Poornima Manco

Author

Death

Death

by

Ah, Death

my old friend,

here you are again

 

I thought I’d slipped past you,

the last time we met

like we were strangers

not intimately acquainted

by our last go-around

 

I was embarrassed

and scared

I’ll admit

because we nearly went the distance

and then, we didn’t

 

You met someone else,

they were more interesting

and you let go of my hand

but only for a moment

 

Now here you are

smiling down at me

like you’d never left

like I’d never wilfully

forgotten you

 

And here I am

 

Gasping out my last breath,

saying goodbye to all I know and love

putting my faith in you once again

 

This time, you whisper,

it’s for keeps

and I believe you

 

The threshold is only a million miles

and a slim vapour away

 

My hand is cold in yours

but you lead me strongly

confidently

towards

that which has always awaited me.

 

(written for a friend who passed recently after battling cancer)

 

 

 

 

 

50 Not Out!

by

My father had once told me that life is as unpredictable as cricket. Taking the metaphor further, I can happily report that I have hit my half century with élan. During days of Covid that is not a blessing to be sneezed at! I fully expected to feel some sadness at leaving my youth behind so definitively. Instead, all I feel is a sharp sense of relief. At no point in my life have I ever felt so sure of myself, so comfortable in my skin, and so content with my lot.

Alongside, I’ve learnt quite a few lessons too. This is hard won wisdom, and in detailing it here, my intent isn’t to bore you, but to remind myself how far I’ve come from that gauche, awkward young girl setting foot into her twenties. Of course, there is no end to learning and in the years to come, I hope to amass many more life lessons. However, where I stand today, these are my little nuggets of sagacity. Do with them what you will.

  1. Forgive. My goodness me! If only I’d known how liberating this was. Conventional wisdom always dictated to forgive and forget. I’ve been terrible at both. But as I approached my 50th birthday, all those petty grudges and long-held resentments seemed to fall away. I really didn’t want to carry any of it into my fifth decade. So, my mantra has become forgive, but don’t forget. If someone has wronged me repeatedly, then I’d be a fool to let them do it again. But I will forgive because I do not want to carry the burden of my anger into the future. If I’ve wronged someone, I hope they can find it in their heart to forgive me too.
  2. Ask, don’t assume. Another one of my failings has been to jump to conclusions, often erroneous ones. With only half the information at hand, one can often make totally wrong assumptions. Isn’t it better to just ask, politely? Clarify rather than hypothesize? It’s already serving me well, as I just ask outright if I’m perplexed by someone’s behaviour. More often than not, it turns out to be the most innocuous thing.
  3. Say No and mean it. Aha! This takes many years to solidify into a behaviour choice, especially if you are a people pleaser like me. But, but, but… Time is not an infinite resource. It is up to you to decide where and what you want to spend it on. In my case, I’ve decided that I would rather say no at the very outset than not deliver on a promise.
  4. Be true to yourself, i.e. have some integrity. Recently I’d paid the bill at a restaurant, only to discover later that they had left the entire alcohol tab off the final tally. I could have let it go. After all, it was saving me a pretty packet. But after a sleepless night worrying that I could cost someone their job, I returned to the restaurant to settle the remainder of the bill. Yes, in the short term it hurt my wallet. But in the long term, my conscience and I could live together happily ever after.
  5. Enjoy every day. This is so oft-repeated it’s almost a cliché. It is so important, though, to really stop and smell the roses, to slow life’s treadmill enough to enjoy the view. Who knows which day may be your last?
  6. Have an attitude of gratitude. Really! Try it. Just say thanks to whoever/whatever you believe in. If you have no religious beliefs and think that the world is just chaos, then thank that chaos for everything it’s given you. Life, love, a home, a family, food to eat, clothes to wear, holidays to go on – everything is a gift that we must never take for granted. Just a simple ‘thank you’ will bring many more blessings into your life.
  7. Patience. This from one of the most impatient people you may ever have met. That’s moi! If I could have something day before yesterday, I would. However, life has taught me that all things come to those who wait. Waiting doesn’t mean sitting on your hands and hoping for a million pounds to fall into your lap. It means working quietly and diligently towards your goals without expecting to be rewarded immediately. There is an Indian proverb that goes – सब्र का फल मीठा होता है – which literally means that the fruit of patience is sweet. That it most definitely is.
  8. Confidence. I have two young girls, and I watch them as they navigate the world, unsure of themselves and their place in it. I always pretended I was more confident than I was when I was younger. “Fake it till you make it” was my internal instruction to myself. I don’t need to fake it anymore. Knowing who I am, what I’m not, and that I add value to the world allows me the luxury of being confident, not arrogant. I hope it doesn’t take my girls thirty years to discover their own unshakeable core of assurance.
  9. Growing old is a privilege. Yes, it is, and it’s one denied to many. In the last eighteen months when we’ve lost so many loved ones to Covid, it is even more important to acknowledge that living to a ripe old age is yet another blessing, a prerogative that only the lucky have.
  10. A legacy of kindness. What do we leave behind that is truly important? Wealth, name, fame? Or, the fact that we may have touched someone’s life with a little bit of kindness? To me, that is the only legacy that matters.

