Dear Cheeku,
This 28th June you turned 31. That is how I celebrated your birthday. Like every year, when you were away finding law in Cardiff, I waited for a signal that you may be coming home. From your distant travels, on one of your stops. at home were all the usual suspects. As we raised the first toast to you, we still hoped there would be a ring on the door.
Then we had the 9th Edition of the Basketball tournament in St. Xavier Jaipur, the court that reverberated with your shouts, your laughter, your exasperation…The court was full of young eager faces, There was much shouting and cheering. The Boys final was nail biting…no a heart-stopper! Xavier team won by just one point in the last minute! Just the way you would have wanted it! Nine years have passed since you have gone. Its seems so long. It seems like yesterday.
I have imagined you with strands of white in your hair. Looking elegant and legal. I have imagined you in your black coat and black-grey stripes trousers. The lawyers band in your collar. But then I have also imagined you in a dark suit with a not so bright tie, the chamber lawyer advising the corporate clients and charming their women representatives with your wit and sharp intellect.
I have imagined you with a vivacious, caring, loving wife fretting over you. I have also imagined you running in and out of the house in great haste to,catch up with your friends in a cafe in Khan Market.
And the time goes by. I have realized why our scriptures have called this world Maya (something your friends called you in school and what you eventually chose to become), an illusion, a place where nothing is real or unreal, where we play our part, as Shakespeare so beautifully described, and move on. some early on, some after waiting a long while. We make promises of eternity, we live from moment to moment. We assume immortality while every heart beat is, as I once read, the drumbeat leading us to death. What is and what is not, is unraveled.
And so life goes on. Time moves relentlessly in one direction and we are pushed too, to keep in step, till the destination suddenly arrives to board the flight.
“It Is Not a Word”
It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
…only memories waking, that so light a sleep…
That love which is…that is all.
Dad