Say What You Need To Say

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

-    Stephen King

     'Different Seasons'

Mrinal was having a yucky day. And cleaning bedpans the old age home where he worked was not helping brightening his day by any measure.

It's been almost a year of him working here, and it still baffled him how the whole place constantly reeked of urine no matter how many people were hired cleaning and scrubbing the place all day. Every nook and corner of the place stank, even the dinning hall. People were only expected to eat there for pete's sake! He and eight other orderlies were by their job description responsible for keeping the 'inmates' comfortable, how were they supposed to that if they themselves didn't know how to be so. Dr. Gupta had banished that word being used within the compound (so let's just keep this as our secret for Mrinal's sake, shall we?)

Why shouldn't these people be called by their real title anyway? Is this place any better than Tihar jail or Sing Sing? Sure this place is more colorful and has lots of comfy sofas and beds, lush landscaped lawns, people hanging around you all day to keep you in prompt accordance of your medication and all. You don't need to worry about a thing. Well, that's what they'd want you to think anyway.

In many ways this place is much worse than either of those establishments. In that place at least you'd know why you are there. Rape, murder, armed robbery, arson, burglary, jay-walking, anything. You do something, the courts sentence you to a period of time, you go to prison, spend your time in your cell with your cellmates who very well could be like the overly friendly T-Bag in Prison Break. But you knew your cause and its effect, and more importantly you knew that all of this had a deadline, either the one the courts sentenced you for or the one till your master plan to jump the prison walls gets materialized.

In an old age home, you don't have that option. There is a deadline yes, but when you reach it there's is no loved ones or fellow gang-members standing there on the other side of the gate to take you home. Once you reach the deadline to get out of here, well, that means you are dead. Any sane, and most of the insane ones also probably, would want to avoid that by any means possible. Even if that means you have to spend those last years of your life on this planet confined to a wheel chair or a bed, and you need other people to do your basic human functions for you, or that you need someone to remember where your things are and when you are to take your next diabetes pills, even if you don't recall the name of your great-granddaughter when she comes to visit you once an year on your birthday.

The life here could be tough on anyone. Both kaidis/retirees and their guards/caretakers equally. Mrinal knew what he was getting into when he started here; at least he thought he did. This was to be a temporary thing till his scriptwriting gig kicks off, which is yet to happen and by the look of things may very well never happen at all. When you look at Mumbai from outside in, it looks so fast, happening and brimming with possibilities especially when you look at all those big name studios and you dream of being on their payroll for doing something that you like doing the most in life, writing. But this past year has been an eye-opener; Mumbai had lost all its charm that it held in the eyes of an innocent recent English graduate from Gujarat. This city is tough, unkind and too-fast-for-its-own-good. This place once might've been really quite something, but now it is anything but that.

In the past one year here, he had met some really wonderful people in this compound though. Some of these old-timers have lived, by that we mean really lived. Not the kind of nine-to-five existence that most of us do now. There is a circus manager, ex-army vet, ex-politician, ex-IAS, ex-tech guru. There is a whole bunch of ex-some bodies here. Each with their own histories. Each with their own treasure chests brimming with memories of the bygone golden era. They all have done something that they have proud of. They have all seen some really exciting time. Mrinal was part of the Hazare fuss too; he thought that was going to be 'the happening time' of his generation, he is not now too confident about that either.

The new generation has missed out on lot things. Maybe the most that he thinks we've lost is our capability to empathize. And this place really drives that emotion home. Especially on that day in July where it rained all day...

There was this guy at the end of the third floor, the room facing the park. Everybody called him The Colonel. So, obviously Mrinal also called him by the name assuming he must have fought for the country during his time. (He was to know later that The Colonel had done two tours to Burma during the insurgency of the 80's.) 

He sure did look the part. Think bushy moustache, stand/sit/sleep straight as if his backbone was made of railroad steel. He always had a grumpy look on his face, and a constantly puffing pipe hanging from the right corner of his mouth. He wore the old-timer's trademark suspender trousers with sport shoes like he just came back from his morning walk, at any time of the day. He scared the people there, the staff and the oldies alike. But they all somehow always elected him as the president of their little oldies’ club that they had running there. And apparently no one who has ever run against him got much of a fighting chance either. He played rough.

They say it wasn't always like that with him, they say he was a lot more tolerable when Auntie J was alive. Nobody really knew her actual name, for everybody there she was always the always smiling caring Auntie who knew each and everyone's name and made it a point to remind everyone to take their meds on time and to wish their grandchildren on their birthdays, she maintained a list of those. Both of them had joined the home together, voluntarily. Their children, a boy and a girl, were IT professionals living abroad with their spouses and children. Neither of them had so far seen their daughter's second child yet, it was her fifth birthday last November. 

Mrinal only had seen Auntie J a couple of times. She now stays in Building 3, over at the other side of the park. That's were the beds are. Only experienced orderlies and caretakers are allowed to work there. By looking at her now, nobody could guess it was the same cheery woman there who has to be shackled at least four hours each day.

