Kuenza's Diary

I said I lost a cousin to cancer two weeks back. Now, my husband’s uncle is in the hospital. His sickness has gotten worse and he is on morphine. I’m told he is given this medicine because he has so much pain and is restless. But this medicine keeps him in that – kind of semi-conscious state – all sedated and not fully aware of anything. I don’t like the thought of him being sedated but I think there is no better thing anyone can do to help him. I visited him only twice in the one week he has been at the hospital. When I’m at the hospital, I just sit on the sofa and watch him, or watch his relatives trying to do anything available to make him feel better. It is exasperating to see how they are ill at ease, not really knowing what they must do. They massage his feet, put a wet cloth on his forehead; they make him sit for a while. They make him lean backwards on a pile of pillows. I feel that the patient might feel irritated by this constant disturb...

I wonder if I’m not dying tomorrow. Death is hanging right at my shoulder. It is peeping at me now and then, as if to ask me if I’m ready and it is so disappointing to say that I’m not. Who is? And now, I wonder at the countless number of people I know die of cancer. The first time I got kicked by such news was when I heard that one of my classmates’ girlfriend was diagnosed leukemia and despite everything the hospital did, she died. She was undergoing her engineering course. Then I heard of someone I called ‘Ata’ die of the same disease. He was a teacher and he had just about started a family. He was referred to Kolkata for surgery but the disease, deadly as it is feared -- it takes life out of you mercilessly. He died before I could go and see him. The fact that he died left in me a deep hole. It was as if I could not cure from not being able to really grasp the truth that, in fact, he died and he was no more. Then came so many news in between, of that person, of this person dying...

I attended a parents-teachers meeting in Lungtenzampa Lower Secondary School last year. The teachers gave us a few papers on which are written questions that children usually have and what parents should do to groom them a good person. The following are what children usually have in their mind: (I’ll give my views on each of the question and how we could help our children with respect to each question.) Mother, why are you not telling me anything when I am roaming? => Parents should know where their children are. If their children want to roam around with their friends for a while, they must say so to their parents and they should not lie to their parents and say that they are going to their friend’s house to work on homework. They should not be forced to make up stories. Parents should foster an environment where their children can talk to them face to face. They can do so by not always disapproving what they say. Children are not completely ...

I have the habit of scribbling every small thing in my notepad. Now, this is bad because, I develop a certain kind of attachment to each of this notepad that I pain when I have to discard them. Today I am discarding one. Tomorrow I will have to discard another. I have a collection of letters. From long time back. They are like trash in a way because they occupy space. I like to keep my room as open as possible – meaning, I don’t like having so many furniture stuffed in a room. So I was thinking if I should throw the collection of letters, diaries, journals and greeting cards I have. No, I did not throw my diaries, journals and letters. I just pushed away my thought of getting rid of them. One thought says, I must get rid of them now, rather than have people read my inner thoughts after I die. And another thought says, I must keep them because what people make of them after my death won’t matter to me. Whatever, I’m keeping them for now. I threw away a few rough papers already – on wh...