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54.A Sad Loss While in Singapore

In order  to  take  up the job in Singapore, I had  taken sabbatical leave for a year.  Among  our close relatives, the only person who was not very happy in our going abroad  was my  wife’s mother. Even though  she was  happy that we  got an opportunity to work abroad, she was  half-hearted  in sending her eldest daughter to a far-off place. My  better  half’s mother and father were  school teachers and after  retirement, she became  diabetic. She  was not taking her medicine regularly and uncle was  not   knowledgeable enough about these  things as he was always preoccupied with  many things  including some farming. Their  eldest son and his wife were working in Alappuzha and for their  convenience  they had  moved to a rented  house  in the town and  uncle and aunty were left alone in the house. The  only thing   aunty used to do regularly was getting her  blood tested once in a month. She  used to carry a  bitter gourd in her bag which she used  to eat raw a few minutes  before giving the blood sample for testing. Innocently, she thought this will bring down her  blood sugar.

 

Things were   going smoothly,  but all on a sudden she had  a chest pain and was admitted  to a private hospital  in Alappuzha. Doctors  diagnosed her trouble  to be a mild heart  attack called angina. They did  not inform us  but our son from Kozhikode  reached Alappuzha and he found grandma   recuperating  after the mild attack. After  returning to Kozhikode, he had sent me an email telling that grandma  is alright and she will be discharged in a day or two. I had seen this  email  at home  in the  morning and told  my wife that everything is  fine at home. Our son was  careful not to call us on phone to avoid his mother  getting upset. However, when I checked my mail at 1130 AM  before  going to lunch at my office, he had written that things are really bad as grandma  had another massive attack and asked  us to come home as early as possible. When I talked  to my   friend  Siva, he said  he will  go to  the travel agent and take  tickets using his credit card by SilkAir flight  to Thiruvananthapuram and come direct to the airport.  He asked me to go home and bring my wife to the airport.  I took a taxi  to  our home and asking the driver  to wait, went inside and took some clothes  and  started  to airport telling that her  mother is a bit serious. By the  time  we reached Changi  airport, Siva was  requesting the check-in staff not to close the  gate as the  time was getting late. Somehow, with  his effort, we could  board the 1400  flight to TVM. Due to the  time difference we could reach TVM by  5PM. As  the evening train  to North had already left, we took a taxi  to our place and reached home by 10 PM, even  before   her brother  reached from Mangalore. As they were  not sure when we will be reaching, her body was kept in the mortuary at Alappuzha  Medical College. 

 

Kuttanadu  was  in floods at that time.  The premises around  the house  were   submerged in water to a level of about 40  cm. Next day, the cremation was  done by  making an elevated  platform on pillars  using bricks. As  I was  on a contract job with minimum  leave , I left after  two days  leaving my wife at home. She came back only after  a month  or so. With this  incident, she lost all further interest  in sightseeing  in Singapore, probably another reason for not pressing for extension of my contract with DSI. We  were  staying  in a part of Singapore called Bukit Panjang  which was just a few  kilometres from Malaysian boarder,  but we  could  not even  make a  trip to the  boarder. Malaysia was a place  we wanted to visit.  A few years  back,  while we made a trip to Cambodia, the land of ancient Hindu temples and genocide, we had  taken a Malaysian visa  to go around Kuala Lumpur. But as  our flight  from Kochi  Airport was  rescheduled  from 11PM in the night to 10AM next day due to some technical problem , we could get only a few hours  in KL during which we could just go  to  the Petronas twin towers  and  take a few  photos. 

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