Tayzwi

I remember being half-asleep in my room, pondering over my travel plans for the next weekend, wondering where it would all lead to, scared of who'd come out of this in what state, whether he would come out of it at all?

I can hear Ma calling out my name telling me that I have a phone call. I groggily wake up and walk over to the phone, and an unfamiliar voice tells me - "It's me." I answer back - "What happened?" He says - "It's all over. You take care of the Bangalore end; I will handle things here." I hang up the phone in simple acceptance of what was most likely to happen, what I had feared the most.

I now understand what it means when they say "It still hasn't sunk in." It hasn't sunk in. I climb down the stairs and start calling my next most trusted friends. Some of them are up, some of them are out, some of them tell me that they are coming over. Ma has come downstairs by now, and I know that Pa is sleeping, as usual, without a care in the world. Ma and I just stare at each other and for the first time in my life, I see it in her eyes, I feel it deep inside; it hits me that my life is my own. The umbilical cord has now been severed.

I started becoming me the day he left.

I miss him.

Labels: friends, life