If It’s Just a Body, Let My Words Linger

 

Image generated by Gemini

The moment you die, your identity becomes a body. Today I came across that thought, and it felt quietly humbling.

It took me back to a cold day in February, a few decades ago — to the day I rushed home from Delhi, the wind slicing through the airport glass, my mind racing faster than the wheels beneath me. My father had suffered a stroke. The flight was delayed by Delhi’s infamous fog, and by the time I reached home, he had already left this world.

Everyone waited for him to come home. I expected to see my father — strong, tired, gentle all at once. For years he had been a husband, a father, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a colleague — many things to many people. But when he arrived, no one said his name. No one called out a relation.

They said, “The body is here.”

In that instant, language stripped love of its titles. My father — a voice, a laugh, a presence that filled rooms — was now the body.

The body we idolize, critique, measure, compare and mold is, in many ways, deeply mechanical. It takes in breath, food, admiration, comfort — all the good things life offers — and when it releases, it releases what it no longer needs. Everything that leaves the body in its natural course — even through our skin, our eyes, our breath — is something unwanted.

And yet, there is one exception.

This very body has the ability to release something that is not waste, not toxin, not discard. Through the tongue, we can offer kindness, compassion, gentleness, truth. We can speak warmth into cold moments and remind someone they matter.

Perhaps that is how we outlive ourselves — not through the body that is eventually reduced to silence, but through the words it once carried.

If it’s just a body, let my words linger.

Through The Wonder Years

It’s fun to see our children grow up but another truth of life is that childhood is a very short session. It also requires positive involvement of the parents to make the childhood sweet and successful.

Sometimes we get upset with the child’s behavior and immediately compare this with our own childhood. “Had we done something similar, there is fair chance that we wouldn’t be standing here right now” is a thought that crosses many a minds of our generation. The parent and child of some families even then acted like friends and were probably are the exceptions that prove the law. One of the leading topic of debate, I remember during my school days was “spare the rod and spoil the child”. This is key indicator of that our society was debating for a change. 

It’s not that we are survivor of a tyrant society but looking back it appears that we did miss some fun, some joyous moment with our parents and some exciting “high five” moments.

We try to be best of friends with our child and give them what we had missed as well as attempt to relive the childhood. It’s a different story that our children still considers their buddy parents to be tormentors for restricting their usage of the ipad or the TV. But children will be children and parents will be parents and the generation gap will always remain never letting the twain to meet. But we do a lot of things together that built a special relationship broadly practicing within the premises of the age old policy of “good cop and bad cop”.

Father daughter bonding is special and interactive activities can be taken to a new high with some creativity. Doing the weekly grocery together is great fun activity with its hands-on experience on shopping for the daily three meals. It starts with realization of the importance of being organized by having a detailed shopping list followed by a few tips on selecting the right fruits or vegetables. Normally we buy only when the stock of a particular item is running low but sometimes that principle gets defeated by the little one’s logic. Last time we went for shopping she picked up a box of cornflakes too early as kellogs had co-branded her favorite breakfast cereal with her favorite movie, “frozen”. She argued that it’s worth buying up in advance as this might not wait for me till next week and I had to admit that it is true.

Like many other matters our knowledge is not permanent and stays only while we practice. One instance of memory erosion is my knowledge of our planetary system. Recently the second grader gathered enough information about planets and stars to meet the challenge posed by the boy who she shared her bench with. Being a boy, he probably had been spending his internet time watching such science stuff while the girls focused on songs, dolls and makeup. Not willing to be outdone, she collected enough information to give me a lecture and revive my knowledge of stars at the same time believing that storms in the earth are direct outcome of the Neptune.

However the most creative and fun activity that brings us together is her video recordings. She loves to unpack boxes of toys and other gifts on our video camera while talking about the product all the way through. I got amazed to watch the six year old do that without any script and therefore get actively involved by setting the camera and shouting the conventional “Lights, camera, Action.”