Solitary dinner

Juz came back from the hospital.
Grandad juz had an operation.
Lung cancer I think.
There he was,
In ICU,
Looking frail and delicate.
Long gone was the robustness and dexterity.
At least he seems better now.
I had often thought long and hard,
On sleepless nights,
About Death.
My death.
My loved ones' deaths.
It seems to be a taboo topic,
Yet in my mind,
It is anything but.
Sometimes,
One juz cant control what s/he thinks.
The more I try to get some random thought out of my mind,
The more it flits about and bothers me.
This is exactly what happens when I latch onto the topic of Death,
Unknowingly.
I honestly think that I'm not ready to accept Death's reality.
And I dread,
So dread,
Its imminent stealth.

On my drive back home,
I saw all those little close brushes with death,
That is so inherent in my driving.
Thus I slowed down and placed BOTH hands on the steering.
In flashes,
The oncoming glares,
Made my eyes crinkle,
Made my mind skip,
Skip,
And I sort-of saw the mortality of it all.
Suspended by a spider-thread,
Broken by Nature's winds,
Rains,
Elements,
The occasional intrusions,
Of inevitability.

I had fed my grandad his dinner.
Spoonful by spoonful,
I fed him bland porridge.
Out of the corner of my eyes,
I saw an unattended unintended tear,
Quietly gathering mass,
At the corner of his right eye.
I thought I saw,
In a split second,
As he glanced at me,
A glistening gaze.
I was struck by a wave of endearment.
I had touched him,
As much as he had moved me.
In this little gesture,
It seems to me,
That the wheel had almost turned one full circle.
He talked about us,
His grand-children,
In tones of pride and passion.
He talked about his own children,
And their toil and labour,
Like closed chapters.
And I saw,
Briefly,
How he had lived,
His moments through space and time,
And how he has lived.
I saw him,
A wary and expectant immigrant,
Making his way across the unknown,
Crammed together with other wary and expectant fellows.
I saw too,
Through his words,
The harsh conditions during the Occupation.
I saw a lot,
But i couldnt feel.
I couldnt re-create an expereince that is not mine.
And that is what I feel is lost.
A whole volume of experiences,
Lost in the inadequacy of words.

I reached home,
And had a solitary dinner.
I could have asked friends out for dinner.
I didnt.
Somehow,
I juz feel that in company,
If emotional state of minds arent in tandem,
Then we are all alone,
Where a wind-swept street,
Is warmer,
Than a crowded party.
I had chosen to embrace this solitude,
This state of mind,
This rosy melancholy.
And tonight I'll pray,
For all my loved ones,
Close and far,
Known and unknown,
That they can look up in the sky,
And see a solitary star shining,
With all its might,
And they be wrapped in bliss and peace.