| Rushalee Goswami | January 2025 | Non-Fiction |
I am familiar with the feeling of dissociating from my body. Whenever something unpleasant happens to me, my mind decides to get up and leave the room of my body. I stay back, moving around on muscle memory.
So, as a 26-year-old, when I saw my father’s life leave his body, breath by breath, as we waited for the ambulance, I felt something inside my own body leaving too. I thought this was a natural response to something unpleasant happening to me.
My father was sick, so his death was not shocking—or so I’ve been told by the people who came to see us afterward. But he had not lost himself to his disease; he was still present until that evening, and then he wasn’t.
I kept waiting for my mind to return to my body after that day. I was still functioning, but a part of my mind was left somewhere far away. Perhaps this was the part that was my father’s daughter—the part that knew that she could miss a flight and her father would take care of it, the part that wanted to stay back for another drink but had to leave because her father would be angry.
Now, I could wear whatever I wanted, and he would no longer be able to frown upon me, and I wouldn’t have to make half-hearted choices just to make him happy. I was free and caged at the same time.
I didn’t cry when it happened. I did what I had to do: I called his doctor, informed relatives and friends, and arranged for an ice chamber to keep him until my sister arrived. Even as he was taken to the crematorium and we had to say our last goodbyes, I did not cry—not because I couldn’t, but because I felt that if I started crying, I would never stop.
I was waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity to start crying, but it never came. Slowly, that tightness of holding it together spread throughout my whole body. I remember explaining to my therapist that it felt like emotional constipation.
I got back to work a week later. Two weeks later, I flew back to Delhi, where I lived and my life was, to pack up my things and move back to Calcutta to be with my mother. Four weeks later, I was back in Calcutta, a city no one goes back to these days. My school teacher had once called this city a big old-age home.
I am a lover of things. I love to love. I love my cup of coffee, I love the movies I like, I read and reread sentences that appeal to me until they become ordinary words. I love my family even when I am not loved back the way I want to be loved. When running out of things to love, I go around with a candle, looking for new things to love. And when I find them, I love them with all my heart.
It took me a few months to realise that the part of that love became so scared while watching my father die that it decided to get up and walk away to a place where loss doesn’t exist. Terrified to have realised that grief is the price we pay for loving.
Soon, the songs I loved started losing their melody to me. The things I watched and read became mere distractions. I used to love drinking—my beer, my wine, my coffee. Especially my cup of coffee, which had always motivated me to get out of bed. During the coldest December mornings in Delhi, it was coffee that brought me back to life. But here I was, out of love, even for coffee.
Along with the loss of my father, I grieved the loss of this part of myself. My dreams no longer seemed to make sense, and work became all about a to-do list. The first few weeks after losing my father, I used to feel that in the arms of someone I loved, all my hardened emotions would melt away, allowing me to easily return to being myself. But the person never came, and I stopped looking.
But of all the things I lost during that time, I felt the worst about losing my love for coffee. I somehow believed that if I could fix this, all my other problems would settle themselves. Like learning to love coffee again would be the beginning of the end of my grieving. So, despite not loving it, I kept drinking it in the hope that it would get better someday.
Then, one day, rather dramatically and unlike how gradually it had left me, my love for coffee returned. It was a regular day. Before starting work, I was in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil.
I put coffee in my mug and added a couple of teaspoons of hot water. The instant coffee in my mug melted. I whisked it with a fork, giving it all my attention. Today, I wasn’t thinking about the mail waiting to be responded to, the long day ahead, or where to fit yoga into my routine. Instead, I focused all my thoughts on creating the froth of the coffee. I poured my entire existence into it, whisking until my hand ached. Then, a faint, familiar smell spread through the air of my small kitchen.
If a common cold or COVID has ever caused you to lose your sense of smell for a while, you’ll know how a function so benign can be so fundamental to our existence. It felt as if a sinus infection like grief had constricted my ability to smell my morning coffee for so long, and finally, it had cleared. I poured the rest of the hot water into my cup and took a sip.
The taste and smell weren’t exactly how I remembered them but it was something after days of nothing. It was an ordinary sip, yet it had a significant effect that brought me back to life.
I still had a long way to go before the hurt could be healed and I would feel whole again, but until then, at least I had coffee to help me get through the days.
_________________________
Rushalee is a 26-year-old living in Kolkata. By day, she manages communications and outreach at a Goa-based social science research collective working on climate change and inclusive technology. In her remaining time, she writes, reads, and goes on long walks. She is also interested in audiovisual filmmaking but does nothing about it except binge-watch films and shows, and call it research.
She studied Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University and Mass Communication at Jamia Millia Islamia and has been a working professional for the past two years.
_________________________
Feature image by Kinga Howard via Unsplash
Find MeanPepperVine on Instagram @MeanPepperVine
