The Icy Hands of Death

Death is called the great leveler. As a philosophical statement it sounds nice, makes each one of us feel humble and equal. But outside the classroom and intellectual discussions, when one truly encounters the death of a loved one, none of the hundreds of lines or numerous arguments one wrote in an essay for English class matters. Death comes unannounced, takes you completely by surprise and leaves you with a scar that can hardly ever be healed! 

It was a fine afternoon that day. A regular day. I had a rendezvous with an old best friend of mine from high school. We had spent nearly the whole day together. We chatted about so many things, trying to catch up with each other for we were meeting after nearly three years since both of us had left for our respective colleges. Just as I was heading home, my mother called me. She sounded a bit alarmed, "Where are you?", she asked me in a voice that sounded quite worried. "On my way back" I replied thinking maybe she was just worried I had been away all day long. "They say your Badi had an accident. I don't know the details. We need to go now. Come home soon" she instructed me, an unusual urgency in her voice. My heart raced, I couldn't really comprehend what Mom had just said or maybe I didn't want to believe what I had just heard. I was home within a few minutes. Mummy quickly briefed me and said that some of our uncles back in village had called and said maybe Badi (Badi Amma in my mother tongue means "Elder Mother" referring to one's mother's elder sister. I used to call my mother's elder sister, Badi for short) has had an accident, they weren't sure but had heard of a vehicle with a similar description to that in which Badi was traveling in that day had an accident on the highway. 

Badi was a humble lady, in her mid-forties, who had been a vegetable vender for the last decade or so. She used to live back in my maternal village and she would ferry local vegetables from her village to Thimphu, the capital city each week in the hope of earning some cash income to support her family. She would come each week on a Thursday, sell her vegetables through the weekend and return by Sunday. She always stayed at our place whenever she came to Thimphu. Two of her children, my cousins, were admitted to schools in Thimphu as well a couple of years back. So my cousins, who were more like siblings to me, my younger brother and I sort of became the four children who had two motherly figures to take care of us - my more disciplinarian Mum and the more lenient, gentle figure of Badi. Since my younger brother was still too young, my two cousins and I used to go each Thursday to the bus station and help carry Badi's goods to the vegetable market. It had become such a routine part of our lives that every Thursday we would rush back home from school and then head to the bus station to help Badi out. Her goods usually comprised of about 7 packs in total - a few sacks of tuber, a few baskets (huge bamboo baskets) of bananas, broccoli, sugarcane and a few jars of local brew. Even when carried by 3 teenage kids like ourselves along with Badi, we used to get breathless at the end of carrying all those goods. We often mumbled and sometimes expressed our concern over how Bada (her husband, again shortened for Bada Bau meaning Elder Father) and she managed to carry all of it just by the two of them back at the village. She would always smile her gentle smile and say "We manage. We have to to work hard for money". 

Mum told me to get ready. She said we had to immediately hit the highway to my village and confirm what really has or has not happened to Badi. We were all clueless, no concrete information was coming by but there were frantic calls either inquiring if it was true or what had happened. I tried to extract whatever information Mum had so far. It was hardly anything. An uncle had called. Apparently he received a call from another fellow villager who happened to be traveling that same highway and had seen a vehicle veer off the road that seemed like the one Badi was traveling in that day. ("So why didn't he confirm by stopping?" I wanted to scream out. But there was no point). We knew Badi was coming that day, it was a Thursday after all. But her cell phone had stopped working since the day before. And she would always come in a public transport bus, she always had for the last 10 years or so. But since the week before, she had begun coming in a pickup truck belonging to a fellow vegetable vendor from the same village. 

