Life and Death of Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole was born and died in our backyard in the short span of a few days. Kenneth Cole the bird, not the famous designer.

A few days back I started noticing a house wren going frequently into the tiny hole of the bird-house that hangs in our backyard. My hopes rose! Last two summers in a row, the bird-house has been the cozy nursery for wren hatchlings. We always heard them chirp, but we could never nail the time to see when they become big enough to venture out. Each time they flew away—abandoning the perfectly good built-in nest for whoever picks it up next season.

This time I kept a regular vigil. I developed the skill to silently come close enough to see the parent bringing food from outside and feeding the babies. I learned not to be too obtrusive and scare the parent away. Just like a cuckoo clock, the babies poked their little heads out to grab the food from the parent’s beak. It was pure bliss to observe this—for two afternoons straight! I knew the babies are growing and gathering strength to learn to fly. 

And one of them did learn, but perhaps not well enough. Yesterday when my son Gogol was hanging out by the pool with our dog Biscuit, he suddenly heard a plopping sound. Biscuit started barking like crazy. I was inside. I heard Gogol screaming, “Mamma! The bird fell down in the pool!!”

We rushed outside. We saw a tiny bird floating in the water. We tried to rescue him/her with the pool-cleaning net, but to no avail. The little lungs got filled with water in no time. The little heart stopped. From where the body was found, it is clear that the baby ventured out of the bird-house and walked some distance along the twigs of the Japanese Maple tree canopying the pool before losing grip and falling down. My heart broke.

We decided to give the baby a dignified burial. The white Kenneth Cole watch box seemed like the perfect casket to cradle the tiny lifeless body. When we dug a hole in the ground and put the box in, the top of the box looked just like a gravestone, lying flat on the ground--the name  “Kenneth Cole” prominently visible. 

I guess the little one was destined for a human name—Kenneth Cole. RIP Kenneth Cole. It was nice to know you, albeit for just a few moments.

Spring Break

I could have written this blog on Friday, May 13^th, 2016, right after I finished my last ever final exam in law school! I had a catchy title in mind too—“Friggatriskaidekaphilia,” my own coinage for the opposite of friggatriskaidekaphobia, which is an actual word, meaning ‘a morbid fear of Friday the thirteenth’. But for those impulsive needs to put down our immediate thoughts in writing, there is Facebook. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for creating a vessel for our euphoria!

The ‘day after,’ Saturday, May 14^th, was too sumptuously perfect to confine myself in one place long enough to write a full-fledged blog. I had too much restless energy still bubbling in me! I had old photo albums to organize, trips to plan, calls to make, son’s soccer game to attend, movies to catch, and a million Bollywood songs to listen to! Then came the luxuriating lull of laziness. I became acutely aware that I don’t have to sit down with the hefty law books at least for a few days! It felt surreal, and luscious! I needed to celebrate by doing nothing. The blog could wait.

Today is Sunday. Seems like I am now removed enough from the adrenaline-dominated feeling of lightness to appreciate that I will never find a better time to reflect on law school than now—the ephemeral ‘gap days’ in between the end of the finals and the beginning of the grueling bar preparation schedule of the summer.

Law school was quite a challenge, possibly the hardest that I have ever willingly undertaken, considering where I was in life when I started thinking seriously about law school. I had a full time job at a law firm as a patent agent. I had a full family life with a son in elementary school. I also had ageing parents in India who were not in the soundest of health to visit me in California, so I promised that I would visit them twice a year, no matter what else I had going on in my life.

While I was preparing for law school admission test, my mom was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer. The doctors gave her six months to a year. So she encouraged me to get done with LSAT before going to India to see her. I planned exactly like that, as my siblings were taking care of my mom. But in a cruel twist of events, while I was up in the air, en route to India, my mom went into a hypoglycemic coma. She passed away on December 21, 2012, literally a few hours after I landed in India. My only consolation was that I did get to spend time with her in the summer of 2012, prior to her diagnosis, when the whole family gathered for my nephew’s rice-feeding ceremony.  

After coming back to California, motivating myself to meet the February 1, 2013 deadline to apply for law school was a real struggle. I was still shocked by the new reality of my life—the fact that I was motherless, and I might have to fly to India on a very short notice if my newly single dad needed me! I remember I started writing my personal statement for the law school application package in the very morning of the February 1 deadline. Writing about my mom’s deep influence in shaping my dreams gave me an outlet to deal with the pain.

My law school orientation started on August 13, 2013, the day my son turned eight years old. We pre-celebrated his birthday the weekend before. My in-laws were visiting us in California that time. Nobody, including myself, had a clue what to expect for the next three years. But if there was any doubt inside their mind, my family didn’t let it show. I was sent off to the ‘first day of school’ in style!

