WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2024
Sudha Devi Nayak
Holi is gone, leaving a hole in my heart. She appeared like a spring flower amidst the festival of colours and vanished like one from our lives leaving behind a trail of grief and a large overpowering sadness. While other springs may come bringing their flowers, this flower will never come back.
We nurtured her for three years and she rewarded us with pure undiluted love, a love that did not question, did not complain, did not reproach but gave us her trust and confidence only as a canine can. She was with us in all our moods of sorrow and disillusionment, our joy and ecstasy. Her very presence spelt acceptance .Her glossy white back, her ever wagging tail that signalled good cheer, her limpid brown eyes, her snuggling up to us and climbing on to our cots as a matter of right made her a rightful member of the household. Every friend of the family was welcomed and every stranger was a threat or suspect and she put him through his paces.
Then came the fateful day when we were away and she died at an animal shelter. We left her a happy spirited creature, thrilled at the car ride which took her there. She looked a little downcast as we left her but we suspected nothing. By the time we returned to claim her she was gone. Though she had a history of medication there was nothing to cause alarm but the unspeakable happened. She had a seizure, a distended stomach and she passed on in the midst of those who were not her own. No tears fell over her as she lay dying, no hand tried to caress away her pain, no heart to understand her anguished bewilderment.
Perhaps she did understand with her animal intelligence that there must have been compelling circumstances for her to be alone there and forgave us with her large heart. Nothing more was left for us to do except to close her glazed eyes as she lay in her cage, pick her up and give her a burial. A large pit was dug, her body was lowered into it and covered with earth and our tearful prayers and chants for her onward journey.
The return home was bleak, the house looked desolate without her stretched out on the carpet and jumping up to greet us with an ecstatic welcome .Her beanbag, her collar her leash, her food bowl and water bowl lay forlorn and we wept in remorse over the loss of this beautiful creature that was ours for a while and went her way to brighter worlds.
People wonder that we should grieve so intensely at the departure of Holi without understanding that grief has several faces and need not necessarily be human. Anything or anyone who has been integral to our existence will be sorely missed. Besides, the act of loving teaches us the pain of loss. Holi has taught us to love and lose and the wisdom and kindness that comes in the aftermath of loss.
We see you Holi in the falling of the leaves, in the rising and setting of the Sun, in the sparkle of the stars in the long walks we took with you. You are always there! Always!
