“Close your eyes and open your hand”, I told my sister. She followed my orders. I placed a travel guide in her hand. “Open” I said. She opened her eyes and saw the travel guide in her hands. “Venice”, it said. She gasped.
“Happy Birthday, didi bahen” I said beaming. Didi means elder sister in Hindi and bahen means sister, so Didi Bahin meant elder sister sister, grammatically incorrect but that is how I called her.
“Oh wow.” She said as she flipped through the book at the picture perfect postcards of the city known as La Serenissima; the most serene one, the Queen of the Adriatic, City of Bridges, City of Canals, and to my sister and I, the City of Dreams. After our mother passed away, Didi and I had spent almost a decade living in Delhi in a family devoid of love and rife with emotional abuse. Our reality had been quite shitty and we had learnt to find joy from our dreams; first to go to America & make something of our lives, and second to visit Venice & ride a gondola. Now that we had been living & working in New York for a couple of years, I had planned a surprise trip to celebrate her birthday; Mar 19th in Venice.
Didi looked up at me, both our eyes brimming with tears. There was no need for words. We understood.
Stendhal was a 19th-century French writer. I do not know much about his writings, what I know is he gave the term “Stendhal Syndrome” , which refers to a collection of intense physical and mental symptoms you may experience while or after viewing a work of great beauty, art or architecture. Its worst symptoms can include dizzy spells, disorientation, palpitations and exhaustion. Some call it “Art attack”! More commonly it registers as a feeling of overwhelm, an incapacity to bear the beauty of the thing one beholds. Stendhal famously experienced it when he visited the city of Florence. To me and my sister, it was visiting Venice. The Grand Canal’s majestic waterway, the city’s architectural splendor, the narrow, winding streets, arched bridges, intimate squares, the soft, reflected sunlight on the canal waters especially during sunrise and sunset, the floating palazzos, the enchanting masks and the romantic atmosphere can be – literally -breathtaking. We stepped off the train & found – and lost – ourselves in La Serenissima. Of course we rode a gondola!
One trip wasn’t nearly enough to absorb our city of dreams. In the ensuing years, I planned another trip, and another, always to celebrate Didi’s birthday, March 19th in Venice.
Didi passed away in India after an intense battle with cancer. Half of me died with her; the half that laughed, that hoped, that dreamed. After her death I stayed in India for a while, my father insisting I give up on my life in America and move back with them. I felt like a ghost invisible to myself with no reason to go on without Didi, in America, India or elsewhere. I remember taking a shower one day feeling the water on my skin when the thought came to me “I must go back to Venice.” Amidst all the thoughts of death & dying, the first living thought that came to me was about Venice.
So I did. I left India and flew back to America to my empty life. I got back into work. Amidst nightmares of losing Didi and days of bawling with grief, I somehow planned a trip – to spend Didi’s birthday; Mar 19th in Venice. Human beings are strange.
I spent Mar 19th in Venice again – this time just me. I sobbed at every place we had visited together, in St. Mark’s Square, on the Rialto Bridge, in the cafes & restaurants we ate at, on a gondola. When I returned to the US, I did not know if I would live to see Venice ever again.
Then I met Mark. Mark was deeply sensitive and caring – just like Didi. And just Like Didi, Mark was a March baby. And as if all that wasn’t special enough, Mark’s dad was born on March 19th! After an LA to NY long-distance relationship, Mark & I moved in together. Over the next few years, we made a life together. If it was up to him, he might have proposed to me in the very first year. But he knew my heart had a lot of mourning to do. I think I even told him not to bother proposing, I wasn’t going to be ready to celebrate for a long time.
Someone wise once said, “Let mourning stop when one’s grief is fully expressed.” Years passed and the day came when Mark knew it was safe to propose to me. So he did. Now the problem was where to have our wedding. With family and friends on three continents; England, India and the US it wasn’t an easy answer. Amidst the pressures of my father; to have a big fat Indian wedding and Mark’s father getting diagnosed with cancer & expressing his wish to see us married while he was still alive, we knew we had to do something. But that something had to be right for us.
“How about – Mar 19th in Venice?” The moment I uttered the words, they felt right. We spent the next few months planning a ceremony with rituals that spoke to who we were. We decided to have zero guests, no show-off, no drama, just two hearts making a commitment to each other. I returned to Venice 7 years after I had last been there mourning my sister, saturated with death. This time I went to celebrate with my fiancé; the tenacity of life. We had the most beautiful ceremony with rituals honoring the lives of my mother and my sister.
As we disembarked the vaporetto for the train station, I looked back at our city of dreams and said to Mark, “how about we come back to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary?” Mark said “yes darling!” Mark always says “yes darling”! At the time 7 years felt like a long time. And yet here we are. It’s February 7 years later. We are planning another trip to celebrate – Didi’s birthday, Mark’s dad’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. On Mar 19th in Venice.
More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is an immigrant to the United States and also an environmentalist. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com