Auntie J had Alzheimer’s with chronic dementia and tendency to hurt herself. She was very frail and week now to do any harm to herself, but Dr. Gupta still got the orderlies to bind her during her sleep time as a precaution. The orderlies hated doing that, most of them had worked here long enough to have seen the real Auntie. For them this was not her anymore, this was just a pale replica of her barely surviving as a walking-talking reminder that such a woman existed. But she was gone, this woman recalled nothing, knew no one, barely remembered her own existence. This woman was not Auntie J.

Mrinal did not know Auntie J; she was now there only on the pictures of the garden parties and birthday celebrations that are now framed all around the walls of the home. She looked so beautiful. The kind of beauty in some old women that reminds you of warm cookies and your mother's lap. In some these pictures he also saw The Colonel, still sulking around but always touching or holding Auntie's hands. They looked so sweet together.

'Lord, what's happening to me today?'

He shook himself up from the bench in the cafeteria, and from the line of thought he has been in for the past hour or so. He went to the back of the kitchen and dropped his plate and cups into the basin and walked out. Without him even noticing his feet were carrying him to the third floor, to the end of the hall towards Colonel's room. 

Knock. Knock. No reply. 

He put his ear to the door to check if he detects any sound of movement from inside the room. None.

'Okay pal, I don't know what made you come here in the first place. Now that you've made it sure nobody's home. Leave. Now!'

Clearly Mrinal was not hearing to the insistence in the voice inside his head. He removed the set of duplicate keys from inside his pocket and opened the door to the room.

So this is where the bear resides. Sparse really come to think of it, he always thought by the way guy carries himself around here; he must living like a king. All he saw here were a few bits of furniture. Clothes neatly hanged on the hangers in the closet, shoes in the shoe rack, all arranged all prim and proper like an army man's barracks. Except for the mirror stand right-side window. It was not just a mirror stand really; it was ornately detailed with delicate flowers and such in the wood panel surrounding the mirror. It really stood out from all the other stuff in the room, it was the only thing here that looked to have had experienced a woman's touch. The whole thing stood as tall as Mrinal was. And he was kind of a short guy, just 5'6". Just as tall as Auntie J he guessed.

He went closer to the mirror; he saw around the wood panel, he noticed there were not just flowers and stars carved into them. There also were little people holding hands, sunset, a little home, a puppy with a bone in its mouth, two kids (a boy and a girl) playing around a tree. It might have taken ages to make this. The level of painstaking detail and effort that went into this was clearly evident.

The Colonel made this. For her.

'Aren't you a big die-hard romantic, you mushy softie you!’ he muttered under his breath and moved away from the mirror. It seemed to be too personal a thing now for him, he felt like a jerk to have touched something so personal without consent of the couple.

As he moved away from the mirror he looked past it out the window to see the park that comes between the home and Building 3. So, this is why the Colonel has been Bogarting this room for so long and not letting the administration to force him to share the room with anyone else.

This must the place where he must sit to watch Auntie when she gets her relaxation break, her only time outside that building. He must sit here on this stool here, look outside this window at her hobbling dragging herself around on her week limbs playing with the flowers and butterflies, or just simply sitting there on the park bench. The women who was the only constant in his life for the past forty years, now just a few hundred yards from him. But he was not allowed to go to her, or hold her hand. She didn't recognize him anymore, to her he was a stranger, according to her she is not married, and this would only confuse her all the more and incite her to harm herself again. His heart must have broken so many times witnessing that. So he figured this is the only solution. He stays away from her, to protect her. For her sake, for their love's sake.

Mrinal couldn't stand it anymore. He had never experienced a feeling like this. His heart felt heavy. But he wasn't sad, nor was in any physical pain. He wasn't hurt in anyway. But he felt it. He felt another man's pain.

He hurried out of there, checking if he had moved anything from its place. He then went to the door and took a last glance to the mirror. So beautiful.

He almost ran back to cafeteria, out of the south gate to park behind. He reached the bench, to the place where the guy eyes his love of his life for so long, and for a long time ahead too. Their love was so sweet, but still he can only imagine how much it might pain him for not being able to tell her all that he wants to, to be able to tell her what she means to him.

There he was now, he could see from there that the light to his room was turned on now. Mrinal never noticed it was past sunset now. He could see a shadow of a man move across the window.

A man who has so much to say, but has to keep it all bottled up to protect the one's he cares about. A man with so much love to give, but has to keep it locked up and love from a distance to protect the happiness of the one he loves.

Sometimes. Life gives you a lot many chances and choices to make your life extraordinary. It all comes down to which path you take. You can either take the easy and the shortest route to get out of that tricky situation, or you can persevere and put up a fight to get out of that pickle. And you will find, you taking the stand right there also makes a huge difference to what becomes of your life.

But now, after meeting Colonel and Auntie J, there is also this odd idea breaking ground inside his gut somewhere. Maybe it's not only those things that matter, maybe what matters most is who is there making that stand with you. Who is right by your side, through the good and the bad and still has it in them to make you smile and feel about your life each night you go to bed.

There is always more to anyone than meets your eye, even if you have known them most of your life. You may begin to become more familiar with people and treat them without inhibitions, but never do away with the appreciation!

Always compliment/reciprocate/thank/emphasize/express your love and adoration to the people you care to keep in your life. Never take anyone for granted.

For who really knows, you ever get a chance to say it to them tomorrow??

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