You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
I used to dread August 29th in the early nineties. I hated the day. I would wait for it to get over, so we could go on with our lives.
August 29th is the day my father passed away in 1990. What started off as a great day for me…I had exams …and yes, I’m the weird kind who gets high on writing exam papers…I came home at half day, went to my room to change out of my uniform when Jun came banging on the door saying that something was wrong with Abbu.
17 years later I may have forgotten some of the details but I pretty much remember everything else . I ran outside, ammi had got abbu to lie down on a bed and he was looking terrible. She called up phuppa, saleem mam i think, and the upstairs woman who was our tenant. We went to Philomena’s as it was the closest and it was where he had gone the previous year when he had his first heart attack.
I assumed that this was just another attack like last year, and abbu might be in the ICU for a few days but he’d be back. Gosh, I can’t believe how ‘take it easy’ I had behaved that time. I was 12 but for many days after, I couldn’t believe that he had actually gone.
In the hospital, there was a moment when Ammi came staggering out and Saleem mam was trying to hold her. I think I got scared then. But even then, the actual fact didn’t sink in. Someone asked me to go inside and see abbu. Or i dont know what the situation was, but I found myself inside the ICU, staring at abbu, lying on the bed. I thought he was sleeping. I couldn’t understand why ammi was crying so much, and why people were looking shocked. No one, no one actually told me that he had died.
I looked at abbu and then I looked at the ECG machine near him. I had seen enough of movies to understand what the single straight line meant. That was the moment it struck me. That my father was dead.
Life was horrible after that. I remember feeling wretched and miserable, without even the will to live. But that’s the weird thing about life right? It bounces back and takes you on unawares. I never ever thought that the pain would go away. It hasn’t gone away completely. Its a dull ache, but its something I have to call from inside.
In the early years, 29th August was a day when ammi just became sad, and she cried and we all cried. But as the years have gone one, its become a day when we remember and then just go on living. Yesterday, ammi had come home. She, Sidra, mil, Shazu and Anjum had been fasting for Shaberaat, and ammi decided to come to my place to open the fast. It was nice.
17 years later, the tragedy of my father dying at 42 hasn’t dulled a bit. But the pain has. And I’m thankful for that.
Has anyone out there written a children’s manuscript? Waiting to get it published? Or you want to try your hand at writing children’s fiction. Then, you have to look at this.
Aah! I’m back home, working in front of my own computer. I don’t have any problems with the computer at moms place, but since its outside in the hall, and the whole house kind of shuts down at 11pm, I dont feel like sitting up later than that. While here…I’m awake till 12 or later sometimes, hitting the keys. 
Okk..the extraction was awful. I didn’t want to go into gory details and describe it, and I have always considered myself to be a ‘good’ patient. (‘good’ for the docs i.e..I dont give too much trouble) But as I sat outside the dentists office, I wondered just how bad could it be? Az had fallen asleep on my lap and mom had gone home to pick up my x-ray which I had left at home inadvertently.
The dentist(Dental surgeon, or what they’re called, I dunno, because my regular dentist didnt do this), yeah, well, she came in half an hour late because of the traffic. She and her assistant set up the clinic while I waited outside, fear JUST beginning to thump my heart a wee bit more fast.
It began SO abruptly. I mean, I dont know what I was expecting. But barely had I sat down on the chair that she came up with the hypodermic needle and loomed towards me. I quickly asked her how long the procedure would take. She said ‘3 hours’. That was when I wanted to run! Even taking out Az during the Caesarian hadn’t taken so long! She saw the panic in my eyes and I asked her again. Apparently, she thought I had been asking about the effect of the anesthetic and she had replied that it would last for 3 hours. Whew!The procedure would last for just 15 to 17 minutes she said.
When it did start, I didnt know that 15 minutes could be so long. I shut my eyes tightly and felt hypodermic needles going inside, poking my cheek and my gums. I felt the drill, the spray of water and a lot of damp cotton wads being pressed inside my mouth. The worst was when the drill actually started cutting bone – the whine of the drill was so close that I felt, no matter what I did, I’d never be rid of that sound.
I tried to think of the seaside. That’s the place I always fantasize about whenever I feel that I cannot face reality. Nopes, not working. I tried to to think of Saboor and Azhaan. But that persistent drilling sound had really seeped into my ears. Each time she moved away from me, I thought that maybe that she’d removed the tooth. Ha!
When she actually did remove the tooth, although I didnt feel the pain, I did feel the pressure she had to exert to yank it out.
I’ve been on a soft diet ever since. Even now I cant chew much. I’ve been eating ice cream, but thats not much fun when your mother actually tells you to eat it! Anyway, the stitches will be removed on Thursday. I shudder to think when the next one will be scheduled.
Last night I saw a report on TV about Adnan Patrawala, but I wasn’t able to see it properly as Mansoor likes to watch the TV on mute. I forgot about it later, and this morning I remembered and googled for it.
There are plenty of opinions on this issue, about how Orkut is to blame for his death. But is it really? Orkut may have got him acquainted with the ‘friends’ of his who kidnapped and killed him. But it was a matter of choice. Personal choice. Adnan chose to go out at 11 pm, to meet these friends, who lured him with the promise of introducing him to ‘Angel’, a girl he was scrapping regularly on Orkut. Also, I wonder about his parents. He was just 16….and I can’t help thinking that he was Saboor’s age in 1999, not that long ago. How could his parents let him drive around, and let him stay out? They were not even concerned that he called to say he would be back only in the morning?
