Last Lines

My good old friend and my doctor for the last three decades just left. He suggests I aggravated my illness by going to the funeral the day before. On palliative care, I should have focused on extending my numbered days. There is no one at home to take care of me and it is difficult for him to leave work and attend to me. He perhaps felt my time has come and I could see it in his eyes.

I decided to add to the leaves of this estranged diary as I know it would be incomplete if I do not ink the three most important memories of my life which ironically I never wrote about. For more than 4 decades I have written all that I went through on the 31^st of December of every year. Yet these memories stayed in the closet away from my closest companion, my diary.

1. The most vivid of the three memories happens to be the most painful one too, her funeral. I had not seen her for almost a decade. She had made me promise to do so. She felt, I was this emotionally draining inhuman and she did not have the energy to face me. She made me swear I would make no attempts to find her whereabouts or try to contact her.

When she passed away, a good 9 years after I had last seen her, I was the one contacted by the authorities. Trisha was in the US and it would take her 2 days, before she could get her VISA approved and make it to Strasbourg. The authorities, however, wanted the funeral to get over the same day and they had invited me to attend.

I was happy, I had outlived her. She had wanted that, she did not want to see me dying and God had granted her that, leaving me to mourn. But I was well aware, that reapers had already earmarked me, my mourning would be short lived. The happiness you get from the very idea that you're mourning would be short lived, is something only a heptagenarion like me can relate to.

I was in the church surrounded by a sea of people. They did not know who I was and my best guess is that they were perhaps her neighbours. She lay right in front of me and the Padre began the proceedings. He was speaking Spanish and the mise en scène reminded me of ‘The Wedding’. It seemed like the exact same setting. These priests look the same and my old lady still looked as pretty, but my wrinkled skin reminded me that it had been 50 years. I tried remembering when was the first time I met her and I realized it was 63 years ago. Both of us were in India then.

2. I was 13, she was 14, we were in school in the same class, in 8th. She had joined us from a different school. I happened to be a shy boy back then and it took me a year to know her. But as we progressively came to know each other we also became very good friends. By the time we were in 9^th,  I used to hate the days she skipped school. The whole purpose of my going to school was to meet her and talk to her. It was really funny as my parents were strictly against me seeing girls and yet every weekday they would drop me to the place, where I would meet the ‘only girl’ I wanted to be around: my school. I was fiercely competitive a student, but by the time I was in 10^th, I didn’t mind if she fared better than me. To me it felt as if we were one team! The feeling wasn’t mutual though. She liked beating me at literary events while I loved to see her beat me. She was my best friend and I loved her. She was confused if I had a thing for her and my never asking her out only added to her doubts. I just did not have the courage. We wrote our board exams and got admissions in different schools. We moved to different cities. Mobiles hadn’t been invented back then. We used to write letters to each other and each day. During our myriad conversations, once we had a tiff, it was my fault. She decided she would never talk to me again. I pleaded all I could but I was not persuasive enough, she did not give in, that stubborn brat.

I kept writing to her, but she chose not to respond, and once when she did it was to tell me that my letters annoyed her and most of them went unread to the garbage bin. I curtailed my outreach to once a year on her birthdays and for six years I got no response. I might be really old, and have lived a lot many years but I still hate the lost time, those 6 years that we did not talk. Lost time is lost time.

As luck would have it, fate dropped us in the same city once again. I had started working by then while she was doing her masters. I persuaded her to meet me. I had become all that I was not. I wasn’t shy, I was persuasive and I had grown up. She met me all right, but I did not know if we could start from where we had left. It had been 6 years and there was every possibility I was no more than an acquaintance to her. I asked her if we could meet the next day but she shook her head in disapproval. She told me her exams were to start in a week and would go on for a month, we could perhaps meet after that. I wasn’t sure, if that were a genuine excuse or if she didn’t want to meet me as often as I wanted to. I went home rather saddened. I could not resist and went to her college to find out if the exams were to actually happen in a week. It was so. I was smiling ear to ear, I went home relieved. For the next one month my eyes were fixated at the calendar. Every passing day seemed like an accomplishment and in about a month’s time we met again. There was not a single day we did not meet after that. I moved to a place close to her hostel so that we could meet even if there were urgent matters at hand. We made sure, we would have our dinner together. That was the happiest phase of my life, mind you it has been a long journey.

The bubble kept bloating up as they call it these days until the day a news pricked it. My best friend was getting married. It had not even occurred to me till then that in India, all you need to do is to grow up and your parents will find a match for you. The groom ticked all the boxes of the checklist. She seemed happy with her parents’ choice and who was I to question anyone’s wisdom. I was told that the wedding dates would get finalized in a week or so and I needed to keep my calendar flexible to turn up at her big day. I was her best friend I had to be there.

It struck me, that my friend would go away from me, she would lead a new life all together and I would be long forgotten as time would pass. I somehow had never figured it out that this was inevitable anyway, we all get married, it had to happen and I hoped by the time the wedding day arrived, I would be prepared.

The wedding dates were finalized. The wedding was to happen in another 4 months and post her wedding, she would move to Strasbourg, with her N.R.I husband.

I told her, how I felt, that I would miss her once she is gone and that the news of her wedding did not make me happy. I also told her that I however understand, that this would come some day and I would learn to live without her. She told me, she was only relocating, not dying, she would always stay in touch. That seemed reassuring in the beginning but with each passing day instead of getting better prepared to see her go, I became increasingly possessive and I started realizing that it was not her physical absence that would trouble me, but the togetherness we shared. I began to realize, I loved her. I however did not bother to tell her as that wouldn’t help in anyway. As a friend it was my duty to be near her at the most important day of her life and I would.

I increasingly became more and more miserable as the wedding day approached. A week before the wedding, she left for her hometown, the wedding was to happen there. I was to join her a day before the wedding. I dropped her at the airport bearing a fake smile on my face and came home crying.

Another 5 days passed and I left for her hometown. However, I was not going to get her married, I was rather going, hoping to get married. I had seen a lot of movies where the brides change their minds right at the altar and I was prepared for such an occurrence. When I reached her place and met her I told her exactly how I felt. She wasn’t surprised at all.

3. I was standing inside the church. She stood right in front of me. The priest was chanting the prayers which I couldn’t comprehend. Others had their hands folded, praying to the Lord to bless the two souls who were getting married. I had my hands folded too, I was praying too, but I was praying, hoping either of the two change their mind.

For the greater good, Lord decided to value the majority and my prayers went futile. The priest confirmed the wedding while I stood there spinelessly praying for things to miraculously work out. In hindsight, I can totally relate to Cassius when he tells Brutus, in the play Julius Caesar that –“
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

The fault was completely mine. They say the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who do not act in times of crisis. I knew where I was headed. I do not know if there is a heaven or a hell, but I had created my hell on earth anyway.

The scenes were pretty similar the other day at the funeral. With time I had also realized that scars do not heal with time, the pain does not caese, we just bear it for we have no other choice and with time we stop complaining. Today I can though!

She lay right in front of me, as others prayed for her. It had been 9 years since I last saw her. She had made me promise to not see her for a lifetime and I did keep my word.

Unmarried all my life, I wouldn’t know how it is to be with someone, for the one I wanted to be with was already taken. I however did never feel a void as I ensured I was always in the same town as her. Few months after her wedding I moved to Strasbourg. I would rarely get to meet her, but I knew she was somewhere around, the belief that I could knock on her door if I wanted to, kept me going. It has been a long journey, there is more that I had to write about, I also wanted to see Trisha, her only daughter, one last time, but my reaper tells me –“le temps d'aller”. It is time to g…