New Roles—For Me

"I am afraid he is no more,” the doctor announced. It was a Saturday evening in March 2007. Your brain doesn’t easily process a statement like that. How could this be? I wondered. Only 45 minutes earlier, my husband Alok and I were about to leave our flat in Delhi for a party, when all of a sudden he just keeled over. It was a fatal cerebral stroke, instantaneous and without warning.
Alok, my soulmate of 28 years, was of an athletic build and looked much younger than his 55 years. A lifestyle that had a healthful diet, regular swimming and golf, yoga and reiki, was punctuated with rather more festive weekends. We sometimes went to parties, but most special were the quiet evenings at home: two small martinis and precious time alone, privately celebrating every small event. Just the day before he passed away, Alok’s routine medical test results had come in and they looked good. “My blood pressure and cholesterol levels are down,” he’d said. “Let’s celebrate.”
When Alok and I met in 1978, he was attracted by my passionate love of children, dogs, poetry, and my blissful ignorance of life’s many nitty-gritties. I was drawn by his intelligence and quiet depth, his pragmatism and his broad, comforting shoulders. As a marketing executive with a leading steel company, Alok’s corporate world was different from my hectic life as a journalist. But I found the stodgy corporate world rather restful.
I moved each time Alok got a transfer, because I could not bear to be apart. I freelanced for publications across the country and my nomadic existence resulted in an enviable network of contacts.
Meanwhile, I also got a deeper insight into family life, which led to a series of articles on the subject, and a unique understanding on what was important to homemakers. I even got a job as the Kolkata-based bureau chief of a leading magazine group. In 1999, I won a press fellowship to the University of Cambridge to study the family. I continued with the research when I returned to India and my book, The Great Indian Family: New Roles, Old Responsibilities, was published by Penguin in 2006. It got good reviews and media coverage.
Our marriage was exceedingly happy and our sons, Viraj, a chartered accountant, and Anurag, a lawyer, were warm, loving, and blessed with both a high level of integrity and a wicked sense of humour. It was as if everything I wished for was mine. When people said, “Life is not perfect,” I used to think, Oh, but it very nearly is.

That Saturday night changed everything. You’ve been a couple for close to 28 years. There’s no major decision you take alone. Every piece of news is shared. Alone now, you feel like half a person. How does one function as a single entity?
I was traumatized and terrified, but felt I owed it to myself, to Alok, and to the boys to rise above the loss and use the strength our love had given me to go forward.
I also had to deal with some pressing issues. Where would I live?