Cheeku,
It is another ordinary day. Being a Saturday, there is no urgency to do anything. No office, no deadlines. No useless meetings either. Just a peaceful ordinary day.
I was struggling to connect my Ipad with the printer over the wifi to print out the contacts list. Time is flying past and as the date for Tubby’s marriage comes closer, so many many things seem to have been left undone. It is just that I have to start at some point…but I am feeling lazy.
I opened my laptop after ages. It already seems like a ancient machine, slow and laborious. But on the screen saver I have a picture of yours, leaning back in your chair laughing. Your laptop is open on the desk. You have grown a goatee, you look really happy. Just the way I always imagine you when I am feeling low and beaten down. I try to go back in time and imagine you there in your room in Cardiff. It must have been cold because you are wearing your sweater. I imagine you in your class room, walking the streets of the University campus…the quintessential Indian in a Welsh town in Britain.
Music is playing on my laptop and out of the blue, Elton John starts singing Candle in the Wind…The song reverberates in my mind…it sounds so much for you…in those days when you were really the English rose, loved by your friends and teachers, spreading good cheer all around while somewhere deep within feeling such loneliness only you knew of…
I can feel mist on my face, my cheeks…seems strange sitting in the room. But these things happen on an ordinary day when everything seems routine…it is just that deep longing within surfacing through the eyes, to settle down again within, where it belongs…
Here’s for you Cheeku…now you belong to heaven, and stars spell out your name…
Candle in the Wind
Goodbye England’s rose;
may you ever grow in our hearts.
You were the grace that placed itself
where lives were torn apart.
You called out to our country,
and you whispered to those in pain.
Now you belong to heaven,
and the stars spell out your name.
And it seems to me you lived your life
like a candle in the wind:
never fading with the sunset
when the rain set in.
And your footsteps will always fall here,
among England’s greenest hills;
your candle’s burned out long before
your legend ever will.
Loveliness we’ve lost;
these empty days without your smile.
This torch we’ll always carry
for our nation’s golden child.
And even though we try,
the truth brings us to tears;
all our words cannot express
the joy you brought us through the years.
Goodbye England’s rose,
from a country lost without your soul,
who’ll miss the wings of your compassion
more than you’ll ever know.
Love
Dad