Dear N,
It’s been a week. Thanks to you and your acha, I had a viral fever almost the entire week. You can keep your ayyo to yourself. 😠
But I not really angry with you. It seems your amma told D that you used to say I was your favourite cousin. I don’t know if that is true. I do know that I don’t deserve it. But you were easily my favourite cousin, and I know that I gave you less than you deserved.
We had a beginning, and we had an end. We lost a lot in between, and that’s completely on me. It wasn’t my intention, and it’s too late to make amends, but I am sorry.
We began well. Thanks to the vagaries of time and space, unlike your other cousins, who were too old or young for you, the two of us got a few years of childhood just for ourselves.
I remember many things from our childhood. The ‘haircuts’ you gave me. Me teasing you that we won’t be friends anymore. Waiting until the second time you asked, with tears welling up, whether we will never be friends again, to admit I was kidding after which you’d give me a tight hug. 🥹
The middle is a mess. I remember we used to have weekly calls, which then became fortnightly. I stopped making it routine because I wasn’t sure I could do it all the while, and I didn’t want you to get upset over that.
It didn’t help that you increasingly started saying hello, and quickly handing over the phone to your acha, claiming that I wanted to speak to him. Cheapo!
My visits too became infrequent. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t bear to see you. I felt frustration, a sense of injustice, deep sorrow, all of which would leave me down and out for a few days after we met. The only response I could come up with was avoidance.
But we sorta kinda ended well, no? The last time I met you, you were more cheerful than the previous times. We sat around for a while, had chai, and you talked a little more than you usually did in recent times.
I really didn’t believe you were gone when I got the news as I was having breakfast. I went to your home, realised no one was around, and then came to the hospital.
I began registering it only when I saw your acha and amma huddled in the hospital cafeteria, struggling to acknowledge that you were gone.
I am grateful though, to have been able to make up at least a bit for what I didn’t do for you. I was with you when you were taken to the mortuary. I was there the next day to lift you into the ambulance and bring you home.
And I performed your last rites. When your amma said you’d have preferred to go to the crematorium in your Nano, people began opining until I put my foot down and said that is exactly how we’d go. So we went for your last ride, with your head on my lap. I rumpled your hair as usual to see if I could irritate you. 😛😢
You know, different people process grief differently. I see your amma running around doing things she should let others do, and wonder if that is her way of coping. Your acha is ahead of us, he realises what is lost and is able to cry. And me? This is how I am beginning to process it.
By thinking of you, and writing it so I don’t forget us as I age. So I can come back and read this.
After we grew up, you and I were different. I couldn’t come to terms with it and the pain it must have caused you. Physically and emotionally. My frustration, sense of injustice, and sorrow all came from there.
But if you promise not to show off, I’ll admit something. I was wrong about that because I was seeing the significance of a life through very silly lenses. I completely missed the part about you being the purest soul I knew. Your currency throughout your life was only love and the joy you could give to others without an ounce of selfishness.
I have proof. When we visited, for a brief while the two of us would be kids again. I would rumple your neatly combed hair. You would slap me off in mock anger. I’d stick my tongue out and you’d do the same. I’d give you a kiss on the cheek, and you would hug me. Tightly. Not letting go for a while. The shared language that bridged the decades that had separated us.
This is how I want to remember us – innocent, and joyous in each others’ company. Friends. Forever and forever. Ok?
Thank you for everything.
Lots of love.
And now, I can feel the tears flowing.
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