50 not out! It’s been a fantastic game so far, and I’ve hit a few sixers along the way. The day I’m bowled out, I hope everyone says, “She had a good innings.”

Because, you see, I really did.

It hurts!

by

“It hurts mummy!” My daughter sobbed, pointing to her chest, trying to identify the epicentre of her grief, “It hurts here!”

“I know darling,” I tried soothing her, my heart breaking as I witnessed what bereavement could do to a person.

To a bystander, this grief would seem disproportionate. After all, it was only a hamster, a tiny little rodent that had a very short life span anyway. But, to my daughter, little Luna had been her world, a repository of her love and a symbol of life finally turning positive after years of pain and suffering that a series of health issues had caused her. Luna, the Russian dwarf hamster, had been bought for her birthday, after much pleading and cajoling on her part. She’d never had a pet of her own. The first two hamsters had belonged to her sister, the steady rotation of fish we’d bought for her had never really felt like her own pets as I’d been the one who’d ended up cleaning the aquarium and caring for them. So, this pet was meant to be hers alone. And she was as good as her word. She fed her, cleaned her cage and played with her daily.

Luna was a delightful little thing – full of spunk and vigour. She was incredibly sociable, always happy to be held and passed from hand to hand. We filmed her climbing her bars and swinging from them like a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist. We photographed her chucking all the food out of her bowl and sitting in it. Her antics became a source of amusement and entertainment for the entire household. Even my husband, not a pet person at all, found her to be a sweet little thing.

A week before she died, my daughter noticed her behaving strangely. She hadn’t come up to the second level to drink any water all day, which was very unlike her. Her food remained untouched. When we raised the roof of her little house, she crawled out uncertainly, wobbly on her feet, dragging her hind legs as though injured. Fearful that she might have broken a leg during her acrobatics, we started googling hamster ailments straight away. Nothing definitive came up, but the advice was to have her checked out by the vet. So, we rushed her to the clinic near our house. The vet wasn’t in and an appointment was made for later in the day. All-day my daughter worried about her, scared that Luna was in pain. In the evening we put her in the little pet carrier and once again, carried her to the vet.

As soon as the vet put her on the stretcher, she seemed to perk up. Running hither thither, she seemed perfectly fine, casting doubt on all our previous worries. We were gobsmacked! This was the same hamster that had been dragging her legs a half-hour ago. The vet discharged her with advice to give her a food supplement and just keep an eye on her. We were perplexed but happy that she seemed to have recovered on her own.

For the next week, Luna’s new ‘normal’ was an exaggerated version of her former self. She climbed her bars constantly, throwing herself down like a kamikaze pilot, she started to chew on them, as if wanting to escape her confinement. She also became increasingly nippy, chomping down on our fingers whenever an opportunity presented itself. Her increasingly bizarre behaviour seemed to transform her from a happy, peaceful little thing to an irrational, hyper, angry little mammal. We could not understand it, and I spent hours trawling the internet trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, a week ago, she didn’t emerge from her house all day, once again. Upon returning from her weekly physiotherapy session, my daughter noticed that Luna’s breathing was shallow and that she was curled up like a little ball. The internet revealed that she could be in a state of ‘torpor’ brought on by the cold, and extremely dangerous in little animals. We heated up a hot water bottle, placed a towel on it and tried to warm little Luna up. But it was too late. She had slipped away silently to wherever cute little hamsters go to when they die.

