Akka

My cousin passed away this morning. She was five years older to me and a childhood playmate.  She was an alcoholic. As her body lies in hospital now waiting for people to get organized around her death, I think of her death and her life. Both tough. She died of high fever, organ failure and jaundice, all exacerbated by her continuous drinking. She leaves behind a young son and a young daughter with a child of her own. And a husband who can take credit for having introduced her to the cheap bottle.

She was the literal poor cousin in the country. In her case, it was the unfashionable suburb of Chennai. But she was used to it. Branded unlucky for having lost her father while still a baby, living with her mother and older sister under someone’s grudging protection, held back from school because she flunked sixth grade and deployed in household busywork, sneered at for her dark, untraditional looks, she was the archetypal underdog. Just when everyone despaired of marrying her off, someone from an appropriately humble background said yes to her and she found marriage a welcome release from her daily tedium and her new master, more than willing to meet her as an equal partner.

Thus would have ended a fairy tale – with the tortured princess having met the kind prince. Yet how cruel reality is. How complicated we make life. How much our baggage follows us from life to life. How much we need the Grace of the Lord to cross this treacherous samsara!

It turned out her husband – despite his other sterling qualities – was addicted to the daily peg. And in the midst of poverty and squalor and the demands of raising two young kids, she found it easier to join him than dissuade him. The impact of alcohol on an already weak, malnourished body would have been swifter and more devastating than normal. So began her vicious cycle, that ended this morning at 4 am, in a government hospital.

Hers is the second death of a cousin in these two weeks. The other one died due to similar causes – alcohol related jaundice, death in a government hospital. I shudder to think of how many people are affected. These are not the salaried urban yuppies who explore swanky pubs. These are poor semi-literates, the struggling, grasping, aspirational middle class, the hope for their families. Young lives. Good lives.

And the main thing that stands out for me apart from the grief is the sanctimoniousness of people. “Ahhhh but she was addicted!” is pronounced as a moral indictment that somehow lessens the horror of her passing. Even if one has never indulged in any of the intoxicants – that blessing does not give one the right to pass judgment, because it really is a blessing, it is a protection that is not entirely due to one’s own self-control but also the Grace of the Lord. What a thin line there is between what drinks what, as the Aghori Vimalananda said – the body drinking the alcohol or the alcohol drinking the body. Who can profess to have conscious control over some chemical reactions in the blood and brain? Our social taboos around talking about intoxicants is not helping people but helping their habit, to cover it up easily. It is pushing youngsters away into the lap of addiction, because we package it as “this is not tradition, don’t do it!”

We need to raise awareness among our young ones that addiction is only a step away. That behind the glamour is a dirty self-feeding greedy entity that will eat you from the inside out. We need to step down from moral high grounds and reach out to people in ways they understand, with love, with empathy, with a keen awareness of our own fallibility.

About my cousin. There’s a picture of me with her posing in front of my grandma’s home.We are both carrying the traditional waterpot kudams – me for the camera, and she as her daily chore. We are smiling, happy. Another time, I visited her, a couple of years after her marriage I think. She lived then in the same place they live now – a tiny tiny one room hovel that she shared with her husband, mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his wife. Poverty was writ large everywhere. We were making pradakshinas of a nearby temple, because it was easier to talk there, there was literally more breathing space there. After the regular irrelevant chitchat, I suddenly turned and looked her in the eye and asked her – out of the blue, uncharacteristically intrusive – “How are you akka?” And I will never forget what she said. “I am poor. I have nothing. But I am happy,” she beamed. That’s how I will remember her. She was a happy soul.

Her name was the name of the Mother, in Her fierce form that destroys evil. In this sixth day of Navaratri, I pray that she is in the Lap of the Mother, her bodies healed, her karmas exhausted, may she abide in peace. Sending you Love and Light, my sister. Om Shantiḥ Shantiḥ Shantihi.