Kaathu - An Obituary

Kaathu is a Thamizh word meaning wind / air. For us, the word 'Kaathu' is short for Kaathavaraayan, and synonymous with Love. Pure, unadulterated, unconditional Love. 

"Kaathavaraayan" is the name of a village deity in Tamil Nadu, meaning "the one who protects".  Our dog, Kaathu, short for Kaathavaraayan, enveloped and protected us in his cocoon of love. 

He died this morning, and what an auspicious death. In the early brahmamuhurtham time, just after Amavasya started, on Deepawali day. He leaves behind such a treasure of memories - adventure stories, fullnesses, lessons of life and love, togetherness and warmth during struggles and joys, silences and spaces, comedies and tragedies, a paw reaching out and calling for attention, a jaw gently placing itself on one's lap in quiet acknowledgement of emotion, melting eyes looking into mine with endless trust and love, lots and lots of comic play, sulks and making up, running with the wind in abandon, combats and resistances, always flowing, and holding us with such communication and sensitivity.  I will miss the space he gave me and how a deep part of me felt listened to by him. 

He had the biggest heart. There was so much space inside it that he put up with any kind of space outside. He adjusted and accommodated with all our meanderings and detours and whatnots of life with such cheer and sport. I remember, right during the 2015 floods, we were shifting bag and baggage to Tiruvannamalai. I was in this tiny Acer van, the driver on one side, me by his side, my 3something-yr-old daughter on my lap, and Kaathu at my feet. Thats all was the space for each of us for about 3-4 hours, as we took the highway through lashing rains, (lots of thunder and lightening), intimidating play of light and shadow all around as we crawled past dusk and into the night. All this frightens him, but he sat through it all, curled up and quite content, ensuring that his body was fully in contact, giving me a lick once in a while asking for attention (and/or giving it!). 

This was the way he loved - with his full loving presence and demanding the same from us. No loving quietly from the sidelines for this guy. He filled our lives with the light of his eyes and the love of his heart -
"sitting right in the middle of my carpentry tools as I chiseled and sawed that I had to encounter him constantly", says senior K;
"looking at me as I eat all the time wondering when he is going to get his tidbits, and competing with me for attention", says junior K;
"he would sit right there at the kitchen entrance as I cooked, or stretch out beside me, his entire body touching the side of my thigh and leg as I sat at my computer", says me. 
The grandmothers received his love in the way they wanted initially - without touch and from a slight distance (He knew this without being told). But over time, he won them over enough with all his beseeching looks, that they completely gave in and started patting his forehead or touching his torso carefully.  

He was just so completely there, fully present with us. And so much in silence. Except when he barked at something from outside. His bark belied his size and never failed to startle, stun or freeze anyone - human, animal or bird. It was like the roar of a lion. I took pleasure in his sound and his silence. And in the touch and feel of him. That's how he showed up.

He loved his food, and ate just about everything that we did. He wanted sambhar rice and tomato rice just as much as he lapped up pasta and pizza. He completely went for taste and refused to touch his food if it just had bland rice. Senior K has become so used to keeping aside whatever is cooked to mix in his food that this is going to be a difficult habit to lose, he said. The loss of an animal family member, that too one who had mixed himself with our days and moments so thoroughly, like sugar in milk, is difficult. He made life sweeter.  

We buried his body in a beautiful place under a neem tree, a brook gurgling nearby, surrounded by fields and trees, and in the gaze of Arunachala. As I smelt the fresh, tangy, unpolluted air, I was remembering Kaathu's doggy smell that I loved to bury my face and nose into. 

Heart on Fire – Rukmini Paatti’s Obituary

The first feeling that I had yesterday, as I went to the ice-box and saw paatti lying still in it, was of a sinking and heavy heart. One more life from that precious generation gone; paatti is, was, around 93 years - this generation I mean. I hold it precious because elders I know from this age seem to live with a sense of fullness of life… complete, whole, seasoned lives. The following sloka comes to mind as I think of this phenomenon:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Puurnnam-Udacyate |
Puurnnasya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate ||
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

Roughly translated, “That is complete. This is complete. From completeness, arises completeness. Removing completeness from completeness, only completeness remains. Peace. Peace. Peace.”

