively fond of reading our phone book, or any phone book in my access just about every minute of the day. I remember when I was allowed to use the landline to answer calls and protocols were set about how to greet people and how to wish them and handle calls. I was enthusiastic and I remember how eagerly I would wait for the phone to ring so I could perform all that I had learned. It was a responsibility my family bestowed on me, and as a first-born I knew I had to ace it. 

Lately, I haven't had the strength to pull through and take the news of any kind and face reality. I needed my time to process things, despite my stoic sense of being. Everyone at home raves about how nothing affects me and I can live through the phone ring all my life, but nobody knows the intensity of horror I live through each time the phone rings. 

The past week has been my version of personal hell. Every phone call meant information about something going wrong, whether it was directly from my parents or the hospital. We have been either informed as a family unit or as an individual about each time something went wrong; a dip, another dip, yet another dip. Yesterday, I was informed about putting him on ventilatory support through a call, when I was home alone and everyone else was at the hospital. My heart sank when I was told that they had to revive him using CPR and whatever little my sibling could convey between her sobs. If there was no phone, I wouldn't live with the constant anxiety of what next. I managed to cry, howl infact, first time in two days. It sunk in how I may never get a call about my grandfather's health and how he may never come home. 

There has been that sense of unrest, that anxiety for as long as I remember gaining consciousness, and each time I hear someone losing someone they love immensely but when push comes to shove is when you realize how deep the scars run and how some wounds are more septic than the other. 

Between the news update about his health, there have been non-stop phone calls between concerned few extended family members that my parents are gracefully handling. Left to my device, I'd not answer even one but I'm grateful to them for setting examples like these where they have outperformed their perseverance, so far. It's another topic for another day to discuss how and what happens when you see a family crumble under the weight of societal obligations and the lack thereof, and dealing with grief. That's a can of worms I don't want to go near today when I'm a fucking wreck. 

The order of phone calls has been peculiar-

Receive information first hand- convey to the family members by a phone call- convey to the rest of the family members after the members of the house have been informed- repeat. 

Despite this disco routine for nearly a month now, none of this has normalized, none of this is easy. Each time the fucking phone rings, I can hear the deep breathing my dad has to do to calm himself, I can feel my mom palpitating and my sister and I taking turns to console one another whenever the other breaks down. Every phone call so far has been a letdown, snatching hope until we are down to none. For the last few mornings, every phone call has brought a new horror story. The day starts on a note, a fresh page and then it's filled with the ringing of doom. 

We were all huddled in the car parking this evening as the waiting area at the ICU has been cordoned off due to Covid. We had each other's support, and yet, my grandfather wasn't around. 

All we had were his sinking updates, one phone call at a time.