And they return for one last time.

Year 1999: Switching off the lights outside the gate and inside, except for the bed lamp, I was busy trying to sleep after a long day at college. I heard my mother calling me from the next room to come and meet a family that had just landed at an odd hour. I changed clothes and went out to meet them, equally curious to know who my mother was welcoming with such warmth at this hour.

I had never heard of them before. After a quick exchange of pleasantries, I got busy speaking with the Person’s two daughters who had accompanied him, but in between I was, for some reason, drawn to the Person’s silent demeanor; there was something that I was not able to articulate, and I kept stealing glances at him, who seemed to be in search of something else.

His eyes seemed to find something here, as if he had arrived.

A week later, I learnt he had passed away.

Year 2010; It was a dark, moonless night as she got out of the front seat of the car, wearing an overcoat and a cane to support her as she slowly walked inside. I was awake to receive her from the airport, and a lack of sleep had made me a little tired and groggy. Her face was dull and sullen, and her eye puffs were swollen, as if they had been constantly moist almost the entire nonstop eighteen-hour flight from the US to India.

I kept staring and looked closely at the face, bearing a kind of resignation devoid of any hope, something very similar to when we stare at the dead in a funeral. She was slightly hunched; perhaps the weight of grief was too heavy not just for the heart but for her back as well.

The night’s darkness was overshadowed by her longing and what she had left behind as she silently wiped her already-moist, dull eyes, trying hard to collect herself and pretend to be all okay, as the world always expects us to be.

Five years later, on another moonless night, she passed away. Despite my best efforts to be her caregiver, I still could not lighten the burdens of her past, but I remain grateful for whatever I could do in my capacity.

Her sudden demise left me in a state of shock, but at times it also brought solace to the thought that perhaps she had already died that very night she returned.

Year 2012; it was around noon, another few hours before the Ashura fast on 10th Moharram . I saw him slowly climbing the staircase of my aunt’s and his sister’s house. He looked very different; his gait and energy did not match the series of illnesses that he had been recovering from. I stood there in silence and wonder, trying to make sense of what it is that I see, but I do not understand.

The rear view of him, clad in neatly ironed snow-white kurta pyjama, the eagerness toward the uncertain thing with energy baffled me; our family was not on talking terms with theirs, so all I had was my observation, which informed me of something beyond the trivial pettiness of worldly conflicts

He never could visit our house again and passed away after a prolonged illness for a year.

Year 2018; On a silent afternoon of a very hot summer day, closed in my room with the air cooler humming, I was in the last leg of an online coaching session which was already running thirty minutes beyond the closing time. I heard a faint knock on the door and sensed someone peeking through the half-open door. I was surprised to meet him, who rarely paid a visit, and learnt that he happened to attend a funeral nearby, and something inside him told him to visit and meet my father, his elder brother. I asked if he would like lunch or tea; he refused both and left after an hour, smiling and deeply content, as if he had completed a trip.

A week later, I learned he passed away.

Year 2019: It had been a while since we travelled for leisure because of my father’s failing health, and when an invitation came from Gulbarga, my father was keen to visit the place where he was born and had spent his best boyhood days. The last time we had visited was for a cousin’s wedding in 1998 at the Deodi, adjacent to the Dargah of Banda Nawaz.

The driver and I struggled to locate the Deodi amid the narrow lanes and new construction, and without my father’s help, we would never have reached the location. Throughout the journey, he shared anecdotes as we passed his familiar lanes and by lanes, with a story attached to each, from his struggling days to the cricket tournaments and to the many mischiefs played out along with his other siblings.

I found my father deeply engaged in every moment he spent there, reliving something he was about to leave, which promised no tomorrow.

Years later, in 2021, he passed away, and Gulbarga remained in our distant memory.

Year 2021: It was a dull evening on a very warm summer day. Sipping hot tea and not enjoying the hot beverage on a hot day, I stood up and walked outside to open the door when I saw him and his son through the CCTV camera entering our premises.

Extraordinarily confident, jovial, with a great sense of humour, and seven years older than my father, He had a very distinct personality. There was never any trace of emotions like grief, pain, or sadness I ever saw on his face or had gone through, despite belonging to the same traumatic past and familial roots he shared with my father.

That day, I saw him; he looked at my father like a mother staring at her child with deep concern. He combed my father’s semi-curled hair with his fingers and continuously asked how he was doing, and despite my father’s response, he seemed not convinced.

I tried to inquire about his health, but he remained lost, looking at my father with a deep, felt longing. I never saw this side of him in my 40 years and his 84 years of existence and was confused, for I could not make out what he was trying to convey.

I went all up to the gate to see him off, but for some strange reason stood there watching him till he was no longer visible in the distance.

A week later, he passed away, and three weeks later, my father.

Year 2024: She has been the second generation of house help serving us, with her grandmother being the first, working for my grandmother and serving as a nanny for my father. After a major cardiac arrest, we reduced her work and allotted a pension fund to her to support her financially. While she was no longer employed with us, this was the 27th year of her association with us, and she would often drop by on weekends and, every time, return with adequate monetary support she asked for and sought .

That particular day, her visit was marked by her unusual silence, and she didn’t ask for anything, and I also excused myself, telling her that I did not have any cash and loose change to offer, so I would give it next time, something I never told her in the entire 27years of her work with us. I, for no reason, also went up to the gate to see her off with my ongoing ranting to her to take her medicines on time.

Three days later, I learned she had a major stroke, leaving her with loss of speech and memory, and she passed away a year later.

In my silent spaces, I often ponder: is there a process of completion to life? When the soul seeks the leftover ends and tries to complete them, are there places left to visit and people to meet? Or perhaps, unless the last trip is made, the journey stands incomplete.

I don’t know if such a process exists; beyond the personal experiences I have shared here, I’ve found glimpses of it in cinema. A few examples are Devdas, especially the Sanjay Leela Bhansali remake, which has an exaggerated form of it in an end scene, and then the character of Badar Begum in the movie Garam Hawa, based on the story of Ismat Chughtai, who refuses to leave her haveli and continues to return only to be driven out one last time!

Warmly,

Mehnaz Amjad.