February 16, 2005
 

The grim reaper strikes again

Typically when a cricket commentator exclaims that "the finger of death has gone up!" or that "umpire Slow Death [Steve Bucknor] has nodded", you dont really look at the statement as being too odd. Yet, the grim reaper has struck a couple of times, at people near and dear to me, in the past couple of months.

Last month, Raju mama passed away due to a heart attack. December's tsunami carried away a couple of young relatives.

Yesterday evening, my chitti paati (Appa's paternal aunt) passed away all of a sudden. She has been a cardiac patient for a while now but her frail body stood up quite well, until yesterday. Five minutes before Satish called up and told me, I'd been looking through the telephone bill for the last couple of months and found the amount was rather high. On peering more closely, I realized it was because of the calls we made following mama's death!

Two things were ironic about it. Yesterday she had gone to the doctor for a precautionary check-up since she had been feeling a little weak and there're some family functions coming up over the next couple of weeks. After some checks, she was advised to get admitted and regain her strength so she could return home after a couple of days. She suddenly collapsed in the evening and returned home, as a corpse.

The second irony was that a couple of weeks ago, chinna thatha (her husband) was the one who had been admitted with cardiac problems and he gave everyone a scare for a couple of days. Chitti paati, who must have been obviously more scared than the rest of us, lived through the ordeal ... but not long enough after it.

I feel very sad for Chinna thatha now. They dont have any children and while he obviously will not live alone now, life will be very lonely.

This has thrown our Madras plans haywire. Things will become clearer over the next couple of days.

Labels: death