A friend of mine’s mother passed away on Sunday, the 27th of January, 2008. She had an out-of-the-blue cerebral attack, and her family could do nothing to at least try and save her. They simply didn’t get time…
I was informed about it quite late. Fact is, I haven’t been in touch with Aritra for the past few months, and the big link between us, Shuvra, decided not to tell anyone about the tragedy. I’m not angry at Shuvra, because I know what he was going through. He was caught in kind of a dilemma as he wasn’t very sure how Aritra would take the wave of thronging sympathizers at this time. But nevertheless, I think Shuvra could’ve been a notch more ‘diplomatic’ and tell me his reason for not wanting to tell me. I would’ve taken care to keep his name out of the ‘how-did-you-come-to-know?’ conversation.
Same goes for Barsali, but with a difference, of course. She was the one who told me, after all, but she did so when we met by chance on the Internet. I don’t know if I would’ve come to know of this otherwise. She could’ve given me a call, or a lousy SMS would’ve been enough for me, but she couldn’t get enough time to do that even while she went on her sir’s bike to visit Aritra! I know it isn’t easy communicating news like this, so maybe I’m being a little unfair to blame her. I might’ve done the same had I been in her position, I don’t know... Maybe she was apprehensive about the fact that I might ask her to take me there and stuff, since I did that later on, as I didn’t want to ask Shuvra for obvious reasons… but she didn’t know the way, so refusing me wouldn’t have been a problem, would it?
The reason why I dedicated two of the above paragraphs to my two dear friends is because it’s not the first time that friends have behaved in a weird manner when someone passes away. This time, it was a common friend’s tragedy, and they behaved strangely too. Last time, it was my own tragedy… and their behavior still confounds me.
Now, the friends I’m going to talk about here are still good friends of mine… since they are my para-pals. When my dad passed away in 2003, I didn’t let any of my friends know, any of my school friends, that is! Even Shuvra, who has been my friend since we were 9 years old, I didn’t inform him. But my para-friends, they knew it, of course, by default, so to speak! But in all those days when I had to don white all the time, I didn’t see one of them, even though I was expecting to. Two of my para-friends did visit, Anirban and Soumyadeb… but I expected others… Rishav, Tathagata, Soumya, Debjyoti, Gaurav, Arnab… to visit as well. In fact, guys like Rishav, Tathagata, Gaurav were closer to me than Anirban and Soumyadeb, to be bluntly truthful.
I had this at the back of my mind for the last five years, but I have never mentioned this to them. I have come close to, quite a few times, but in the end, it hasn’t happened. I guess it was this nagging snippet of memory which made me visit Aritra, apart from the fact that even though we haven’t been in touch for the past few months, we have been good friends before that! You know, when a tragedy strikes and all, there are many unwanted sympathizers, shooting away phony phrases a dozen a dime. I had more than enough of them, and I bet everyone gets an ample quantity of them too. But what one really wants is one’s friends to stand beside them, just the feeling that they’re there… it doesn’t take any words of sympathy… or an assortment of fake sentences… it’s just confirming the fact that the world hasn’t changed… there are still beautiful things in there like your friends…
But again, gearing up to face someone who has lost his mother… isn’t easy. I came to know of the tragedy on Thursday, I think. And it took me four days to gear myself to visit him. I didn’t know it was so hard… if I had known, I might’ve been a tad less severe on my seemingly unfriendly para-friends. I had ample amount of time on my hands on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, even Monday, but I couldn’t brace myself to go and visit him. There were a lot of things I was apprehending- what would I say? I can’t conjure and deliver ‘it’s-gonna-be-alright’ speeches, so what’ll I say? What would he say? So quite naturally, I was looking for someone to go with when I visited Aritra. Shuvra was already out of the equation, so I had asked Barsali, who gave her dunno-the-way story (“story” sounds bad. Apparently, the location was new for her, and so, quite naturally, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to go back a second time without her sir, who had taken her there for the first time. So I should call it her dunno-the-way “fact”), so I was the only one left. Shuvra did help me with the directions on phone, though! The locality wasn’t alien to me, and that helped!
The visit wasn’t that scary, as I had feared it would be. We didn’t get to talk much actually, didn’t get the time since he had to do the necessary religious stuff that everyone has to do, and I sort of barged in at the end of one of those sessions. He looked like he was on his way towards recovering from the shock, and hopefully, I’m a good guesser… But I was more concerned about Uncle, Aritra’s dad, actually. He really didn’t look like he had been able to accept the shock. He was keeping a constant eye on Aritra and his elder sister, it’s the fear of losing a close one that has crept onto him, fuelled by the ridiculous belief (that even my mom had, for a year I think) that the departed would try to take one’s loved ones with him/her. He even sent me (out of his tension) to check on Aritra and his sister when they were taking a tad longer to return from the nearby pond. I really hope he gets over this soon. Living in constant fear of losing someone can’t be good for anyone.
Lastly, a note to Shuvra and Barsali. Thanks, Barsali, for telling me about the tragedy. Thanks, Shuvra, for helping me find the way to his house. You guys disappointed me a bit, but at the end of the day you guys are still great friends of mine.
Signing Off,
-Jagannath (Jesse)
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