I met him outside the ER one evening. He was a Pakistani and had come for treatment of some minor injury. He asked me if I was Indian and then, from which state did I came from? I told him that I was from Kerala. His face brightened and then he told me, “Doctorsaab, meri beevi bhi Kerala se hain. Kottayam se.” Seeing my surprise he explained that she is a nurse and that they had met some twenty years back here. They liked each other and had got married. She was a Hindu but had converted to Islam, he told me. He was mechanic and was running a garage. Of late, she has not been keeping too well, he said.
One evening a few weeks later they came to visit me at my flat. He had walked up the stairs alone. He told me that he had braught his wife along and that she’d wanted to meet me. She was too ill to climb the stairs. Could I come down to the car to meet her?
I accompanied him down to the car. She was happy to meet me and we spoke in Malayalam in our Kottayam accent. She was dressed in an abaya ( burkha ) like an Arab lady but spoke perfect Malayalam. She said that she had been to Kerala and to her home just once after her marriage and that her husband had accompanied her. She had lost track of her family after that. They had no children that she had stopped working, she was too sick, she said. I could see that she was severely dyspnoeic ( breathless ) and was having a bad cough. She told me that she had a heart condition and that she was in heart failure. She was having adequate treatment, she assured me. She told me smiling that she was happy to speak her mother-tongue after a long time. Then they left.
A few months later I heard that they’d had an accident and that she had died instantaneously. Her husband had survived with some injuries. I had gone to their home to offer my condolences and was told that she was buried at the ” foreigner’s cemetery ” according to Muslim customs.
Later on, when I had spoken to my malayali friends about her I was surprised to discover that almost no one had seen her, let alone spoken to her. She had kept to herself all those years but for a few friends in the Pakistani community.
In the end she lies buried in a distant land among strangers, forgotten by her people, family and friends.
Sometimes I remember her and wonder what was it that made her come and meet me. Was it premonition?
thus let me live unknown unseen
thus unlamented let me die
and not a stone tell where I lie
to die nameless, faceless and friendless, detached from home, family- is a desolate, unthinkable irony of fate! very well stated story!
maybe it was all so that you could tell this tale… did she miss her roots? Imagine having to turn your back on your own history… though neeta says it like it shd be said.
sacrifices!!! wonder why the lady alone had to make them if the husband had been so loving - isolating her from her natives, and changing her identity from her community and religion!! is that called love!!? IT is obvious that she had suppressed her wishes to be herself, to be a mallu and speak her language and mix with people of her kind. I wonder if such sacrifices are worth it!!! The lady would have been terribly LONELY in her cocoon and would have silently suffered. Death as such is not predictable- so how u die is not what matters- how u lived is what matters na?
Isn”t it sad that in order to remain in one relationship she had to give up all the other relationships that had been part of her life till then? She may have recieved immense love from her husband,;but surely a part of her may always have been lonely as your title suggests. We can never quite cut away our roots can we and if we do, we are never really healthy or whole again. What complicated webs we weave for ourselves!!!!
sometimes strangers open up to us.they shower their love upon us.i have also experienced a similar situation when a person opened up to me.we talked only once in our life..a perfect stranger then..later me and his daughter studied together in the same college.he is no more now..this too might be a premonition..
Hmmm. Touching.
The time and place of life and death is always destined… no matter what one does. Well! i believe in destiny. Atleast she got a chance to talk in her native tongue with you. That itself is a great relief in a foreign land. She would have blessed ur soul for that.
So happy to se you back on the blog..where were you doc.? Hope things r fine with you.
Life takes us to distant places…at times not only by distance, also in terms of relationships!!!!! Let” understand that “Life Is Relationships” (Oneness University” teaching)!!!
Doc., if time permits, visit http://blogspot.nomadonmove.com
That’’s why I always say God never created religion … How unfortunate it is that people fight in the name of God and religion! … I think this is true love … Inspite of all the difficulties, they stayed together till the end … That rarely happens … Hats of to them.