Then came the whirlwind of endless reading assignments, writing assignments, quizzes, papers, mid-terms, end-terms, peppered with occasional client deadlines at work. I cut down my work commitment significantly to make room for law school, but deadlines are deadlines! Saying “no” to friends’ and family’s well-meaning invitations to join them for something fun became routine. The effortless balance that I achieved in life before law school went missing, at least for the first year of law school. I tried to draw inspiration from the collegiality of the classmates, the sincerity of the professors, and the giving spirit of the university, organizing countless social service events. The first respite came when we went to India in December 2013 after the first semester was over. Seeing that dad was somewhat adjusting to his widowed life was comforting. We took him to the Sunderbans---the storied mangrove forest by the Bay of Bengal, so close to home, but never visited before! Another semester went by, followed by a busy summer catching up on billable hours at my law firm. Then it was time to go to India again in August 2014 to see dad. My son says India is the best summer camp ever! Playing with my son in the monsoon rains in my hometown rejuvenated me to take on another year of law school.

This time law school felt different. I could choose some of the elective courses that were of professional interest. There was opportunity for teamwork built into some of the courses. I became more familiar with the study techniques that produce results. I learnt how to mentally decouple from my office work. I started appreciating the fact that law school infused me with a precious dose of youth at this stage of my life! Dad could see the difference in my attitude when we went to India to visit him in December 2014.

Third year of law school started with a unique experience—a full-time externship at a federal courthouse in San Jose. I just took one evening class, and spent my entire semester working at the chambers of Judge Beth Labson Freeman. It was a 180 degree departure from my normal life in so many ways! For the first time, I had a female boss. For the first time after graduate school, I had to share a windowless small office room with another extern, and had to make do with a modest desk and a prehistoric computer with a tiny monitor. But none of them mattered because of the intellectual thrill of finally having an insider’s perspective on the judicial system! On my last day of the externship, I went out to lunch with the Judge, and she asked me about my parents. She was curious about the life of a working couple in India in her generation. Suddenly it felt like law school is my most favorite thing in the world!

But can life be that good for long? Of course not! A few days before Thanksgiving 2015, my dad had a ‘mild’ cardiac arrest. My sister valiantly took care of things in India. Dad had an emergency angioplasty that looked all successful initially. Once again, my dad told me to finish my final exam before coming to visit him. But I guess I was a little wiser this time remembering how three years back waiting to finish my LSAT robbed me of the opportunity to see my mom before she went into coma. So I was seriously contemplating the idea of postponing the exam and go right away. My dad’s second heart attack within days of his angioplasty made it easier for me to just drop everything and book the flight to India on Thanksgiving day. This time life gave me a little more opportunity. I could spend nine whole days by the side of my dad, chatting with him, cherishing childhood memories, before my dad rejoined my mom in a different world, reunited for their 46^th marriage anniversary. I would never forget the feeling of emptiness that I felt leaving India in January 2016—the first time dad didn’t come to the gate to say goodbye and to wish me good luck for what would be the last semester of law school.

Looking back, I see that my life outside of law school interweaved itself with my life in law school in a strangely inseparable way! My parents’ death made me realize that there are bigger things in life than worrying about law school. At the same time, law school kept me occupied, making it easier to deal with the loss of both parents in three short years. Perhaps that is the reason it is bittersweet to say goodbye to law school. It was quite a journey that we had together for three years! It was my extended youthful spring break in the scorching summer of my life!

Life and Death Between and Beyond the Blogs

My first blog in 2015 was somewhat self-aggrandizingly titled "Time." It was about my visit to a watch repair shop in the neighborhood that made me all philosophical. And my last blog in 2015 was titled, "The Answer is 42!"--self-laudatory once again, as I was describing the beautiful things in my mid-life that I am grateful for, including my 82-year old father's "successful" angioplasty after he suffered a cardiac infraction. Life was near-perfect between the first and the last blogs of 2015. Until it wasn't. Two days after I wrote my last blog on November 23, 2015, my father suffered a second infraction. The angioplasty turned out to be not that successful after all. I rushed to India on the Thanksgiving Day to see my father. I got to spend nine precious days with him at his bedside, thinking he is on his way to a slow recovery. Then his aging, battle-torn heart stopped beating forever---he didn't survive the third infraction. My optimism was silenced, and how!

My father's demise taught me one vital lesson. I can blog to my heart's content, but life and death happen on their own terms beyond what I can control through my wishful blogging. No matter how fancifully I title my blogs, time doesn't care to stop for me or my loved ones. This feeling of powerlessness is painfully and poignantly real. But strangely enough, I also cannot think of any other way to catharsis. So here I am--trying to get over the pain caused by the loss of a parent by blogging about the act of blogging itself! Talk about meta!

I brag, I breathe, I bleed and I break down through my blogs. Celebrated novelist Haruki Murakami once wrote, "Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death." My blogs nurture me as I nurture my eventual inevitable death. But until death comes, I plan on living my life every day--a life shaped partly by shiny memories of my parents, but mostly by the thriving hopes for the long list of things to come before I join my parents in their journey to eternity. Here's a slightly belated toast to living life in the new year 2016!