Losing my uncle - looking back 5 years

Most people I know have lost a loved one and know the raw pain of that loss, but some deaths affect you deeply. How do you bear witness to someone you lost to eternity forever? What do you say when that someone is a very dear Uncle, a caring Father and above all an honorable Freedom Fighter? Debilitated by the despondency due to this great loss, we are guided primarily by our own hearts, our love for him and our memories and knowledge of him. In days to come, we will remain aggrieved by the reality – the permanence of this unthinkable loss but nevertheless, we all bear the responsibility to keep him honored and his memories alive by abiding by the values that he lived his life by.

He did never live for himself – he dedicated his life either for the country or for each and every member of his extended family, so much so that he wanted to live a little longer to see all his grand-daughters settled in their lives, quintessential Jethu (elder brother of my father). If nothing else, it behooves upon all of us to first and foremost rise above all differences and pettiness, and instead lead our lives in a manner so that we can make difference in lives of others.

Eventually, all of us merge into one, like rivers to an ocean. As the river of Jethu’s life runs over bedrocks from the beginning of his life, they oscillate with a melancholy strain, and the sun shines on flowing water with kaleidoscopic brilliance – there are words, memories, and warmth, that will be felt until our own rivers meet the ocean.

I wish I was there to bid goodbye for the last time. I wish I knew about this during our last time together so that I could have embraced him with the warmth that he always emanated and conveyed my respectful “Pranam” (a show of respect) as a final homage to an exemplary Father.

He was a great citizen of the country - a freedom fighter who bore arm to defend his motherland, India. He was a leader of the locality, who was put to jail several times by the British. The British wanted to kill him and he was once saved by his fellow freedom fighter when he pushed my uncle to the ditch and embraced the bullet meant for my uncle.

Interestingly, he came to Kolkata, a city in India, to attend an event about Benoy-Badal-Dinesh, well-known freedom fighters of Bengal but unfortunately got admitted to the hospital. Unknown to many, these are the people who fought hard to fend off British out of India.