He missed her funeral.
Not physically of course. Not even the grim reaper himself could have stopped him from being at that funeral. He just wished he could be there again. It really was a grand old time. She wrote a eulogy for herself, for him to read out. It was his last performance on stage. When you get to an event as morose as a funeral, the last thing you expect is for a little boy to accidentally roll into - what was later found to be - another person’s to-be-grave because of his mother’s overwhelmingly shocked expression.
Little children are interesting. He found them abhorrent. She flip flopped between trying to choke one with love and trying to choke one with well... Whatever it is you choke people with. It really was interesting to watch her argue with her husband about the prospect of having children. They seemed to always be on the opposite page about it. Whenever the poor chap wanted a child, she insisted against it, yet when he wanted to put his career first - it was always her desire to hear the pitter patter of feet on the floor, and the high pitched screeching that you learn to ignore eventually.
It really was an interesting funeral. You see, the problem with funerals held in the West is that they’re too … exclusive. Now, funerals in Pakistan. Those are an absolute sight for sore eyes. An absolute sea of people crowding around a dead body. You’d think the poor chap would suffocate … Though that’s a bit redundant at that point isn’t it? None of this black suit and tie business that you would expect in the West. Just uncles wearing a good old-fashioned shalwar kameez making a grand old fuss about what a good old chap the fellow was and how he or she would be sorely missed while all the aunties nearby bawled their hearts out.
Western funerals though … You’d think it was a middle-school assembly taking place. Everyone standing awkwardly in lines, a few people here and there wiping their eyes with a handkerchief and the only talk that took place was awkwardly whispered from ear to ear. Then there would be the fancy eulogies where people close to the ‘dearly departed’ would come up and talk a load of bollocks about whatever the hell it was they wanted to talk about. She did take advantage of that tradition though. She’d written a eulogy for him to read out - or rather, perform. It was her last fuck you to the world.
It was brilliant though, people’s response to a strange man strolling in as if he owned the graves and their contents. They’d apparently been expecting some chap wearing the same suit-and-tie as everyone else had been wearing. They looked like absolute peacocks the lot of them. All competing to outdo each other; the family had always been stupidly obsessed with clothing and looks above all. Normally, he’d have risen to the occasion to be the belle of the ball as she used to say - though she did spell it incorrectly. Despite the eulogy, she’d never been great at writing - or English for that matter - but pointing that out only got him a long glare.
Instead, however, they got a fellow wearing a plain white kurta - not even with the traditional shalwar but instead a pyjama which made his thin legs all too apparent - and a maroon sweater-vest topped off with slippers to boot. In a family where practically everyone had at some point assimilated into Western culture, he stood out like a white man at a call center.
She wouldn’t have recognized him. It wasn’t the wrinkles, the saggy skin, greyed hair, stooped back or wooden cane that he clasped in his hand - a relic of the past, but a man had to have style. It wasn’t even the slow shuffle that had replaced confident strides or the slight grimace that fled across his face as he forced himself to climb the singular step onto the pavement and into the grass. If she’d have been there - well, technically she was there - then maybe she’d have noticed him muttering under his breath with horror as none of the little ones came to help an old man across the way. Those bloody western children. Not a shred of decency in them. Of course, once upon a time he would have been too stubborn to accept help from anyone.
No, she wouldn’t have recognized him. Maybe it was the gentle smile permanently etched onto his face or the glint in his eye. Or maybe it was how he affectionately passed his hand through a child’s hair as he limped past. An onlooker could’ve described him as an eccentric old man who was deranged enough to be cheerful at a funeral. Honestly, an onlooker could have described him as a bloody whole lot of things ... but unhappy was not one of them. Despite what time had stolen away from him, it had left him with something she’d never seen in him before.
He was happy.
It caused a proper hubbub at the funeral. Arrogant young men - with their slicked back hair and too-polished shoes - quickly came to address him in their odd, brokenly accented Urdu to turn someone who was obviously just a deranged lunatic away. But as soon as he introduced himself, they quickly went back to their family gawking and momentarily distracted from the tragedy at their feet. Apparently the theatrics that had been passed down to her from generation to generation had not ceased to continue forward in the line of succession.
It was an absolute riot. No-one could believe it. As hurriedly as they had come to escort him away, the little gits held his hand and helped him across whilst apologetically explaining that they hadn’t known what to expect. Apparently she’d been telling them for weeks now that a man was going to come, and he’ll be wearing a blazer decorated with speckled black and white lines so close together that it looked like a textured grey, a tie, some sort of ridiculous socks and orange shoes. That was his first chuckle of the evening, realizing that only she would be silly enough to remember what he used to wear as his thing half a century ago and expect it to be the same.
I’m sure that everyone else at the funeral must’ve been absolutely flabbergasted at the old man who had just been prioritized over the proceeds of the actual funeral and was just sitting on a stool - bless those runts for that kindness - chuckling away as a few strapping young lads tended to his needs. And then, he found a sealed envelope passed onto his lap. He smiled at the thought of an actual sealed envelope in this day and age - that too from one who had never in her life respected the holiness of the written word.
