Adieu My Friend!

Adieu My Friend!

As I scroll through the chain of WhatsApp messages. I can see some texts that have gone low in the chain of messages because you don’t interact with all of them regularly.

But there are few special ones with whom you start your day since years on end. In these crazy times of uncertainty some remain this certainty everyday.

Chinna Dua was that special friend to me.

Its 11.30 pm and as I get the news. I am dumbfounded. It is in the haze of my sleeping pill plus the inability to be coherent of something you are unprepared for. I lie still listening to the voice on the other end sob. I have no words.

In the dark of my room, I open my phone and stare at the last text. I scroll with the hope that there will soon be a text from her tomorrow. I listen to our past voice messages to each other. I feel choked and in complete loss.

As I digested the news of her demise. I was engulfed with emotions very difficult to articulate.

I realised I will no longer be able to meet her in Delhi, hear her laugh and listen to her voice messages.

Mourning someone you really like too much is like a seizure of the heart. You feel sudden bursts of denial and then also some spurts of arriving to a place of knowing, that the phone won’t have her voice on the other end ever again. 

The green sign signalling she is “active” on Instagram won’t be on ever again.

At this juncture when the only connection remains the digital connection, you don’t know how to express this overwhelming sense of loss. We are all grieving in public.

You look back at the last Facebook photo tag and read about the person through the eyes of others to understand that there will remain so many dimensions of your friend you will learn, over time except that it won’t be in her voice ever again.