Learning to say Goodbye

As a young child I remember being completely obsessed with dolls. They were my greatest passion. I cherished each and every doll that I owned and cared for them long after their newness had worn off. Perhaps part of the reason for this was that I owned very few real dolls. Apart from a rubber duckling, I remember having all of three dolls in my whole childhood.

The prettiest of these was a large size baby doll whose eyes would close when the doll rested and they would open when the doll was held upright. That remained my baby for several years. I already had this doll while we were still in London and at five years of age when my family and I returned to India for good, the doll came with us. Needless to say, as an imported toy, it attracted a lot of attention and I was very proud of my beautiful blue-eyed, golden-haired little companion.

About a year after we had settled in Mumbai, my parents took us to visit cousins in a nearby suburb. I insisted not just on taking the doll along but on carrying it on my person, as if I was carrying a real baby.  I was meeting my cousins for the first time and both sisters were as, if not more, excited at the toy that I had carried as they were about meeting me.

My cousins and I must have had such a great day that when my parents asked me if I wanted to stay back for a few days on my own, I happily agreed. They left for our home that evening while my doll and I settled in to enjoy our vacation.

My uncle and aunt had government jobs and left for work the next day. I was the youngest of the three girls spending the day together and my elder sisters babied me. I happily did what I was told. Once we were all bathed and dressed for the day, the older of my two cousins figured it would be fun to give my doll a bath too. Excitedly we watched as she washed and dried the doll and laid her down to sleep in the small space we had created as a bed. From her resting place my doll stared back at us wide eyed and accusing. Something was wrong, her eyes wouldn’t shut. I was aghast and I must have started to cry.

I know I must have started crying. I was a regular cry-baby back then and it took just about nothing to set off my tears. I can’t remember crying though. All I remember was that we knew that something was wrong and that we needed to do something about it. My older cousin, still a child herself, tried to physically shut the dolls eyes and I’ll never forget what happened next. The eyes detached themselves and fell into the hollow mould of the doll’s body. My doll has lost her eyes. Two holes remained in their place in the once beautiful face.

The beauty of childhood is how easily we recover from tragedies. I hadn’t learned then that we needed to show and carry our grief for all time. In fact, I can’t even remember what happened next except that we continued to enjoy the rest of my stay there. My doll came back home with me at the end of the trip, blind but not beaten and my cousins’ home continued to be my go-to place for the vacations for several years after that. It was on one such trip to their home, that I met a pair of sisters called Latha and Lekha and so when I was 11 and was gifted with a little sister it seemed to me like the natural choice for her name. I asked my dad if we could name my baby sister Lekha and the whole family approved.

My doll went on to die a tragic death when I was around eight. I was dancing in my front room to the beat of some music and remember twirling myself round and round. In the midst of my utter abandonment, I asked my five-year-old hyperactive brother to fetch my doll for me. I had wanted her to join me in this dance of glee. My brother Venu of course for once, decided to oblige me. He picked up my doll and flung her to me. I wasn’t expecting this and was in the middle of a turn and was in no position to make the catch. She missed my arms and crashed onto the cement mosaic tiles on the floor and broke into what looked like a hundred pieces. I remember seeing her eyes on the floor staring at me and reviving the memory of the last time I had seen them. This time I really cried and was inconsolable for a long time. Finally, I think it was Raj, my older brother who came up with the idea of burying the doll properly. That’s when I stopped crying and started getting ready for the funeral. We lived in a largely catholic colony and burials were part of the local culture. I remember my catholic friends helping me to plan the funeral. We found a box for the remains of the doll and gathered some flowers and later that day, my brothers and friends gathered outside the watchman’s cabin in our apartment building. We dug up the earth and placed the coffin in the ground and solemnly said goodbye to my little baby. Thankfully we didn’t mark the ground because I know I did go back to retrieve the doll the next day and couldn’t find anything where I looked. That was the first time I learned what it was to have a sense of finality that comes with loss.