I would like to preface my story with an excerpt from the poem “How the light comes” by Jan Richardson.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
(You can read the full poem at many places on the web, one of them is here )
“You are the red in my painting, the color in my life.” I said to my sister.
“And you are the light in mine”, said she to me.
“This little light of mine, I am goin’ let it shine”, we both sang together and giggled – until Didi winced. She was in pain. She adjusted her position trying to make herself comfortable, as comfortable as one can get, in a hospital bed. I sat tall, as tall as one can possibly sit, in a hospital bed, so she could rest her head on my shoulder. She would be gone in a few weeks. But we didn’t know it then.
Didi meaning elder sister in Hindi, was 5 years older to me. My childhood was wrapped in her stories; she was one hell of a storyteller! When we were kids, she would read me stories from books she borrowed from the school library; in both Hindi & English, in English – stories of Amelia Jane, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Nancy Drew. As we got older, her stories changed; she was in her mid teens and I was only 11 or 12 but it didn’t stop her from telling me romantic stories she would read in novels; the romantic Mills and Boon series was all the rage in India in those days. I think she sanitized them a bit for my young ears! We got older but never stopped reading stories together; so much world literature & mythology and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings; our favorite stories were those of heroes and heroines who fought great battles and somehow found their way home.
The story I miss the most was the one she told me many times; of the night I was born. Apparently a stormy night, I was born just after midnight. The hospital my mother was at, had run out of some urgently needed medication (yes this used to happen in India) and my father was asked to find the medication at a local chemist shop (like a miniature CVS). So my father, who rode a motorcycle in those days, took my 5 year old sister on his bike and went around looking for a chemist shop that was open on that stormy night. “Amidst thunder and lighting, we finally found a shop that had a little light on” – Didi was a bit dramatic. “Papa asked him if he had the medication, he looked hesitant but asked us to wait while he checked. We stood waiting in the pouring rain, papa trying to shelter me as best as he could under his raincoat. The man finally came back with the medicine. And we went back to the hospital”. She would continue, “The next morning, I went in the room to visit mummy and she asked me if I would like to hold my little sister. I said yes and very gently she put you in my arms. And this is how I felt.” At this point, she would break into song, singing a few lines from a classic Bollywood song “kabhi kabhi mere dil main khyal aata hai, ki jaise tujhko banaya gaya hai mere liye. Tu ab se pehle sitaro main bas rahi thi kahi tujhe zameen par bulaya gaya hai mere liye” “Sometimes often this is the thought I have, that you were especially created for me. Before this moment you were residing amidst the stars, you were brought down to Earth especially to be with me.”
She & I would always cry after she finished this story. Because we knew in our bones it was true. It was true the day I was born and it became truer the day our mother died. Although we grew up in a two-parent household, we found ourselves suddenly parentless that day; our father too consumed with his own grief and incapable of handling two teenage daughters. Soon after we were saddled with a step-mother who as my sister put it “was so loving to us that the day she arrived in our lives, we both magically turned into “Cinderellas”!” So we looked after each other and stood for each other, at home and as we carved our path to the US – first to NY and then to LA to follow our heart and to make our mother’s dreams come true. We had always been close but our shared grief and struggles of those years made us one whole person. That is, until death did us part.
The diagnosis of cancer came out of nowhere. The memories around that time are sharp and blurry, but I will never forget the words – 4th stage, rare, aggressive. We took the news in stride. We were just not the type to be fazed. “Beeee Positive!”, she would say, when asked about her blood group, with a naughty glint in her eye and a cheeky grin on her face; her gorgeous dimples deepening on her gorgeous face. We were not fazed when we were given the schedule for her Chemotherapy sessions. When she mentioned she might lose her long, lustrous hair to Chemo, I told her. “I will shave my hair too and we will both look cool, like Samantha and Smith in ‘Sex and The City’”, “We will both be ‘Bald and Beautiful!’”, she had quipped back joking about the famous soap on TV from the 90s “The Bold and Beautiful”. We had laughed through it all – until laughter itself became too painful for her. We never said goodbye, it was not an option.
When Didi died the color vanished, the only color I knew & felt for years was black. I thought the light vanished too.
And yet.
There is a saying in Hindi that roughly translates “as long as there is life there is world/light”. Incredible as it is, I found love again. I became the light in someone else’s life. And slowly, very slowly, the color returned. I do not know if I will ever know Red like I knew once, but I know I have seen a few rainbows.
I also do not know HOW the light comes, but I know that it does. Somehow.
I do know a way to seek it. As Didi would sing “this little light of mine, I am goin’ let it shine.”
More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, a sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com