Two Obituaries

Six is a small number, and thus the rule of six degrees of separation  suggests that no one is too far removed from another person in this world. Yet, when Covid struck last year we knew few victims that were separated from us by two or three degrees or less.

This year it has menacingly closed in on us.  It has struck some near and dear ones, and some fatally too.

On 16th I lost my Bhabhi, elder cousin's wife, to this terrible contagion.  Both Bhaiya and Bhabhi had taken their first dose of Covishield and were staying confined to home.  They had fever a few days later but tested -ve for Covid.  Even as the fever was subsiding a little, their oxygen level dipped a little and then some more.  It took major efforts by her daughter and son-in-law, both doctors, to find them beds with oxygen in a Covid facility.  Despite all these valiant efforts and the best medical care, Bhabhi succumbed to the disease.

Bhabhi's son, my nephew, working with Intel in Bangalore, had flown down to Lucknow soon after getting the news of their affliction.  He is deeply attached to his mother and it is difficult to fathom the shock that he experienced.

Added to this loss was the inability to conduct a normal dignified funeral because of the regulations and crowded cremation facilities.  No family member could be in attendance at the funeral except her son and son-in-law.  The subsequent rituals were also shortened to a Shanti Path at an Arya Samaj facility.

Bhabhi was a simple woman of my generation, always smiling and caring.  She loved light reading and afternoon siestas.  She was rooted in tradition, always dressed in a saree, and never took to the salwar suit that other ladies in the family had adopted.  She was very fond of Dahi and sometimes we joked that it was because she hailed from the village Chakdahi.  It is so difficult to believe that this dreaded disease snatched her away from us in one fell swoop!

She will be fondly remembered and missed, always.

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Two weeks have passed since we lost Bhabhi, while Bhaiya remained hospitalised.  Extreme care was taken not to break the news to him and fend off his queries about her with concocted responses.

His condition kept fluctuating and he had to be shifted to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital four days ago as the facilities at Vivekanand Hospital came under pressure because of large addition of Covid patients.  He succumbed today.

Even as the memories of our shared childhood in the joint family of my father and his brother keep flooding my mind, the cruel fact of his death at the hands of this dreaded disease keeps jolting me into this dreadful present.

We studied at the same Government school in Faizabad.  He was a bit of a star there as he was a good cricketer and had played at the district level.  However our middle class compulsions to focus on studies to the exclusion of everything else, weaned him away from cricket.  He had an athletic build and was the tallest person in the family and stopped just shy of six feet.  I am sure that had he followed his interest, he would have gone a long way.

We were all science students, and I vividly remember an incident when he happened to bring a small chunk of sodium and put it in water as I watched from the side.  It erupted and some debris reached his eyes.  Fortunately it didn't cause any damage.

He started his career in the Intelligence Bureau and later, like many others in government jobs, moved to Central Bank of India as a Vigilance Officer.  He was an absolutely upright and straightforward person.  After retirement sometimes he used to share with us his encounters with top management and union leaders.  He never yielded to pressures and was both respected and feared.

Like my father and chacha, Bhaiya too lived in a joint family with his elder brother.  The eldest one, Bade Bhaiya, had passed away four years ago after fighting a resurgent metastasised cancer.  He had been a bit lonely since then.  He also developed a severe problem in his knees which kept worsening as he kept delaying the knee replacement.  This made him sedentary and his fitness level had dropped too.

He had planned and managed a tour for the whole family in March 2020 to Dudhwa National Park.  The entire family had a good time and enjoyed the trip.  No more than a month ago, we were planning a trip to some place in MP.   As we struggle to come to terms with his death, I recall this memory and it fills me with a sense of disbelief.

It is a deep shock for me, and I can only imagine the pain that my nephew and niece must be experiencing having lost both parents in a fortnight!  We are dumbfounded at two from our immediate family being cruelly snatched away by a disease that we had been mocking only a month ago and believed that it had gone away!  My niece and her husband, both doctors, did their absolute best to get him all medical facilities that he needed.  But doctors can only fight illness, not death.  We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dr Virendra Sharma, my niece's husband.

Do say a prayer for the departed souls and also a prayer for us whom this bereavement has left heartbroken.