Imperfect Grief

There is nothing like perfect grief. My imperfect grief is my new connection with my father.

I wanted to grieve. Just like everyone expected me to. I did not want to be strong. Maybe just for a moment. I wanted to surrender to the blankness that I was feeling inside.

“Why am I so cold? Why am I not crying like I should be. I want to. I really do. Have I spent too many years harnessing my emotions that surrendering to them in extreme pain is difficult?”

I wanted to find out.

3 weeks after Baba’s passing, with a bus full of children, I was driving up the gentle slopes of Solan. I was traveling for my first show in more than a month. My world had changed in the past month and there was a gaping wound inside me. I traveled in solitude, nursing my broken spirit. Three weeks earlier when I was doing my father’s last rights, I had made up my mind to cancel this booking. There was no way I could go up on stage to face an audience. As the days wound up, I almost let it go. However, a small inner voice asked me to hold on to this show.

“Don’t cancel,” it said.

I didn’t. 

Instead, I was riding up the hillside and looking out of the window. I wanted to get away from my family. They knew it too. I wanted to grieve alone. I wanted to come to terms with the surge of emotions and energies that I had experienced. I realised that this dip into anonymity would give me the freedom to grieve just like I wanted to. I had not notified the school about my loss. I felt a deep sense of comfort in that. No undue attention. No consolations. No condolences. I was looking for a space where no one reminded me of my loss.

But that doesn’t make the loss go away. Does it?

The previous evening was a taster. I was surrounded by chattering children, eager teachers, indulgent school leaders and fellow guests who mingled happily.

I tried to fit in.

I smiled.

I nodded.

I made a comment.

I tried to listen. 

Pretending to be perfect was tougher than I had imagined.

All I wanted to do is scream out.

“My father passed away 3 weeks back!”

My mind wandered back to my father. 

“You will see, she will be the only one who will hold up. She is strong,” my father said in the morning. That evening, he was taken to the hospital for the last time. 

He was not delirious, or in a medicated trance. He was healthy, laughing and breathing when he said this. 

“Why did he say that? How dare he? Am I not allowed to be weak?” I asked my mother through my hurt.

I laughed at how well he knew me. I tried to understand the surge of energy flowing through me. There was so much I was feeling inside. Yet, I wasn’t allowed to sink or drown. I was bobbing at the surface. I was getting tired.

Suddenly the anonymity in the crowd started to get claustrophobic. I was anxious to go back to the hotel.

The next morning, I was up early. My headphones were charged. I was ready to listen to my stories in preparation for the evening. At the first sight of the hills, I opened the windows to breathe the air my father would have loved. 

Many years ago, when I first travelled to Himachal Pradesh, my father was with me. We were going to visit my brother in Shimla, who had joined a boarding school.

Just that thought made my little heart take a soft tumble. I felt alone and deserted. For the first time in my life, I was not ready to face an audience. I couldn’t find my spark, my voice, my spirit. I wasn’t me. My audience had no knowledge of my story. They would judge me for who I was that evening. I knew I was going to be imperfect. I clearly didn’t have the spirit to delight them! What if they rejected me?

At that very moment, I realised, a part of my storyteller’s identity had gone away with my father. Nothing would be the same anymore.

I was bruised and broken.

I was so consumed with my loss from within that the audience didn’t matter to me.

I wanted to grieve. I had stepped away from my family to do just that. Landing up before an audience was NOT the best thing for me at the moment.

Is it too late to tell them that I am not ready yet? I was unprepared to perform?

How could I carry my grieving heart to my audience and ask them to forgive me? I needed the courage to carry my broken self to them. 

All I wanted was the permission to grieve in a way that helped me heal.

I took out my phone & opened Google Drive. I plugged in my headphones and pressed play. And, Baba spoke to me. I played an excerpt of my interview with Baba. I had asked him about his father’s passing.

“I was with him when he died. Dadabhai (his elder brother) was still on the way. He didn’t get to see him in the end. It was only him and I. I discovered how great a man he was after his death. Huge crowds of people came to join his funeral. I guess, that’s what matters in the end. How people remember you.”

My father lost his father when he was 17.

I lost mine when I was 42.

Who lost more?

Who gained more?

Why was I even complaining?

At that very moment, a tiny voice in my heart said, “Consider what’s left behind. There is more than you can count.”

That evening as I stepped before my audience to tell a set of stories anchored around the theme of Wabi-Sabi, I allowed myself to be imperfect.

“Tonight, I’m far from feeling perfect. I am going to be kind towards myself and allow an imperfect show tonight.”

I stepped on to the stage and announced that my show will be imperfect. There was nothing perfect in my heart. Or in my mind. I couldn’t pretend to be perfect at all.

“I am going to perform from my heart. I hope the stories travel to you. If you find beauty, or feel the magic story dust, let me know. That will perhaps make this a perfect evening in someway,” I said.

That evening, I didn’t feel the spark. My stories flow like gushing rivers from inside. That evening, I had to force the stories out. I surrendered myself to my art. I had to be patient for art to do its work. 

I would have to allow it to me heal me. Again.

I realised that I wasn’t going to be the same Rituparna anymore. I was becoming someone new. I had to allow that to happen.

There is nothing like perfect grief. My imperfect grief is my new connection with my father. I have to allow myself to continue to living with this for the rest of my life and find myself through that. 

11th June 2024…Happy Birthday Baba! You are 73 today.

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[This is an expanded excerpt from my e-book Story Heirlooms]

[This post was written during the Ochre Sky Workshop with Natasha Badhwar and Raju Tai]