A study in grief

From the eleventh floor of the hospital building
the world looks almost minuscule.
The air in the waiting room is laden with despair,
like all the grief on earth has been condensed
between its four walls.
Dinner is eaten out of steel tiffin boxes
and aluminium foil pouches,
hands shake.
There are no tears,
but a mother says,
“My beta had to be brought to Dilli
in an air ambulance from Ranchi—
the doctors there had given up.”
An unuttered consensus is reached
by everyone present,
if time were to stop right then,
on the condition that they would
never see their loved ones again,
they would agree in the blink of an eye,
if it meant they won’t have to read
the obituaries in the newspapers,
or worse, write them.

A man sitting in a corner all alone,
says that God will make things better.
The silence in the room shrieks—
God has been a little deaf to the prayers lately.
These lives have been intertwined
through hours spent waiting
in a room on the eleventh floor —
like balls of yarn
left in the bottom-most shelf
of the almirah years ago.
If you were to try to untangle
these lives from each other,
you’ll probably have to tear some of them apart.
All of them knew,
their lives will never be the same again.

– D