I took it hard because I had grown increasingly fond of her. But my daughter took it even harder. She didn’t sleep all night, crying into her pillow, weeping at the unfairness of it all. “She was just a baby!” she wept. Yes, she was. Less than two months old, Luna should have had at least another sixteen months of life.

My daughter’s back pain has come back with a vengeance, once again underlining how psychology influences physiology. She feels like the Universe is conspiring against her, that nothing seems to be going her way. But more than anything else, she is grief-stricken at the loss of her pet, her darling little Luna Yves.

For people who don’t own pets, this may seem incomprehensible. For people who do, this will be completely understandable. Pets, little or large, become a part of the family. In their quiet and unconditional love, in their reliance on us and their domesticity, they bind us to them in infinitesimally small and unseen ways. When they die, a part of us dies too. When they die unexpectedly and so very young, a part of us is wrenched away in the shock of the arbitrariness of it all.

Perhaps Luna had an underlying condition we were not aware of. Hamsters can be prone to heart issues and/or diabetes. Perhaps her bizarre behaviour was symptomatic of her condition, her ‘nipping’ a way of conveying her pain and discomfort. Perhaps. A lot of questions remain, but we didn’t have the heart to have her little body cut open for an autopsy. Instead, we gave her a little burial in a plant pot, with a beautiful yellow rose plant bought especially in her honour to commemorate the joy she brought into our lives. The little plaque I had made for her notes the date of her demise and how much she was loved by all. It is glued on to the outside of the planter.

Too much? No, not in my opinion. There is a reason that we have certain ceremonies or rituals after death. These are a very visible way of bidding goodbye to a loved one. They are the first steps that we take towards healing. After the pain of the loss comes denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression and finally, acceptance.

Right now, my daughter is trapped somewhere between anger and depression. The acceptance will come, I know it will. But in the meantime, it is important to acknowledge the magnitude of her loss and to show her that Luna’s little life on earth meant something to us. In time, hopefully, we can bring home another little hamster. But right now, we grieve the passing of our little friend. May she rest in peace.

The ghost in the office – Shantanu Saha

by

It was the year 2004, and I had set up my own bootstrapped venture, an Executive Search Firm. Our first office was in a fairly old bungalow in the heart of South Delhi.

I had leased the entire ground floor of this bungalow, spread over an area of 3000 sq. ft. with an additional front lawn and a back courtyard. Outside the house was an old Banyan tree adjacent to the main gate, with aerial pop roots hanging from the branches, giving an eerie look and feel to the whole house. The first floor with terrace had the landlord’s family: a husband, wife, child and his elderly mother.

The ground floor of the house that we occupied had three fairly large rooms with an attached bath in each. There was an even larger drawing and dining area. Doors of some of the washrooms, especially the one in front of the house, tended to make a creaking sound whenever the wind blew. In this place I occupied one room at the back of the house from where I used to work and I had a team of three girls: Raj, Swati & Rupa who would sit and work in the adjacent room. There was also an old chap Kartik who was the office help. His job was to manage the pantry, lay out the lunch, supervise the cleaner who would come once a day and open & close the office.

The business was doing well and all was hunky dory till a series of strange events happened. Initially these were minor things.  A couple of the girls complained that after lunch when they went back to their workstations, all the windows tabs in their computers they had kept open while searching for profiles on job sites, had been closed. Another girl complained that though she had switched off the light and fan switches in their room before coming to the dining hall for lunch, they had all been mysteriously switched on when they went back. I made light of all this and told them that they were getting absent minded. However, after a while, they got it into their heads that this was all down to a ghost. They were also convinced it was a female ghost who was not bothering me but only the girls, as everything happened to them and not to me. I refused to buy into this line of thought.

Then something even more mysterious happened. It was a bright sunny afternoon in the month of June, when one of my team members Swati was discussing something with me in my room. The doorbell rang. In those days we were recruiting for our own team and we used to call candidates over to the office for an interview. The candidate would be attended to by the office boy, given a job application form and after they filled that out, Kartik would bring the candidate’s resumé and form in to me. I would send one of the girls to do the first round of interviews and if they cleared that, I would meet the candidate.