Well, in however much of her life that he had known her. It really hadn’t been all that much. He could count the number of years on one hand and still have a couple of fingers left to spare. Yet, they had called each other best friends and made promises and fought and argued and shared secrets and engaged in the follies of youth. They’d been told that they were destined to be lovers, to spend their lives together and to be each other’s soulmates. It was utter poppycock then, and it was utter poppycock now. None of those three things had been remotely true. Yet, they had made promises. Amongst them, was the promise that he would either attend her marriage, or her funeral.
It was her way of saying that if he didn’t attend her wedding, he needn’t ever see her again till she was dead and buried. Of course, they hadn’t seen each other, as it was, in years and as fortunes turned ... so did friendships.
So he broke the seal and pulled out a small sheaf of papers. He’d expected … Well, he hadn’t expected anything really. He’d thought that he would show up at the funeral, pay his respects as someone who didn’t belong in the proceedings and then exit. Instead, he found an entire eulogy written for him to speak out. Absolutely ridiculous wasn’t it? In front of him, he found the first words she had said to him in decades:
‘Get up you little child. You’re going to give one last speech for me. You better not have lost the one talent that you had all those years ago’
The bewilderment of all the guests was something he missed particularly. Seeing an old man laughing his way to the fancy stand that was nothing more than a glorified soapbox to speak from at a funeral was not a sight they were prepared for. But one last time, he found himself abandoning his cane, straightening up and clearing his throat.
If she’d have heard him right after, it wouldn’t have mattered what he looked like, what he was wearing or even how he acted. She would have recognized him - though anyone who had seen him speak before would have.
But so he continued on with a eulogy for a person he never really knew, written for people he had never even seen, containing things about her life that he had never even heard of, written with a certain comedic flair that he had never known she would have. You might think it sad, that he hadn’t been given a chance to know the entire life of someone who was once dear to him. That’s always been the problem with the youth. He was an old man, and he had been given one last chance to do what he did best.
To perform.
And in his performance, as the onlookers’ faces turned from bewilderment at an old man, to disgust at their own inability to stop the giggles that were inevitably escaping their mouths. Children rolled on the floor. Teenagers openly laughed at innuendo, something which he reflected on after as absolute madness. What had happened to the world if desi - even if only technically desi - teenagers felt comfortable acknowledging the presence of anything sexual around their family?
She’d always criticized his inability to be able to relate to the values and traditions of other families. They’d always had plenty of fights about that. She’d tell him a dream of hers, he’d tell her how to accomplish it and she would end up fighting to prove how impossible it was due to her values and traditions. The fights always ended with the air heavy with unsaid - though sometimes very loudly said - accusations of him just being a rich kid who would never be able to understand or relate to the problems of someone from a ‘normal’ family.
Of course, he’d go on to always solve her problems and give perspective on them that she herself was never able to understand, but obviously he was unable to relate to her circumstances. That was but amongst an ever-growing string of things that they constantly fought over. Eventually, the string grew too long and friends, as friends tend to do, became strangers.
It wasn’t till long after they had made peace with the fact that they were no longer truly companions that they stopped talking entirely. They had families and friends and problems and ultimately, solutions that didn’t have anything to do with the other.
The eulogy itself was horribly written. It reminded him of her old assignments and projects which she came to him for the purpose of ‘proofreading’. Proofreading more often than not turned into sheer shock at her inability to express herself and a frustrated hurried rewriting of the entire project into something he thought was at least passable. No matter what she might’ve told the world, he was convinced that she would have remained thoroughly uneducated and degree-less had he not been there to guide her through the words in her life.
And so, the audience received the best possible version of what she had written. A complete, polished, comedic delivery of a eulogy that by all means was written by an old woman trying to remember the memories of her childhood as she was surrounded by both family and friends who loved and cared for her more than he ever would have been able to. They must’ve thought her absolutely barmy, writing a note for someone to receive who she only knew was even alive because of his face coming up on the news once in a blue moon.
But there he was, and the eulogy was coming to an end.
He learnt a lot about her from that performance. He’d learnt that she’d forgotten a lot of what happened, but so had he. He found out that she’d went on to study even more than she had ever imagined to, and had found work temporarily in a field she’d always dreamed to occupy. She’d grown up and started surrounding herself with family. He couldn’t see her body - thank god those little rascals hadn’t become westernized enough to have an open casket funeral god forbid - but he didn’t want to. He knew, that she too had found a happiness that they had never believed possible for either one of them.
The entire funeral was a grand old time. That phrase may never be uttered again. In the end, despite what they had thought at the time, the two had just been ships, passing in the night through a rocky sea before being permitted the relief of smooth sailing.
She missed his funeral. Physically, that is.The grim reaper stopped her from attending it.
💕
ReplyDelete