Granted that I didn’t see that much of Rukmini paatti in recent times. It had been in the 90s that I met her a lot, going to school with her granddaughter Sathya, one of my best friends from school.  And then for about a year or so between 1995 and 1997 I saw her for a few hours every day. Particular life circumstances made it such that I spent almost all my time besides school and sleeping hours, at their house for that time period. Then as we grew up, and supposed adulthood, its daily life and responsibilities took over, my visits got lesser and lesser.  

However, I never could forget her altogether. She made it so. I went over to visit them (paatti and thatha) in their lovely Mandaiveli house from time to time, selfishly just to get her sweet blessings. And she, peace be with her soul, never forgot to call and wish me every year for my wedding anniversary, a month earlier on the same date! Every year.  We would laugh about it, she’d say, ok I have it marked right this time, and then like clockwork call me a month earlier for my anniversary the next year.

This I will remember of her the foremost – her sweetness of speech.  In all the years that I have known her, I have never heard her utter one word that was harsh, or with ill-will.  The two instances that I do remember her starting to say something that was approaching negative, she stopped herself to say “but we don’t know what it is for them” and “we don’t know their circumstances”. 

A heart, so pure and innocent, was sending out the sweetest blessings for me and for others. Wholesome blessings with utter absence of any agenda, guile or self.  It was all between Perumaal (Lord Vishnu) and the receiver of the blessings. That she was simply the almost-invisible instrument, was the implicit feeling in the way she gave her blessings. I realise that my fervent prayer as I write this is for me to imbibe this quality of hers, while also laughing wryly at the irony that the prayer itself has so much self. Whenever I gave my obeisance in the traditional way, by doing namaskaaram and touching her feet (which was every visit, to hear her blessings of course!), she would just direct me to the altar as well every time. And say, “it all comes from there”.  

I will always remember her as so active, taking care of her household and everyone in such a lively manner. Not a stray moment around her, until the last couple of years when age took over Will I think.  She knew that I loved coffee, and the first thing she would do is to give me a cup whenever I visited. I always saw her taking care that all of us, Satya’s friends, or anyone else in her vicinity had eaten properly, and insist on this. Like many elders from that generation, she would remember the significant to the smallest life details that we tell her, and ask about them. The job offer. Daughter’s school. Shift to new city, are you settled. Cold and cough a month back, how are you now.  Didn’t you say painting was happening, is it over ... Such keen interest in the sense of well-being of people around that she would glean from all this apparently “just information”.   

It is this aspect of being able to serve the well-being of others that she seems to have held above all. Way back in 1992 I think, when I first started going over to their place, there'd been a time of water shortage in Chennai.  The water lorry came when I'd been there chatting with Satya. I helped with the activity of filling up many drums and pots and stocking up water and saw it through until the lorry left, and the work was over.  She never failed to mention this as her first introduction of me to anyone, for more than a decade.  I am pretty sure that it was this one instance that warmed her to me so much. 

It has been a couple of months now since I visited. When I mentioned regret that I hadn’t been able to see her one last time and get her aashirvaadam (blessings), Sathya sent me this message: “She really wasn’t talking the last 10 days. I would hold the memory of her as the active, loving person you know, with the natural simplicity of being that many of us aspire towards.” 

By the time the rituals were completed at home, and she was taken to the crematorium, her body had started shrinking rapidly, and face had started looking bird-like. As part of the ritual, coal was placed on her heart, ghee (clarified butter) was poured on it, and it was then lit. My heart was on fire. Her body was pushed into the incinerator.  The impermanence of this physical body and the permanence of some higher energy that it houses – Paatti and others of her generation seemed to be so much in touch with this, and so effortlessly.  Maybe it is this sensing that gave Rukmini paatti her pure and good heart and her simplicity of being. What more is this body for, if not this religion.

Sathya’s words are paatti’s truest essence - her religion of the heart. It is this picture of her I will carry in my heart forever, and this slokam as her life’s blessing:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