INTRODUCTION
After her passing away I had promised myself that I would write a poem a day for my Pretty Lotus as my way of healing myself and I have gone beyond my promise.
I have written over a thousand pieces in the last three years of her passing away. This will continue to give me a sense of satisfaction and feeling that I am not alone. I am still proud to be living with the multiple golden memories of my Pretty Lotus. To some of my family and friends, this is utter madness but for others who can understand my feelings, this expresses my instinctual love for the great soul which had merged with mine for life.
Of the many regrets that I have deeply ingrained in my heart about my creativity a few outstanding ones are:
I have expressed many of these internal feelings in a lot of my writings and have somehow tried to satisfy me for the additional loneliness and awkwardness. Of course, there are some dear friends who have stuck by me and have supported me in my grief and bereavement. These include my children, my brother Vijen and his family, my college friends Regina and Anand and Vijendra Keshwanand and his wife and my colleague Vidya Nand plus our adopted children Donna and Barry. They have been my strength to move on.
I owe them and many other similar helpers and well-wishers a lot. I thank you people. For all the other selfish individuals who were only tentatively and selfishly related to me whilst my wife was around I say ‘your departure from my world is no regret for me’. My advice to them is to stay away in order to give me the needed peace and harmony. I do not need any more sycophants and indignant individuals in my life to torture me any further.
I see no point in meddling with the past when the present seems nicely intact. I would rather have sweet memories than sour ones, hot meals than cold ones and merry times than monstrous dichotomy that I am finding so conspicuously at display in some of my own people. I have learnt it the hard way that discretion is definitely the better part of valour and I will try not to let my emotions override my logic. I have found my specific place in this lonely social environment and this life of a hermit is giving a new meaning to my life. Loneliness is better than bad company.
I have gained a feeling of security and a sense of belonging to myself. I do not want to submit myself to people who are not genuine in their dealings with me because I do not believe that this is the human way of overcoming my loneliness and anxiety.
Freedom to pray, believe and do social and cultural things is paramount for me. This was the reason for deviating from all traditional ceremonies after death of my beloved wife because for me any death is the final aspect of life. There should be no ceremonies to mourn the departed soul but rejoice with the memories.
I firmly believe that I am not like any of my fellow beings and no life should repeat another. Now as my purpose unfolds so would my life. I am but a simple creature of instinct. I do not want to condemn anyone for any ferocity or praise anyone for the meekness.
I have at last chosen the goodness in my own life and have finally realized that life is like a game of cards. The cards, bad or good, have been dealt to me and I have to play the game with added skills to win or to lose.
Thankfully, I have no partners as my assistants or to pass any possible blames. Alone I will win because I have called my Tanhaai, my Shradhanjali and my Nazraanaa for My Pretty Lotus, a glowing tribute, an emotional accolade and a fitting homage.
Let me express my understanding of death and loneliness. It is my Tanhaai for the non readers of Hindustani.
We all die and our goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In this publication I have tried to create something that should live forever.
All people who have taken birth in this material world are destined to meet death at an appropriate moment. This is simply a matter of changing bodies but no one knows where they are going after the change of their forms.
Some people say that death is nothing at all and it does not count much in their life but they have not lost someone who was as dear as the one I have lost. That severe loss brought a lot of realization for me.
For me the death of My Pretty Lotus has left a heartache that no one would ever be able to heal but the love and passion I have and had for her has definitely left a lasting memory no one can ever steal from me.
I feel that if God takes away something I have never expected to lose, He will replace it with something I have never imagined. God therefore has left an everlasting memory of my beloved wife for me to treasure. That I will.
One of the reasons that I have created this publication is because I felt that those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday; unseen, unheard, but always near if they are still loved, still missed and remain dear to you.
Grief, sorrow and sadness of losing my beloved were like the ocean for me because they came on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water was calm and sometimes it was overwhelming. All I had to do was learn to swim in the rough ocean. The expressions in this publication were an apt outlet for my emotions and the healing was bearable and manageable.
So death of my beloved wife was not the extinguishing of the light from my life. It did put out the lamp but it also helped me find a new light in the dawn that had come. My Pretty Lotus is remembered as my princess of love, truth, beauty and goodness and I owed her something major that needed to keep her multiple memories alive, hence, the publication of this book.
It is titled, “A Loving Tribute, an Accolade and Homage to My Pretty Lotus” which translates as Shradhanjali or Nazrana but all these are lovingly and fondly expressed as Tanhaai.
I sincerely thank Dr Donna McGrath for her support in writing the Foreword and editing this publication and my son Rohitesh Prasad for arranging the publication of this loving tribute, an epitome of fond memories.