I asked Swati if she could see who the candidate was, as although the drawing room was a little far off, there was a direct line of sight from the place where she was standing in my room. She described that the girl was looking away toward the French windows overlooking the lawn and was wearing high heels and a salwar kameez. She added that she looked smart enough, and that she would meet her once Kartik had got her to finish the formalities. We then went back to our discussion.

After 10 minutes, I suddenly reminded Swati that Kartik had not yet come in with the candidate’s form. She called out and Kartik came in from the back courtyard which had an entry from the room where the girls used to sit and work. We asked him what had happened and why he hadn’t brought in the girl’s form and resumé. He asked – which girl? Swati and I looked at each other. I asked Kartik had he not opened the door when the bell rang? He said he never heard the bell ring and that he was in the back courtyard anyway. We immediately went to the drawing room and there was no one there. I was stunned! I thought I had heard the bell ring and so had Swati. Besides, she had vividly described the girl. We did not know what to make of it.

However, when I discussed  this with Raj and Rupa separately, they speculated that since Swati had recently been through a bereavement and been quite distressed, that maybe she had hallucinated the episode. Although I was not fully convinced, I thought I had what could be the best explanation under the given circumstances.

A few days later, I was talking to the girls in the room where they used to work. All the girls at that time had Personal Computers on which they worked. To ensure an uninterrupted power supply in the event of a power failure, all PC’s had a Battery Backup Device attached to them. While talking to them I walked across to the window in the room where the curtains were a little out of place. I was adjusting the curtain when all of a sudden Swati’s PCs Battery Backup Device started beeping. She looked at me in alarm. I looked at the power plug to which the battery backup device was connected on the wall which was located just below the curtain and I noticed that the switch was off. I told her that maybe the switch had shut off when I was adjusting the curtain and there was nothing to be alarmed about.

That night I was at home when at around 10 pm Swati called and her first question was – ‘Sir, what’s the backup time of the Battery Backup Device?’ At that instant, a shiver ran through me as I realised that the device had, at the very least, a 15 minute backup. It was fairly new, so its in-built alarm would not beep unless it ran out of power. If  by my moving the curtain I had inadvertently switched off the main switch from which the device was drawing power, the beeping sound could not possibly have started that soon. Swati had been working on her machine all morning, and the power backup device had beeped only when I was in the room that afternoon. Both of us realised that no logical explanations were working. She insisted I speak to the landlords about any unnatural deaths in the house.

I briefed the landlord the next day and he said he had no clue why these things were happening. He said that only his father had passed away in this house but, there was no reason why he would be spooking us. It was then that Rupa in my team disclosed some more details about the area where this house was located.

Apparently, just across the road from our house was a 5 star hotel that had been built adjacent to an old graveyard that had been there for centuries. She had worked in that hotel for a short while before she joined our firm. She said that many guests and staff in that hotel had reported hearing eerie screams on the upper floors quite frequently during the night. It had come to such a stage that hotel staff had refused to go to the upper floors late in the night. She also pointed out the Banyan tree outside our office. Banyan trees in India are associated with the God Yama, or the God of Death. The tree is often planted outside villages in India near crematoriums. It is believed to be the abode of ghosts.

Upon hearing all of this, my entire team and I decided that it would be difficult to work from there any more. We frantically searched for an alternate location and within a week shifted out.

I do not know whether the house was truly haunted or not, but our experience there was spooky enough that even now, reminiscing about these incidents sends chills down my spine.

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Shantanu resides in New Delhi, India and holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics as well as a Master’s degree in Business Administration.

He had a successful Corporate Stint in the Human Resources Function and became a Head  of HR at the age of 25 in a Manufacturing Multinational. He worked in various sectors subsequently as a Head HR, before setting up his own Executive Search Firm in 2004 that now has a presence in multiple cities across India. He is also a guest judge and speaker in various management forums & institutes in India.

He lost his father at the age of ten to a genetic disease that later affected him and his sister as well. He had multiple surgeries and a near death experience and survived to tell the tale both literally and figuratively. He wrote a book on how he overcame the disease describing his whole experience and the same is available on Amazon globally. He unfortunately lost his sister to the disease too.

