The call came on a Wednesday afternoon. I was in the middle of something at work, nothing important, just the usual. My phone buzzed. It was my mother. She never calls during the day unless something is wrong.
"Appa is in the hospital."
Everything after that is a blur. I remember closing my laptop. I remember the auto ride to the hospital, the driver talking about something I couldn't hear. I remember the smell of the hospital corridor, that specific mix of phenyl and anxiety. And I remember thinking, over and over, this can't be happening. This was not part of the plan.
But it was happening. And no amount of thinking could undo it.
The moment everything splits
When life changes without warning, there's a very specific feeling. It's like the ground you were standing on just vanishes. You were walking along, doing your normal routine, making your normal plans. And then suddenly you're in freefall. The future you had in your head, the one that felt solid and certain, is gone. And nothing has replaced it yet.
That gap between the old life and whatever comes next is the hardest part. Because in that gap, there's nothing to hold onto. Just confusion and fear and a strange numbness that comes and goes without warning.
The shame that comes with it
In India, we don't just deal with the change itself. We deal with everything around it. If you lose your job, it's not just the money. It's what your parents will think. What the neighbours will say. The WhatsApp group where everyone else seems to be doing fine. The pressure to have an answer when someone asks "so what are you doing now?"
If a relationship ends, it's not just the grief of losing someone. It's the aunties asking when you're getting married. It's the pitying looks. It's the feeling that you've failed at something everyone else seems to manage.
If you have to relocate for work, leaving your family behind in a small town, the loneliness hits harder than you expect. You're surrounded by people in a new city and you've never felt more alone. The PG room smells different. The food tastes different. Nothing is familiar, and building a life from scratch is exhausting in a way nobody warns you about.
What I learned about the first few weeks
When my father was in the hospital, I tried to be the strong one. That's what we do, right? Someone has to manage things. Someone has to make calls, talk to doctors, keep the family calm. I threw myself into logistics because it was easier than feeling anything.
But the feelings don't disappear just because you're busy. They wait. They find you at 2 a.m. when the house is quiet and there's nothing left to organise. They find you in the auto on the way home, staring out the window at traffic that doesn't care about your problems.
The instinct to stay strong, to move on quickly, to show everyone you're handling it, that instinct actually slows everything down. Because the feelings you're pushing away don't go anywhere. They just pile up.
Small anchors
What helped me, and I didn't realise it at the time, was the small things. Making chai every morning at 7. Even when the rest of the day was chaos, that one small ritual was mine. It was predictable. It was steady. And when everything else felt uncertain, those ten minutes of boiling water and measuring sugar and smelling cardamom gave my brain something to hold onto.
I started going for short walks after dinner. Not because I wanted to. Because I couldn't sit in the house anymore. But those walks became important. The sound of traffic settling down, the street dogs finding their spots for the night, the smell of jasmine from someone's gate. These tiny sensory details pulled me back into the present moment when my mind kept trying to race ahead into worst case scenarios.
What I'd tell someone going through it
Don't try to see the whole road. You can't. And trying to will only make you more anxious. Just focus on the next thing. Not the next month, not the next year. The next thing. Get through today. That's enough.
Don't make big decisions while you're in the middle of it. Your thinking is clouded by emotion, even if it doesn't feel like it. The impulse to quit something else, or move somewhere else, or end something else, wait on all of it. Let the dust settle first.
Let yourself feel terrible. I know that sounds like useless advice. But trying not to feel bad takes more energy than actually feeling bad. Let it come. Cry if you need to. Sit with it. It won't destroy you. It just feels like it will.
And find one person you can be honest with. Not the whole family. Not everyone. Just one person who won't try to fix it, who'll just listen and say "that sounds really hard." That one person makes more difference than you'd think.
There's no schedule for this
Some people find their footing in weeks. For others it takes months. Neither is wrong. Recovery isn't a straight line. You'll have a good day and then a terrible one, and the terrible one will make you feel like you've lost all your progress. You haven't. It's just how this works.
My father recovered. Slowly, with setbacks, but he recovered. And looking back, I can see that I did too, in my own way. Not by being strong. By being honest about the fact that I wasn't strong, and letting that be okay for a while.
