A Death in the Family

Lightning didn’t strike me but I know even if it would have, it could not have been worse. I guess I will start rambling on after few sentences so, I am warning you ahead. I received a call from my home and the news delivered was distressing. I do not call home often, usually they call me. I am trying to live in this little isolated world of my own, divorced from all worldly bonds and emotional attachments. Every call from home creates a little hole to peek in my little isolated world. It’s not that I hate my parents or family. They are the only people I love and they mean to me more than anyone else. This is a normal behavior of an adolescent I guess, normal since I am growing amid an American society.

Life and death are the two biggest mysteries that haunt every human minds, even more so thinking, active and intelligent minds. The only death that I have seen closely is the death of my grandfather. It was an unusual death in many ways, ways that I do not intend to mention here. I was only 14 years old then and the concept of death was alien to me even though I knew that being dead means not being able to find that person on this Earth or in this universe. I was very close to my grandfather and I was his favorite among all cousins that I grew up with, in my large family in my village. It has hardly been 6 years since I lost my grandfather and the pain has not healed yet and it seems I am going to lose my grandmother now. It’s unfair.

Can’t they wait? Death should give me sometime so that I can overcome the pain of losing my grandfather and those childhood days that I spent in his arms listening to folklores. It should give my grandmother sometime so that I can finish my college degree and go back home to see her. The tears in her eyes when I left for the United States have stamped an indelible image in my mind. I vividly remember her words, “You are going so far from me. I do not know if I will ever see you again before I die.” Even though she said these words in a serious tone, I knew this was just an intended humor. Her words have turned true, what an irony. I wish they had not.

My father did not hide anything; he explicitly said, “She is in her last stages. She is confined to bed now and cannot move at all. It seems she will not live for long. Do you have any of her photos?” As a grown-up adolescent, I know about this process of life and death, unlike Siddartha Gautam(Lord Buddha). But my incomprehensibility and inability to understand this process or to reason why this is inevitable is no different than Siddartha Gautam. When someone dies in one’s family, all the knowledge, understanding, rationality and pragmatism goes on a holiday trip to Bahamas, all it matters is that the person, whom they loved so much and who loved them so much would be no more in this world. No one can do without shedding tears.

Jaundice. That is what put her into this situation. This word will become associated with fear and hatred for me throughout my life. I know throughout my college degree and beyond, whenever I will come across this word, I will wage a war against it. I will try to learn everything about it with every opportunity, all its weakness and I will humiliate it. I might not be able to kill it but I will defeat it and will make sure it never invades me or my family in the future. Jaundice is a curable disease if treated properly and in a timely manner, if not, it brings death. Her jaundice was not caused due to contaminated fluid or food; it was due to degeneration of her liver aggravated by her diabetes. Diabetes runs in my family and so does high blood pressure. She was further afflicted by gastrointestinal complications. She moved with a diseased body afflicted by diabetes, high blood pressure and gastrointestinal diseases. Such a lethal combination will bring any mortal down sooner than one can imagine. She battled successfully these years, thanks to her healthy diet and traditional lifestyle in a serene, natural and rural environment.

Living amid strangers, all I can do now is reminisce my childhood days spent with my grandmother and wait for the final call from home. With every trrriinnnnggg now, my heart will skip a beat. The tears have started welling, it’s such a pain I have no one to share my grief with.

40 Minutes

The white logo on my black T-shirt read, ‘Trinity Sports Official’ and that was the only official appearance to me as a Trinity sports official for the soccer game on Tuesday night. I had the least official appearance of all the referees. I wasn’t even wearing my shorts, all of them were. Have you ever seen a referee officiating a game in his grey trousers? I am not surprised. But I was trying my best not to even spill a hint that it was the first game of my life that I was officiating. I was trying to act confident, but my struggle was apparent since confidence has always eluded me. One of the main reasons why I chose to be a sports official was because I wanted to gain confidence, be the in-charge and maintain authority since in real life, I have always struggled with developing a ‘bossy’ attitude.

As the clock struck 9:15, as the main referee, I called the captains to come to the center and call the sides on a tossed coin. Wasn’t I loud enough? No one even turned in my direction. I wondered how they could even ignore me, didn’t they know I was the official? My trousers could be elusive but at least I was wearing the official T-shirt. I knew what I had to be done. I blew my whistle, it made a funny noise but at least the captains walked towards me. Apparently, I realized I did not have a coin. And that is how my first referee debut began. But I knew I had to act confident like every other referee who knows what is going on so, I improvised with Eric Elliot's little trick of placing either one or two fingers behind my back and letting one of the captains call. After the captains chose sides, I realized the team of ‘Engineers’ did not have minimum number of players and the game couldn’t be started. We were to wait until the ‘Engineers’ had at least two girls on their team; it was a co-recreational soccer if you didn’t know. I wondered why these sorts of unusual, anomalous events always happen with me, it was making me nervous for sure. I had to award a goal to the other team as a penalization for not being punctual. Members of the ‘Engineers’ team arrived two minutes later and the game was about to start. But how could it start without my permission? Not a chance. I blew my whistle, as hard as I could; after all, they had to know I was the boss there.

Running on a wet ground in trousers is not fun at all when you are not wearing proper soccer shoes. My laces kept on getting untied every 5 minutes. The players stared at me every time I bent to tie my laces. I realized they were trying to imply that it is the players who tie laces during a game; a referee doing the same appears so ‘unofficial’. I was making every attempt to make right calls to hide my inexperience. I had never realized the task of a referee would demand such excellent coordination of senses and the central nervous system. Scientists claim that a human brain can do only one particular task at a time, but I would say, “Look at the referees, they are the perfect examples of human brain multitasking. From the corner of the eye, they have to distinguish between the colors of the teams and also follow the ball, make close calls, instant decisions and be able to direct attention as quickly as the ball moves without any clue what would happen next.” Really, how many things can you watch out for, with a pair of limited- view-angled eyes?

The first half of the game ended in good note. I was glad that no one had the faintest idea about my debut. I did not make any mistakes. The second half began with my whistle and this time I blew it even harder. The game was going well and there did not seem to be any significant aggression among any of the teams, if at all. I realized I had not blown my whistle even once for any foul conceded. Was it a hint of my inexperience, I thought. Or did I not have sharp enough eyes to spot fouls? I knew I had to prove my officiating ability. Bang! A girl was tackled and she fell down. Without even waiting for the signal from the assistant referee (linesman), I blew my whistle. Everyone seemed to look at me with fear and helplessness. They realized I was the big boss while I tried hard to suppress my smirk of confidence.

I have to admit, time seemed to have frozen in the first half of 20 minutes. I kept on looking at the scoreboard repeatedly out of nervousness and every second passed as if it were a minute. But as the game was approaching its end, I realized I was blowing my whistle more often since the game was beginning to heat up, but the screeches of my whistle served them right. How could they forget I was still around? The second half added legitimacy and authority to my sports official status since, I did not have to bend to tie my laces, not even once. It was my most enjoyable 40 minutes in the last couple of months. I was starting to gain more confidence and it seemed by the end of 30 minutes, I was no more the same referee I had been. It was an enriching experience that boosted my confidence to not be deterred from taking this arduous challenge in the future.