He is a workaholic, likes traveling, is an amateur photographer, likes reading & writing occasionally, is an exercise freak and also has interests in the areas of Science, Arts and Politics.

He can be reached on :-

Twitter : @ShantanuSaha1

Instagram : @shantanusaha1

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/shantanusaha/

His book – “Fight for Life: My Journey from a Fatal Disease to Good Health” is now available for Kindle on Amazon. The Paper back is also available in some countries.

The link for India is: http://www.amazon.in/dp/B014YFEFES

The link for US is: http://amzn.com/B014YFEFES

The link for UK is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014YFEFES

Lone Wolf

by

So what makes them do it? What makes an ordinary, quiet, seemingly normal teenager fire an automatic at his school friends and teachers? What makes a man drive his car into innocent pedestrians on a sidewalk? What justification is there for these lone wolf attacks?

Wolves are pack animals, just as humans are by nature socialised beings. Lone wolves on the other hand, prefer their own company. They live and hunt on their own. They are outcasts by temperament, by circumstance and sometimes of their own volition.

Nearly always after another chilling attack, emerge the clues that led to it. A social misfit, a dysfunctional background, a lack of love, a propensity for violence, vulnerability to ideological brainwashing. Taken alone, each of these qualities may perhaps lead a person to a solitary existence, a criminal career or even a mental institution. Together, however, they become so much more dangerous.

Can we, as responsible citizens; parents, neighbours, co workers, pick up on any of these clues, and report them to the relevant authorities? Do we, as a society, have a duty towards these social outcasts? Is it possible in any way to intervene and diffuse a potentially fatal situation from developing?

These are amongst the many questions that lie at the heart of the modern dilemma of home grown attackers. Are killers born or made? Are terrorists just victims of circumstance and conditioning?

Reflection and responsibility. Two things that might lead us to answers. Uncomfortable truths of the part we play in marginalising these peripheral pariahs, whose only moments of recognition and glory lie in death, terror and destruction.

Then, and only then, will we vanquish this multi headed Hydra.

The Great Leveller

by

Prince or Pauper. Young or Old. Death doesn’t distinguish.

Rarely do we acknowledge that with every moment and every breath, we are moving towards our own ends. If life is a miracle, then death is its unsung companion. It lurks at every bend and fold. It stalks us with every near miss and illness. It laughs grimly as we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and milestones. After all, we have to walk into its arms eventually, and feel its lips upon us.

Does that negate the meaning of all life? On the contrary, as anyone who has had a brush with death would attest, it reinvigorates you into living better, and puts into sharp focus that which is really important.

I lost a friend and colleague last week. As memories and tributes have poured in, one fact has stood out in glaring contrast to the others. People have spoken time and again about his kindness. His generosity of spirit was the trait that distinguished him from all others. Not to say that he didn’t have his share of faults and weaknesses, as we all do. However, the overriding narrative has been about his selflessness, his need and ability to help.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones, said William Shakespeare. For once, I am in disagreement with the Bard. The good does live on. This is not canonising the dead. This is accepting that each of us has a choice in the legacy we leave behind. Our legacy could be little or large. It could affect multitudes, or only a handful of near and dear ones. Yet, it would be the one thing that we would be remembered by. Choose wisely.

Having seen how quickly life can end, it makes me examine my own self, and ponder whether disagreements and resentments, and standing on points of principle are really as important as I thought they were? I could never be a doormat, and let people wipe their feet all over me. Yet, I need to inculcate forgiveness and empathy, and an awareness that each of us views life and relationships differently. I need to be honest with myself about my own legacy. I don’t want it to be one of anger and hatred.

In his illness my friend reached out to those he had wronged, and those who had wronged him. He set the record straight, and if nothing else, he died with his conscience clear. Perhaps this is a life lesson for all of us.

We do not need to be looking at death in the face to realise the importance of telling our loved ones how much they mean to us, forgiving those we have perceived as our enemies, building bridges that we have allowed to fray, and choosing to live each moment to its fullest capacity.

Live well, Laugh often, Love much.

A trite phrase that contains a pertinent universal truth. Do not wake up to it when it’s too late.