The darkest day

It couldn't get any worse.

Just when pieces were starting to fall in place, today on 23 rd March, on my 21st birthday, I got the present... in the evening of today, as I now know that my father is suffering from facial cancer.

I don't know how to write this, as my heart is trembling in the upcoming fear...what would happen to him, I don't know whether it is the early stage or the final... I don't know how much that old disease has eaten and digested out of him....just the hurriedly call from him, the voice is as usual calm, but I recognized as a deserted one, telling me that doctors are suspecting at last....

O God... I don't want to write, forgive me.

I don't know what is it that is going to come to us, to our family. Oh.. I am so deserted, no one is there, after all.

I pray to you God, wherever you are, just listen to my last prayer...never again will my watery eyes will seek your help in distress, never... not for my own fate, not for my love...nothing in the world... just make sure he will be all right... I am a no one to you, absolutely no one, I didn't believe you, I had the anger and vanity that I shall have my life of my own... I have done wrong things... don't do this to him...

"Dubious in nature" as the reports are saying...as my father says from the chair across the room.

Mom is still not fading... but she will soon, I know.

Oh...why don't they give wrong reports... can't they?

The maternal uncle of my father had the same one... I don't want to remind... and he ended up in death.

Genes follow... they say.

It's a hard time for me...I hope I can smile in public, as always, bettering all my tensions and gloom. Should I be able to? Who cares now anyway?

He is still sitting on the chair...consulting the dictionary, what every word in the report means... just killing the time...he is tensed, I know, I am his son.

The phone rings. Didi has called. She will be worried too. She has got her family, but she loves him more than I do...

I am a worthless son.

I am a worthless son.

Why didn't I pressurize him to consult a doctor before?

I talked to didi...she is okay, everything is going slow...but going where?

If chemotherapy happens... I don't know what's gonna come...one of my friend reminded me that of our teacher from Narendrapur, who had cancer in his throat, survived after a chemo...but he had got innumerable students and x-students behind him, many contacts...had helped him, I suppose, but we don't have that.

Things have got worse in the past few years...I remember now a saying, 'easy things do not enter into grown up lives...'

Now as he assures, it is cancer. Doctor has written in the report, 'carcinoma'. As the doctor has written it as either 1. Carcinoma or 2. Dermatofibroma. I check out the net and be sure that the second one can not happen, as it is mostly found in ladies and in the lower legs. So what remains, is cancer.

No one in the world will be so elated as me if I come to know that after these reports too, things really don't mess up, and it really doesn't proved to be what it is feared...let's just hope, and pray...

The house is silent tonight. Dad and mom are talking in a lower voice, the old fan which we decided to carry all the way from Midnapur at the time of shifting, continues to struggle, as I at one corner manage to type these at my laptop.

I don't want to stop writing tonight, because whenever I am stopping, these thoughts are covering my mind. I have lost many things here at Kolkata, but nothing more I want to lose. Oh God, how badly I need someone beside me today, is it all really written?

Bad things and possibilities are hovering here, I want to stay away from those...

Write, write, write...

All my writings are smiling at me...the smile is wry.


Past 9.15.

What is going to be?

God. I don't want to know...

I am a bad son, and I will be. But when I pray, it's not for me, so do justice to the persons for whom I am praying. Punish me, as you have been doing from my childhood, since I was 10, but let them be happy... at least content with what they have...don't let them go. Please.

Last hours

And when the dark moments
Will end as a nightmare
No pain will be, nor any gloom
As the stars would come
to my feet; as a welfare

The light will fall sharp
From the heaven on my head
Tears will be there
In the eyes of those
Who would not let me fade.

From the path of sky
Will come an angel
To whom, I shall sacrifice
All my belongings
In the world of mine

And from that morning
I shall smile like I never had
In the corners of your heart
Truth, belief and passion
Never let down a man in his life.

-December '08