Anyhow, we had hired a taxi and started moving towards the alleged accident site. Mum was busy over the phone trying to get any valid information whatsoever. I began praying silently. After some time, I too decided to start making some calls. After several failed calls to get any information, I called the telecom operator and asked for the contact number of the nearest hospital to the accident site, a place called Bajo. I received the number and called them. They confirmed an accident had indeed occurred on the said highway to our hometown. But I was given another number and instructed to call there, it was the number of a health staff working at a Basic Health Unit (BHU) which was nearer to the accident site and that the survivors would be taken there I was told. I called the new number and a voice over the phone told me that two passengers had in fact been brought in from the accident site. I was listening with all my concentration by now. I probed for details. "Are they alive?", was my first question. "Yes". "What injuries have they sustained?". The speaker on the other end started explaining. As a trainee medical student myself, I began trying to decipher if the injuries described sounded serious enough. They didn't. I took a momentary sigh of relief. "Can you tell me their names please?", I asked. The voice on the other end gave two names, both females but they didn't sound familiar at all. "Are you sure those are the names? Isn't there someone by the name of..." I gave them Badi's name. Negative. Then the voice added "There is said to be a third person who was in the same vehicle. She is said to have some head injuries. She hasn't arrived here yet." My heart was racing again. "What kind of head injuries? Is she conscious? What is her GCS?" I asked. (GCS stands for Glasgow Coma Scale and in simple terms it is a grading system used in medical practice to assess how conscious and alert a patient is, especially after a head injury - a low score being bad news). Hearing this medical jargon mentioned, the voice on the other end quickly asked "Who are you sir?" I told them that the person he is describing could possibly be my mother (Badi) and that I was a medical student currently pursuing my MBBS in Sri Lanka. The voice asked me to stay on hold. In a few moments another voice came on. He was the senior in charge there apparently. He gave me another number, this time that of a police officer, he said, who had gone to the accident site. The third survivor was still not at the BHU, so I was asked to call the number and find out. I called. I briefly explained who I was and the conversation I had with the BHU staff and inquired about the third survivor who had sustained head injuries. "She is no more" came a sharp, quick response. "I beg your pardon?" I uttered in reflex, thoroughly confused. "She is dead. Died on the spot it seems" he said again without much hesitation. I was stunned. "What is her name?" I heard myself whisper. "Huh?", he didn't seem to have heard me. "I mean did you find any documents to verify her identity please?" I half pleaded. "We found her citizenship identity card. It says her name is..." The police officer's voice reverberated in my head for what seemed like forever. It was my Badi's name. A faint "Thank you sir" is all I managed and I hung up the phone. 

My mother, Badi's daughter and eldest daughter-in-law, who were all seated in the back seat all along up until now while I was in the front passenger seat looked at me expectantly and asked what they told me. "They said they didn't know" I lied. And what happened after that I cannot recall accurately. All I remember is going absolutely numb. I do not know for how long. But finally I managed to speak again and asked the driver to stop a while. I excused myself out of the taxi by saying I needed to answer nature's call. I entered the bushes and called my father. My hands were shaking violently and so was my voice. When my Dad heard the news, all he managed was one word in Nepali which roughly translates to "Oh no!!!". I told him that I hadn't told Mum yet. Then I quickly hung up and returned to the taxi. I began texting my Dad asking him how best to break this news. He couldn't help me much, just told me "The sooner the better." The whole world seemed to collapse then. I had never experienced the death of a close relative of mine before. Time seemed to slow down to a snail's pace. I cried in silence. I cursed God (whose existence I didn't believe and constantly questioned on normal days). And then I waited. I waited for a miracle. I waited for my phone to ring. I waited for some news from somewhere to let me know it was all not true what I just heard. I waited for the storm to pass. It never did. 

One year on and it still feels so surreal. I have returned to Sri Lanka and I often wonder if Badi might still be ferrying her goods perhaps. I still wake up and wish it was all a terrible nightmare. I still look at her pictures and hear her gentle voice speak to me. I still look at her face and see the lady who toiled so hard and never complained one bit. And just like that death took her away from us. Just like that, she was there one moment and gone the next. I could never tell her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me. And just like that, our lives changed forever!