It was time to go and have my last words with her. She was dying. Decided SHE finally had enough of this asinine world, and not vice versa. Her room was in the middle of the house which was in the middle of a jungle of flora and fauna she called her garden. She was always working on her garden, with her dogs and cats sniffing or peeing around and she never did finish it. She was the first to admit that she loved plants and animals, and an occasional fox, but really did not know how to train either.
When I went in to see her she was holding forth in the middle of her “Family Court” I remember when she would always use her head of snowy white hair to browbeat any dissenters into submission and carry out her orders. Her quotation of the day:“Kaii hoth nahi”( Nothing’s gonna happen) actually meant “Do what I tell you and no argument!” and her other dinner table epithet : “Khaa re/ga , chaan ahay” ( Eat up it’s good) meant, “Shaddup and eat quietly.”
The doctor did not have to tell us she was dying, we knew anyway. Everyone she knew came and met her, which is what she wanted at the end. She had stopped wearing her glasses, her dentures having been discarded years ago being unwieldy and uncomfortable.”Stupid things” she said.
Her friends and family called her “Akka”, but over the years with the increase of her tribe it became “Ajji”. People would always call to talk about their plants and animals who were acting crazy, or not growing, or drinking too much, or running away and ask:” What can I do?” They never called anyone else. She’d listen and then zap them with a 94-page lecture.
Which brings me to the question everyone who does not have a garden asks: “Just what the heck is the meaning of Life anyway?”
For millions of years man has been trying to find the meaning of life and this made him very lazy. Deepak Chopra’s wife yells at him: “Honey, don’t forget to take out the trash” or “Can you take me to the hospital I think I’m having a baby.” And he says: “Sorry I can’t right now darling, I’m trying to explain the meaning of Life.”
Over the ages mankind has come up with all sorts of explanations to the meaning of Life. Actually right up to when Wikipedia came into being, anything mankind came up with for anything was stupid. In fact I’ll bet that children would be able to finish high school in about a week if we stopped making them memorise all the rubbish about history, the sun and the planets and about the gods and goddesses and so on and so forth.
One definition that encompasses every living thing on this planet, which noted scientist and proctologist Albert Weisenheimer using sophisticated analytical tools has put forth is : Life is anything that dies when hit with a large hammer.
By this definition the lizard, the earthworm, the rose, the chicken, the potato and some politicians are forms of Life. But how does one equate a chicken which clearly has some value with a politician. And where does Life come from?
Charles Dickens extolled the Theory of Evolution. There was this slimy character called Uriah Heep … oops sorry that was a story about an orphan kid called Oliver Twist. The other story came from Charles Darwin who said that at one time the earth consisted primarily of slime and ooze, sort of like stuff that makes up our parliamentary system. Then some of the slime came into contact with some of the ooze. One said: “Let’s form Life” and the other said: “Sounds good to me. I’ll be the brain and you can be the other end” and then they crawled out on land and mated, and the ones that did not get eaten survived in what was labelled by Herb Spencer as “Survival of the Fittest.” and they went forth and polluted the earth.
Some religious people dispute the Theory of Evolution saying God made everything, and whole wars have supported the God theory so they went and built the Hadron Collider in a neutral country like Switzerland to try to find the God particle or any other particles,tools or black holes He left behind after His creation.
Life today consists of a) Plants b) Animals
Plants are sub-divided into Fruits, Vegetable and Vegans.
Animals are categorized differently:
1.Animals that can hurt you: tigers, elephants, snakes, Al- Queda, Maoists, drunk drivers, Raj Thackery.
2.Animals you can eat: chicken, sheep, fish, some species of snake.
3.Animals you can ride, and sometimes eat: horse, camel, bulls.
4.Animals that are loyal to humans: Dogs
5.Animals that humans are loyal to: Cats
Insects do not fall into any category; these are species which are there solely for our amusement by spraying them with insecticide: cockroaches, mosquitoes. Some environmentalists would not agree saying that birds live by feeding on insects. So who needs birds anyway?
So I go in to Ajji’s room as her life ebbs away, and I just know it’s my last words. I lie next to her and hold her, hoping she can’t hear the tears beginning to choke and say:”I love you Amma”, and she says: ”I love you too. I’ll talk to you after this is over. Life is nothing just a garden.” I walk out; I can hardly see the door.
Everyone thinks we had a more meaningful talk. But I know I didn’t need to. I’m glad I didn’t then. She and I have been speaking ever since. A trillion things and they don’t need words any more. She defined her departure on her terms. She defined HER Life, and touched everyone else’s.
