It was a strange kind of silence that settled in our home when Meera went away. My daughter was eighteen, full of life, and one accident took her from us on a monsoon afternoon. Her room still smelled like jasmine oil and the notebook where she scribbled lyrics lay open on her desk.
My name is Kavita. I live in Pune, and for twenty years I taught classical music. But after losing Meera, I couldn’t sing a single note. The house was full of music before — now, it echoed with absence.
I spent days sitting by the tulsi plant, staring. Eating less, speaking only when needed. People came and went. They brought words, and sometimes food. But nothing touched the ache in my chest.
One morning — it must’ve been a week since the thirteenth-day prayer — I heard a faint humming. It was coming from the veranda. I walked over and found my neighbor’s little girl, all of six years old, twirling in the rain, singing "Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram" — the bhajan Meera used to hum while doing her homework.
I don’t know why, but my knees collapsed from under me, and for the first time since Meera’s passing, I wept loud and full. The girl came over and hugged me, no questions. Just quiet presence.
That night, I lit the diyas on our small home altar — something I’d neglected for days. Meera used to help me place the wicks in ghee, even as she asked why God lets bad things happen. I’d always scolded her for asking. But now, I wasn’t sure either.
As I watched the flames flicker, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita rose uninvited to the surface of my mind. It was something I’d memorized in my college days: “The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die...” (Bhagavad Gita 2.20). I whispered it aloud, a little shaky.
Somewhere in that darkness, I felt Meera not as gone, but as beyond. Changed, not ended.
I began waking early again. I’d sit before dawn, pressing the tanpura’s strings softly. Singing only to the Divine — not for class, not for anyone. Just the voices of old bhajans rising in me like breath I hadn’t known I still had.
One morning, while singing a line from the Ramayana — “Bhakti is the river that flows straight to Ram” — I stopped. I closed my eyes, and for the first time, the grief didn’t feel like it was drowning me. It felt like a current, moving me closer to something sacred.
Now, I sing again. My voice still cracks. That’s okay.
The pain hasn’t gone. But bhakti — loving devotion — has made space beside it. When I sing to Rama now — the prince of Ayodhya, who himself knew deep sorrow — I feel Meera’s smile, not her absence.
The Katha Upanishad says, “The Self is not known through study, but by one whom the Self chooses. To such a one, the Self reveals Its true nature.”
I think loss chose me. But so did Bhakti. And somehow, through her, the Divine now sings me whole.
It was a strange kind of silence that settled in our home when Meera went away. My daughter was eighteen, full of life, and one accident took her from us on a monsoon afternoon. Her room still smelled like jasmine oil and the notebook where she scribbled lyrics lay open on her desk.
My name is Kavita. I live in Pune, and for twenty years I taught classical music. But after losing Meera, I couldn’t sing a single note. The house was full of music before — now, it echoed with absence.
I spent days sitting by the tulsi plant, staring. Eating less, speaking only when needed. People came and went. They brought words, and sometimes food. But nothing touched the ache in my chest.
One morning — it must’ve been a week since the thirteenth-day prayer — I heard a faint humming. It was coming from the veranda. I walked over and found my neighbor’s little girl, all of six years old, twirling in the rain, singing "Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram" — the bhajan Meera used to hum while doing her homework.
I don’t know why, but my knees collapsed from under me, and for the first time since Meera’s passing, I wept loud and full. The girl came over and hugged me, no questions. Just quiet presence.
That night, I lit the diyas on our small home altar — something I’d neglected for days. Meera used to help me place the wicks in ghee, even as she asked why God lets bad things happen. I’d always scolded her for asking. But now, I wasn’t sure either.
As I watched the flames flicker, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita rose uninvited to the surface of my mind. It was something I’d memorized in my college days: “The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die...” (Bhagavad Gita 2.20). I whispered it aloud, a little shaky.
Somewhere in that darkness, I felt Meera not as gone, but as beyond. Changed, not ended.
I began waking early again. I’d sit before dawn, pressing the tanpura’s strings softly. Singing only to the Divine — not for class, not for anyone. Just the voices of old bhajans rising in me like breath I hadn’t known I still had.
One morning, while singing a line from the Ramayana — “Bhakti is the river that flows straight to Ram” — I stopped. I closed my eyes, and for the first time, the grief didn’t feel like it was drowning me. It felt like a current, moving me closer to something sacred.
Now, I sing again. My voice still cracks. That’s okay.
The pain hasn’t gone. But bhakti — loving devotion — has made space beside it. When I sing to Rama now — the prince of Ayodhya, who himself knew deep sorrow — I feel Meera’s smile, not her absence.
The Katha Upanishad says, “The Self is not known through study, but by one whom the Self chooses. To such a one, the Self reveals Its true nature.”
I think loss chose me. But so did Bhakti. And somehow, through her, the Divine now sings me whole.
