The Greatest Lesson of Loss

It was a cold January for Karachi. The crisp winter breeze off the Arabian Sea carried the smokiness of the neighbourhood rubbish being burnt in the morning. Daddy was back in India for work, and the morning felt melancholic in the humidity, the skies heavy with rain that would probably never come. The telephone rang, and it was my Dada saying that we’d need to come over as Dadi had taken a turn for the worse. My mother told me to get ready to go to my grandparents’ house.

‘But Daddy isn’t here, Mummy. What if something happens to Dadi?’