Learn Curve for Girls

Suhani Dewra

Arundhati undertook a sudden flight to her aunt’s house. Her uncle had passed away a natural death of cardiac arrest. He was 75 and was being treated at the hospital for some days before he breathed his last. Arundhati wanted to be near her aunt. While on her flight, memories of younger days when her aunt used to look after Arundhati conjured up in her mind. She made and packed her lunch for school, checked on her college admission itinerary, and in general her well-being.

When Arundhati reached the house, her aunt who was in the mourning period was delighted to see her niece. A little shedding of tears happened, of course.

The house was full of relatives and visitors. The mourning period was scheduled for ten days. Every day, a new set of visitors came to meet Arundhati’s aunt and her children who were now parents themselves. Arundhati’s aunt in general was a woman made of sterner stuff. Never in her life has she been inactive. Whether it was her health issues or any emotions set back, this was a woman who never stopped caring for others. So remained she, even after the loss of her beloved husband.

“Take my bottle,” she said Arundhati when Arundhati woke up at midnight feeling thirsty. “Do you want to sleep in the room your cousins are?” suggested her aunt feeling Arundhati may want to share the room with people her age. “That’s alright, I will go out to meet Preeti. She must be tired after a long journey,” she murmured when somebody commented that how her daughter-in-law was outside in the living room when she should have directly stepped into the aunt’s room the first thing she arrived. “Tell the cook to pack the night’s dinner for you. You may not want to cook after you reach home,” she suggested a visiting relative who was now returning home.

Towards the end of ten days, the aunt’s daughter got upset with her mother’s behavior. “Mother, stop this behavior. Just stay in the room and mourn. What are people going to think? That you are not sad about the loss?” she said.

Arundhati overheard her cousin say this. She wondered, do we have to mourn for the sake of people? Do we have to display suffering to validate suffering?

These thoughts consumed her for some days.

On the other side, every day the menu comprised food that the deceased liked eating. Most of them were gourmet food. Women dressed in embellished clothing. “Carry some bright and bling clothes. This is how people dress up in any gathering, be it mourning or wedding. Else people think that you don’t have good clothes,” had said Arundhati’s mother while she was packing her luggage.  At night, a lot of members of the house gathered to chit chat, some about the worldly affairs, others about what was on in somebody’s else’s life.  

It wasn’t a lifestyle that raised eyebrows. The other family members could carry on with their lives. Only Arundhati’s aunt, being the widowed wife, was expected a certain conduct. Not sure if those around her expected her to be so, or it were only her children and daughter in laws who feared gossip in the colony.  

While such thoughts were floating in Arundhati’s mind, it occurred to her that when a famous movie actor’s ailing father had died, the son threw a lavish party to celebrate his deceased father’s full life. There was orchestra, there were drinks, and there were lots of guests. Just like a celebration. And that actor’s mother was alive who Arundhati assumed had also participated in the celebration of a life well lived.

“There are various systems of living. One system of living chooses for the woman to mourn the dead, while another system allows her to celebrate the life that lived,” thought she.

Back home, Arundhati discussed the details of her stay in her aunt’s house with her once colleague and now friend Surela.

“But one can’t always grieve. Even if one is mourning, there are moments when light shines through. That is human nature,” Surela reasoned.

“True, but much is expected of women. A man’s calmness is considered his strength, a women’s is taken as her nonchalance. Can the display of grief measure the amount of love one felt and feels for another person?”

Neither of them had an answer to this question.