MindVerse: nurturing souls through words

My Chachu’s death has shaken me to the core. It has made me question something we spend much of our lives trying to understand: What is the purpose of life? We are born, and one day we die, at any age, for any reason, sometimes peacefully and sometimes after immense suffering. Life can change without warning, leaving us with plans that will never be completed, words that will never be spoken, and a future that suddenly no longer exists. So what is everything in between? A few years after we are gone, most people will stop talking about us. A few generations later, even our names may be forgotten. Our homes will belong to someone else. The possessions we carefully collected will disappear or lose their meaning. Unless we do something extraordinary, or something terrible, history may never remember that we were here. But should that matter? Perhaps no grand purpose is waiting to be discovered. Perhaps life is not a problem we are supposed to solve or a legacy we must build. Perhaps the p...

Have you ever read a book at exactly the right time? A book when you read, the words somehow landed differently? The Comfort Book by Matt Haig was that book for me. I happened to pick it up during one of the most difficult phases of my life, the untimely loss of one of my closest uncles. And suddenly I was thinking about things I don't normally spend my days thinking about. Life. Death. Time. The ridiculous amount of energy we spend worrying about things that may eventually mean very little. The people we assume will always be around. The plans we make as though life has signed some contract promising us a certain number of years. Grief has a strange way of rearranging your priorities. And yet, strangely enough, this wasn't a time when I wanted to read something profound about grief. I didn't want answers. I didn't want someone telling me to be strong. I definitely didn't want to hear that everything happens for a reason. I just wanted something that wou...

Dear Raju Chachu, This birthday feels different. Incomplete. Maybe because birthdays have a way of taking us back to all the birthdays that came before. And when I look back at mine, you seem to be woven into so many of them. Having been born and raised in a joint family, I have infinite memories of you etched in my mind. You weren't someone I met only at occasional family gatherings; you were simply part of everyday life. From my birth to my childhood, teenage years, adulthood, my wedding, and everything that came after, you were there. And perhaps that's why it feels impossible to think of my life story without finding you somewhere in its pages. The Chachu of My Childhood You were seventeen when I was born. I was the first child of the next generation of our family, and you were the last of the previous one. It's as if you were more of an elder brother to me than my uncle. Mom tells me that as a baby, I was almost always in your lap. Apparently, I preferred y...

Today, I am grieving. My chachu passed away after a short and difficult battle with cancer. And yesterday morning, while I was still trying to process the reality of his absence myself, I had another difficult task, I had to tell my nine-year-old daughter, Nishka. She cried. It was a natural reaction. Just six months ago, she had met him hale and hearty. How does a nine-year-old comprehend that someone she saw laughing, talking and living his normal life only a few months ago is suddenly no longer here? Then again, I am an adult, and I am struggling to comprehend it too. But somewhere in that conversation, something happened that I wasn't expecting. I thought I was going to teach my daughter about grief. Instead, she taught me. The Safety Pin of Love After crying for a while, Nishka said something that initially left me completely confused. She placed two coins on the table and connected them by resting a safety pin across them. Then she slowly removed the safety pin and said: “Tod...