Straight from the heart
Updated: Aug 6, 2022
Meet Vishakha Boni, a 24 year old girl next door who lives like it's her last. Her friends call her crazy for all the "right reasons" and she believes in breaking the ice, and talking to everyone. She believes in "laughter is the best medicine and a snile us a curve that sets everything straight". Loves to talk, eat and shop. She finds it difficult to gel with people who are a little serious in nature and if you meet her, God save you! Haha.. A teacher by profession who never cribs going to work on Mondays because she absolutely loves her job and wanted to be a teacher since the age of 5. A poser at heart, she loves to get clicked and her hobbies are eating, dancing, shopping, hanging out with friends and spending time with her loved ones. She envisages a world free of stigma, and where people didn't bully others. She feels that's the worst thing ever. She started writing articles and poems as a 14 year old.. but it came to a halt few years ago.. she's planning to get back to it and this is her first write up after 2013. Let's see what she has to say.
Always trying to find the right words to express myself .. I don’t know how much I’ve been able to do it here, but I have been wanting to do this badly for almost four years now and definitely before I entered 2018. You see it was necessary because I realised, TIME IS PASSING!
My dearly beloved dadu (grandfather) passed away four years ago. His passing was my first encounter with Death. But before I go on any further, I want to state that this post is not a sad clichéd tale of someone ranting memories of a person who’s gone forever, nor is it a narration about how a part of me died when my dadu left me. This is about LIVING TODAY AS IT’S OUR LAST.
When my dadu died, my life changed entirely. I watched him take his last breath in the hospital alone. I called my nani to tell her that her husband had died. In that instant, as I delivered the painful message, my emotionally sheltered life tore open and fell apart. In that moment, against all hopes, I was forced to grow up. The person I had always leaned on my entire life, was gone. The person who meant the world to me, had left me and it begun to dawn on me that I was completely alone. Thinking about facing the world on my own brought fears I had never felt before. I literally reconsidered everything I had done in my life in a matter of seconds or minutes or hours, I really don't remember. I thought about college, graduating and walking across the stage to receive my degree. That was his biggest dream for me, and the dream was only a year away, but life can be cruel at times. Instead of watching the joy in his eyes for my degree, I watched his very life being snatched away from him. In that moment I realised that my dadu was truly gone, gone to a place where I could not follow him.
SO when a grandparent leaves, what do they take with them? They take a chunk of you, whether big or small. When you were younger, you laid down your plans about life with them. You shared your dreams, your insecurities, your childish ways, and more than anything you shared your love with them. They, in turn, taught you lessons about life, helped you realize those dreams, and never let you go without being told you were loved every single time they saw you. They were and always are the suppliers of happiness, security, and laughter. Friends come and go, but your family stays with you forever. In fact my grandparents have been way more than just grandparents. They have been the best mentors, parents, friends, and I’m glad that I could share whatever little time I could with my beloved dadu. I have countless memories and they cannot be penned down because there aren't enough words or pages to truly express my love for him.
However, I have few regrets that I would like to share, the truth that I probably could have made more memories with him, to last me for my entire life, had I not been too engaged with people who aren’t even a part of my life anymore (even though they are alive), new people that I met and spent all the evenings with rather than spending it with dadu and nani. And the anger that I feel towards the mobile phone, the truth that I could never look up from it while they were sitting in front of me trying to make a conversation with me. Even though I got too busy in my own life, their lives still revolved around me. They waited to share their thoughts with me while I got too busy in living a life of my own. But they never complained about anything, all they had to offer was love and were always all ears for me! Always.
Today when I look back, I feel I missed out on a lot. Maybe he wanted to say things which I didn’t pay much heed to.. And I miss his presence around me all the time.
So I want to tell you: look up from that phone and talk! Talk to your parents, grandparents, people who need to be heard, and whom you need to hear. I’m entering into 2018, with the thought of never having to have the same regrets with my nani.
Time is passing my friends. You never know when it’s the last goodbye. Let it not be too late for you when you look up from your phone, that you don’t find your loved ones in front of you.