And then it all went dark...

It seems like yesterday, my hands traced the line of cracked paint along the walls of the corridor to the ICCU (Intensive Critical Care Unit) in Vijaya Hospital, Vadapalani. My uncle walked along side me, dread filled every step of mine as we walked towards my uncle (elder than the one walking beside me). We reached a hall and a nurse looked up from her files with a questioning glance, I walked towards her. The pungent smell of disinfectant filled my nose as the dim lighting overhead seemed to fill every shadow with a ghastly pallor. My throat was parched and my extremes where numb with the cold air and a sense of foreboding which threatened to fill me.

I asked her for my uncle, "Where is patient by the name Shanmugarajan?".

"Second patient from the right just after entering the ICCU" she said.

I looked at my Uncle who gestured to me to follow him. I felt my stomach lurch as though it refused to follow me into the ICCU, I felt kiddish right then and looked to my uncle for guidance. He had followed the nurses instruction quicker, his stomach seemed fine alright. I stepped into the room, to my right was a patient hooked to a number of instruments as test tubes weaved from every orifice in his sickened body. I tore my gaze from him to turn towards my uncle, my uncle for 21 years, now reduced to a shadow of himself for the next few hours as he struggled against death. And at that very instant I knew this moment would be etched into my brain forever.

My uncle for 21 years, who had been a loving person, who had always stood by my father's side, who had clipped my nails when I was a kid, who had always wished the best for me was now lying on a gurney, wearing a blue gown, struggling against the Velcro strips that bound him to his hellish torture chamber. Tubes and injections entered and exited him and the life support systems that where prolonging his agony hung from his chest in support A pillar of strength from the day my memory account was initiated, now a dilapidated ruin broken down by disease. His conscience laced with the drugs tried to break free from its bodily confines, torn between the struggle to regain lost ground in its battle against death. As I gazed down upon him, I realized the monumental struggle taking place in front of me. His very being seemed to revolt against his body and my uncle was the battle ground ravaged by conflict, stricken wounded soldiers, rivers of blood flowing towards the ocean where they would be consumed by her gaping mouth.

Beside me my uncle gagged, stifled a sob and then broke down.

"Shanmugam!! Look at me!! Shanmugam!!" he cried.

To my amazement, I noticed a flicker of recognition flow across my uncle's shriveled face. The doctor's had told us he was on heavy medication and was in a drug induced coma so I could not understand what was happening. How could he possibly react? My uncle had always been a fighter, even after almost loosing his eyesight for the last 5 years of his troubled life, he had never given up. I could almost sense his conscience try to break free from his drug laced body, trying to call out for help. Or was it that he had finally accepted defeat and had decided to throw the towel in?

My uncle wonder struck rushed towards him to hug him upon noticing the reaction. I had to restrain him because my uncle was just a mass of flesh and bones below a seemingly endless web of test tubes and medical equipments. I was worried that even a single string of silk disturbed from that endless web would send my uncle hurtling to the deep. I shed a tear unable to take it in. I wept like a child, I wept for my uncle, for his memory.

It struck me then, with a sickening blow, that the only image I would ever remember of my uncle would be what I beheld at that moment. Erased where those memories of being lifted in his strong arms, riding piggy back on him, being chased for calling him by his name and not the respectable title of "Chithappa" suffixed, instead was a memory, or half a memory? Was this my dearest uncle? I asked.

The next morning Shanmugarajan breath his last. He died in his sleep, after struggling for over a week, on March 6th 2006.

2 days later I went home and saw his picture "Was that you I saw uncle?" I asked again. He smiled back at me from the picture as though mocking at my childish question.

3 days later, my sister called me from the states.

" Niru, for the rest of my life I will live with the single regret that I never saw him before he died" she wept.


I said " Akka, you have no idea how lucky you are...... "



2 years later, you are still sorely missed.

In loving memory of my uncle.......