Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

I wish I had known you better. I wish I had called you up the last time I was home. For all the times that we were on the debating club together, for all the times that we disussed the books we liked the most and for all the times that we hung around with the rest of the gang and had tea on cold afternoons as we passionately discussed politics, books, college life, the weather, and the next upcoming viva voce, I am sorry life cheated on you.

I have a lone snap of you somewhere, it was when our club went on a picnic to that waterfall place whose name eludes me now. We missed the bus because of you, you later helped me across the narrow stream and pointed out to me that if we hadn’t waited for you, I would still be stuck on the wrong side of the stream. You were on my team often and we played well and booed down everyone else. I spent Sunday afternoons working on “What’s the good word” quizzes with you. I don’t have a good word at the moment, I don’t have any words. All I have is a memory of youth, of you and me and many others like us, gathered around the dusty benches of GCC, with the sun rays slanting in through the French windows, reading to one another and commenting on one another’s writing.

I wish I had known that when I saw you two years ago, it was the last time I would ever see you. On second thoughts, I am glad I didn’t know that, because I was never one for goodbyes.

I will remember you like that, encased in eternal youth in a sepia photograph and not as the victim of a horrific car crash. Incomplete memories hurt the most.

RIP Anand – I am sorry that you never had the chance to grow old.