The news channels have been full of reports about this sad incident. According to some reports, they are also partly to blame for his death. They started flashing news of his kidnap as soon as they learnt of it, and that is the reason which is being touted, as to why his kidnappers decided to turn into murderers.
At the end of the day, I can’t begin to feel what his family must be undergoing. His mother. The woman who gave birth to him and brought him up. I might sound emotional to the extent of being trite here, but the truth is, that whenever something like this happens, I can’t help but think of the mother.
Some how, when you’re a child, the smallest thing can become a big problem. I seem to have forgotten my tendency of getting into such problems and troubles when I was a child myself. Problems with teachers, missing books, everything seems to have come down as a legacy to Saboor.
This is the third time since school re-opened that he has not been able to find his social studies notebook. When the class leader handed out the corrected books, his was not there. Oh, I remember that feeling! His teacher scolded him saying that its probably at home. Which it wasn’t, as Saboor likes (yes, likes) to carry ALL his books back and forth to school.
We did a quick search at home yesterday. No notebook. Then, with a sigh, he tells me, “That’s it, I have to be absent tomorrow. I can’t go to school.”
No way. I was not letting him miss school for something so silly, when something more important might come up, and he might have to miss school. I told him to speak to the class leader and go with him to the staff room and check if his book was there. He agreed to this. But with Saboor, he loves repeating again and again. What I mean is that by this morning, he must have repeated at least twenty times, “What should I do about my Social Studies book?”
Each time I answered him patiently. This morning however, my patience snapped. As he was taking the tray with the cup of milk for his hazrat, he looked at me and whispered, “What should I do about my Social Studies book?” I whispered back, “Pray that you get it.”
Anyway, when I went to pick him up, it was the first thing I asked him. “yeah, it was there right behind my portfolio and my class leader helped me find it..” and he didn’t want to elaborate more. In fact, he was at that moment feeling quite ‘dude’ish and was most embarrassed as I knelt down to tie his shoe laces, and just mumbled his answer.
Kids and their problems! Its like the end of the world to them. Actually, it does feel like the end of the world. I remember!
This blog is amazing! I stumbled upon it quite by accident, and I simply love the pictures she has put up. Pictures of food. Food she makes. Umm…
src=\”http://andaleebwajid.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1187630588-hr-668.jpg\”
Thats my tooth there. Guess you can see that its really horizontal!:-)
Thanks to Anamika for her post on the Sulekha-Penguin blog contest. I haven’t won or anything, but thanks to her, I re-visited my almost defunct Sulekha blog after nearly 8 months and posted a story there. I wrote this story quite sometime back, and most of you(my friends) would surely have read it.
About 3 hours after I posted it, i got a mail from Sulekha that its in the featured blog column, which doesn’t mean anything except that my blog can be viewed more easily!
Here’s the link.
My dentist is not amused. I’m 29 years old, and my wisdom teeth have decided half way from emerging that they don’t want to. Or maybe they will, after they push my other teeth into the center of my mouth and generally create havoc.
Both my lower wisdom teeth are emerging horizontal. Yes. H-O-R-I-Z-O-N-T-A-L. Which means that they are right angles to the molar immediate to it. And they’re pushing away happily, but slowly. By the time I’m probably 32, they might have emerged fully, and would be of no use to me as they cannot help me in chewing anything.
So, my dentist and I fixed on a premature death for them. Extraction. Yikes. The situation is grim. Both my teeth will have to be extracted one at a time, under local anesthesia, which is anyway going to wear out after a few hours, making my face bloated and the pain will of course be there, she added.
As an aside, while I don’t usually crib about forking out money for medical treatments and other such stuff, I’m mighty miffed that I have to shell out 3k per wisdom tooth. The other option is to get general anesthesia where they will remove both teeth in one go, and I’ll be spared the pain and swelling. And that costs 10k. I’ve had two experiences of going under general anesthesia, and nopes, I don’t want that again. Its horrid, that sinking feeling which suddenly looms over you, and then, u wake up, minutes after it seems, although it might have been an hour or two since you passed out, and then that awful disorientation, dry throat and dizziness. I’ll work with the swelling and the pain, thank you. My pain threshold is quite high.
These ruminations apart, I’ve not been well from the past two days. There’s been some sort of muscle pull kinda thing in my upper back that hasn’t been letting me sleep well. Its still there and I went to the doctor this morning. Hope it subsides. Whew!
With the engagement eclipsing everything else, I never got down to write about how the PTA meeting went. The three of us went to school, Saboor, me and Mansoor, entered his class and his teacher pointed us to his portfolio for us to look at while she spoke to other parents.
His Hindi marks were not bad. B+. But Social Studies…he had got a C+ and C+ in Computers too.
When his teacher was free to talk to us, she looked at Saboor, and said, “The first thing I want to tell you is that Saboor is the most well behaved and quiet boy in my class.” I had to ask her if she was talking about MY SON Saboor. Well, its not a surprise really. Ghar mein sher, baahar billi, thats Saboor for you.
She urged us to make him improve his handwriting. His handwriting has been the biggest problem we have always come across. He writes in too much of a hurry, and doesnt really bother about getting the flow right.
Well, we came back home, Saboor a bit angry that I had told the teacher the truth about him at home. Meaning, I had to tell her that he isn’t one bit quiet or silent at home. Which really surprised her.
His teacher seemed a perfectly affable lady, the kind who didn’t look at me condescendingly just because I was in a burkha, and the kind who didn’t switch to Hindi, just in case I might not know English.
Until the next PTA Meeting then!
