9/11

Ei Brindabon chatladi nang kapkadra? Will you ever cry if I go to Vrindavan, she once asked me. Vrindavan means heaven to her, it's the place her favourite Lord Krishna wooed his gopis and lived in. She loved him so much that I often teased she would give Mirabai, Krishna's other lover, a complex. And every trip to Delhi was incomplete without a visit to Vrindavan, near Mathura, where the Iskcon (international community for consciousness of Krishna) community have built their base and thrive in. To the question, I remember giving her an miffed look. And that was some months before she passed away, uncanny as it may sound.

Today, one year exactly after her death, I visited the Iskcon temple in East of Kailash, where I last visited with her and papa. I refrain myself from visiting all temples or observing religious rituals because I am still searching for the Godly or (un)Godly truth about religion. But today I just wanted to do the things that made my mother happy. The temple had an air of serenity and against the chanting of Hare Rama Hare Krishna in the background, a small puja in her name was performed. Though heavy at heart, I came out feeling satisfied.

I want to know where she is right now -- in the way I want to know where everything I have lost is gone. If only there was a way we could see where the dead live. But thoughts, they just come in all forms --abstract, sad, happy, et al.

I don't know how to define this loss from my life. I am always short of words, short of tears. Like a buttoned up shirt, I carry and wear this sadness, sometimes even unware that the shirt is permanently fixed on me, till the tightness of it makes me gasps in pain that only circles in the insides of my heart. Only those who have loved and lost will understand my pain. I wish there was never a 9/11 in the calender and in the calender of my life.