Yoyo-nama Chapter 19 Two Long Breaths

19

Two Long Breaths

In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, there are some descriptions about the outer signs of the inner journey that has begun, when a person is dying. I had not read the book then, but later I could see how Yoyo began to display so many of those signs…he became inward, detached from us, apparently staring vacantly, looking at you, and through you. Sometimes he wanted to simply disappear, by trying to find a place where we would not see him – this was not one of his old tricks of vanishing justforfun and waiting for us to find him. This was a quiet, determined, exit strategy.

One day he managed to scramble and scrape himself slowly into the small space between the back of the fridge and the wall, pulling wires, sitting frighteningly close to the exposed parts of the electric arrangements of the back of the fridge. I found myself much less patient than Tatsat, with this. In a bid to tell myself that this was the usual crazy-Yoyo behaviour, I would uselessly shout (he was totally deaf by now) at him to stop it, and try to pull him out, because it seemed like a dangerous place to go, what with possible sparking, wires, heat from the fridge. Tatsat would also be worried about this, but would move the entire fridge and give him space, rather than pull him out of there.

Yoyo now began to eat less and less, living on virtually nothing for some weeks. We had decided firmly not to involve saline and other such feeds. We would just put water in his mouth with a dropper, which he would simply not swallow – it would trickle out of the other side of his mouth. But he would sit up and take himself down the three steps to the yard when he needed to pee. Then he took to remaining in the yard in a patch of sun. We had always loved his ‘basmati chawal’ fur smell when he was young and healthy. Now his mouth and body began to let off what anyone would call a bad smell, but which to us became precious in itself, his smell, he-is-still-alive smell.

Almost all of Yoyo’s fans and victims dropped by, through this time, to say hi to him and to silently say goodbye in their minds. Mathangi’s last moment with him, days before he passed away and she was visiting Pune, is etched in my mind. She had said her goodbyes to him, but as she wheeled her bag away down the walkway outside my gate, she turned around and came back in, to sit by him, prone in the sun in the yard. He registered it all, with his eyes and all of his now frail self. He had stopped wagging his tail or doing that imperious bark and sharp eyed look to make his slaves and staff like Tatsat and Mathangi keep petting him; his body was now over sensitive to touch, and Mathangi’s hand hovered lightly over him for what would be their last communion with each other.

Then suddenly one day, miraculously, he began to eat, walk about, the smell receded, he came upstairs to the bedrooms and sprang on to the highish bed, and even gave us a little display of his yappy-happy days. He had not pooped for over ten days, as he had eaten nothing. Now he marched out and took a nice dump. Tatsat, the staunch atheist, had apparently told himself that he would believe there is a god if Yoyo got better. For a month after that, it did seem like Yoyo was simply back, almost in full form, albeit a slightly ratty-tatty version of himself. He even produced some new vocalizations, surprising us with some kind of caw-caw and cluck-cluck that we had never heard before, when he rolled on the bed in sheer mischief like in the old days.

Friends who enquired after him, were surprised at this turn of events. As Yashoda put it, “Ok! So he is really that kind of ‘ghatta ajoba’ who has plenty of life left in him even when everyone thinks he is on his way out.” ‘Ghatta ajoba’! It means a tightly-knit grandfather! One that does not unravel easily, who ticks on to a ripe old age. We loved the idea, and saw it as a sign that we were going to have more time with Yoyo.

But his brief revival and revitalization that we were witnessing, was the proverbial last brightening of the flame before it went out.

During this time, I went to Goa to visit a friend and explore some possible work. It was September and raining. I was sitting with my friends David and Charmayne in a small porch of the unassuming press club of Aldona. With three other friends of theirs who I had never met before. There was a call from Tatsat. I stepped out into the shabby yet comforting porch of the structure. Yoyo had passed away right in Tatsat’s lap. He had been quiet and feeble during the day, and had just taken two large breaths and let go of his life at night fall. Tatsat was having him buried in our backyard – ‘deep deep down in the earth so I can just forget him, never think of him again, never miss him,’ he said in utter and abject grief. Sitting among friends and new acquaintances, far away, it was comforting to not feel the searing pain that Tatsat was experiencing. Just the empty feeling of a door clanging shut somewhere between Yoyo and this world.

It is surely a measure of Yoyo’s place in many lives, that our neighbours sent food for Tatsat on the day that Yoyo passed away and for the next day, just like we do when a human family member dies, and it is expected and understood that you will be too distraught to cook and feed yourself.