The feeling of immortality smashed

It was the 10th of April, 2004, the morning after the Good Friday midnight mass. Good Friday is a day of mourning for Christians and is meant to mark the sacrificing of Jesus on the cross, before he is resurrected three days later, on Easter Sunday. I’ve had friends of other faiths wish me a Very Happy Good Friday through most of my childhood and I have never quite got why they wish me like that. Even though that resurrection occured, Jesus conveninently disappeared never to be seen ever.

I woke up to my mother shouting at me to answer the phone call, at 6:05am. I’m droopy and being shocked out of sleep after a late night mass is not my idea of a good morning, not when I’m used to waking up at 12 in the noon now. It’s my friend on the phone, one of my 4 close friends. I haven’t met him in a while but we were closest through school. He says, “Hey man! Bad news. He’s dead!”.

“What? How?! What happened?!”

My friend, my closest friend, the one who promised to my brother because I didn’t have one, had passed away in a bike accident on his way to a call centre job after the Good Friday mass. I had met him just before he left for work, after mass the night before. He had bought a new bike with his pay, and he had met with some sort of accident. The friend who informed me, and his father were going to the hospital right now. I dressed up, numb in my head from this shock, and the lack of sleep. I was calm through the 45-minute-long drive there. We went up to the third floor and there were a group of people waiting, some crying and mumbling. My friend’s younger brother was there. He came and hugged me, crying, telling me he didn’t know what happened. I was quite numb to the reaction and I told him it was OK. I told him to calm down. There is nothing we can do.

It turned out he had met with some sort of accident, with no marks and scars on him. As odd as it seems now, the doctor asked me and my friend if we’d like to see the body. We went into this cold room with my now, dead friend on the bed, shirtless, with two deep, dark circular holes in his chest. The doctor said those were to drain the blood out of his lungs. I touched him, and he was cold. A surreal moment.

My friend was supposedly lying on the side of the road before he was taken to a nearby government hospital, then a private one. On the way there, he had mumbled to his father that he would tell him everything later. Things went terribly wrong after that. He never came back.

I returned home after the hospital visit and stayed there till the day of the funeral. I went to his apartment and there were a lot of people waiting there for the body to leave for the church, then the cemetery. I arrived there alone and I went up to their residence. There was a crowd there, and I heard his mother ask one of my friends, where I was. I quietly went back downstairs, and I could hear people chit-chatting and gossiping about what might have happened. I remember hearing all of this, running to the back of the building, behind a pillar, covering my face and mouth, and crying. I think I cried for a very long time, wiped my tears and met up with my friends. His body was put into a hearse, and I could hear his mother screaming as the crowds made their departure. We went to the church, I survived mass. I was numb all along.

We have this ritual of people saying their farewell to the dead, at the church before the body is taken to the cemetery. I kissed my friend’s forehead. Again, endless tears and crying and I couldn’t control my emotions. I don’t think I’d ever cried in front of so many, so loudly with my mouth covered. I was helpless and giddy. My classmates from back in school calmed me down. I was seeing them for the first time since then. We went to the cemetery and I kept my distance as they lowered him. I passed on my condolences to his family and went back home. I cried that night and many other nights.

A cousin was to be married so we made a trip Mangalore and that helped cheer me up a bit. I could see my cousins being nice to me. That state of mind faded off but I don’t think I ever forgot that day. I still don’t forget the 10th of April. The biggest part of my life was spent with him and he was gone. The rest of my friends were only partly present, now occupied with their close friends and acquaintances, now going through their mid-20s, working, dating and doing all the normal people stuff. I was at home, trying to figure things out for myself. No income, no education, nothing. My father was nearing his retirement, now having nearly paid his EMIs for our home.

One of my cousin’s asked me to meet this friend of his, who worked at a film and TV production TV studio that also made advertisements. I burnt all the 3D work I had done into a CD and visited him, for a casual interview. My work wasn’t to their level of proficiency, but he said there is a small studio that creates most of the work they do.

This smaller studio had a strength of 12 people. It was located, above a small-time car garage, housed within a asbestos tile shed. They would do all the crude, heavy-duty work and pass it on the professional studio to be fine-tuned before it aired on TV. They would create, animate, composite and post-process assets into footage. II would spend the next two years with them, doing cut-out work for them, animating, tracking video movements, creating some models, and learning a lot. I worked on a lot of the detergent, chocolate, tooth-paste and phone ads, in some small ways.

These guys had limited resources, the guys who did the work weren’t polished folk, but they were good. I became their IT advisory guy too. I’d help them troubleshoot and recommend upgrades. I did not get paid, and so I would go there thrice a week, learn something, try it at home the next day, and repeat. The journey to this place took nearly 4 hours of my day. Two buses, 1 train, and a 10 minute walk each way.

I figured I was getting somewhere but my mother’s discontent was growing. She was concerned that all her friends had children working in major companies, earning a lot, going abroad for further studies while I was working part-time and not getting paid. My father had retired too. What was she to tell her friends in her circle? The folk back in my hometown were also taking shots at me. I was never bothered about others criticism, only my own.

We were distracted by another event. My father had suffered from prostrate problems in the past, some 10 years ago. He was given a clean chit then from a premium hospital when he was employed. Now, there was some new irritation and my father decided to go in for a checkup again. This time he was advised to do a scan. That scan then turned into a biopsy, since there were some visible issues in the prostate, that had appeared over the years. Events like this, uncertainty can make me very anxious.

We went to Jaslok hospital, me, my mother and my father drugged and without any food in him. I was already reading up as much as I could on all the possible causes of his symptoms and the marks. I didn’t want to say cancer. The biopsy ended, and my mother and I were asked to sit and hear from the doctor who had done the procedure. He pointed at some scans and said there were clear hardened, uneven nodules in the prostate. He had taken the samples for studies, but we needed to start preparing for all eventualities. “Please get all the insurance you can get ready. We may need to operate very soon”, he told us. We would get detailed reports in a week.

I went home with my folks, my dad with his discomfort having pieces of him plucked out. It was a very rainy day, and our cab broke down, or he refused to go further. We changed cabs and made it home. I spent the next few days looking at the typical prognosis for prostate cancer. My dad did his research too and started calling his employers to understand how insurance worked in such cases.

I think it was a cloudy, rainy Thursday and my dad told me to go to the hospital to pick up the reports after work. My father was always very particular about certain disciplines. If you’re going to do a part-time job, do it right. No skipping work over his issues.

I did not mention my problems to anyone. I left from my part-time studio workplace, took a bus then walked to the hospital, went up to the floor for the reports, very nervously chewing on my lower lip. I think I was still in denial, and the thought of a disaster like this was hard to swallow. What if the cancer is really bad? What if he only has weeks and months to live? I have no job. I have no education. My mother is not capable of handling this. First my friend, now my father?

Reports in hand, I slowly slipped it out of the sleeve and it described the nodules and their positions. And then it said the nodules were ‘benign’. I tried to remember, if benign was good, or was that malignant? I called home and told my mother what the report said. She told my dad, and then came back a wave of joy. It’s not cancer!

I ran down the elevator with moist eyes. I skipped the bus ride, took the taxi like a king, to the station with the reports in my bag. Now in the train, feeling alive, away from my usual cramped corner place, I stood at the door with rain drizzling on my face, dried tears and mild smile. I felt good, really good!

When I got home, I looked at the word again, closely, just to be sure I read it right. It was benign!