Dear Diary,
Today, Hari Krishnan passed away. He was my batchmate in college. Although in another class.
I don’t think we talked much. Maybe a customary hi-bye smile while crossing each other in the corridor. I don’t think he knew my name. I wouldn’t have known his name too if my classmates hadn’t mentioned his death.
They said, lung cancer. I wondered how long it must have been eating him away. It hasn't been so long since we graduated. Was it there, even when we were all busy with our final exams? Or was something brutal and sudden..Did it hurt him? What would it have been like for him to realise that he was going to leave this place soon..
Its one thing to have a sense of mortality,…but its an entirely different game, to definitively know that it’s going to happen in x number of days. I can’t stop thinking about him. Memories I didn’t know existed are flooding into my mind from all corners. Suddenly I’m remembering asking him on the way to the library, where did ms. x go? Or that time when he came to visit his friend in our class and he was blocking my way out,.. I smiled and said, onnu maruo…Or that very short convo about the college fest.
We certainly didn’t have much to do with each other’s lives. But I have observed his presence.
He was a very bubbly easy-going person, not the kind eager to get into a fight,..always trying to get along with his friends. I think he had a girlfriend who was oscillating between him and another guy. That was kind of a running joke amongst us. I haven’t seem him pick a scene with her ever,..usually guys get very combative when they hear crazy rumors about their girlfriends…he wasn’t like that.
He wasn’t a hyper progressive urban dude or metrosexual or hip or whatever you call them. He was a very small town boy who wanted to live a good life. Always smiing when you passed him by. Trying to make lame jokes and trying to get people to laugh.
It feels funny now that I think about it….how you can talk so much about a person without ever having even a 1 minute conversation with them….
I think I observe people a lot. It’s easier than having to talk. I have a problem with approaching people to have a conversation because I live in the perpetual fear of , ‘what if we run out of things to talk about?’ situation. Then it will be awkward silences and byes.I hate those things. I’m not that great with small talk. I sometimes write down things before I call people to avoid awkward pauses.
I don’t think we had any common interests or common personality traits. We also didn’t have to copy assignments from each other since we were in different classes. Usually, these are the reasons to make friends in college. We checked none of these boxes, so the opportunity never came.
But just because you have nothing to talk about, or have nothing in common, does that mean you should ignore their presence around you? I think you can find something interesting about even the most boring person if you observe them.
Even though i didn’t find anything particularly funny about his jokes, I loved that he could brighten up other people’s lives. He was one of those guys who pulled his friends out of a fight before one of them smashed the other’s head.
Some people walk around smiling as if the sun shone right from their face, like Hari. I always feel something positive when I pass by such people. There’s always something about innocent smiles that lights up an ‘i can do it’ spark in me. Even though I have nothing to do with them, I like having them around, because it somehow makes me retain my faith in humanity.
In spite of all this, he got taken away from us. Many of us will go on to see kids and grandkids, but not him.
Why him? Why did it have to be him?
I think it goes back to that saying, ‘if you could pick one flower out of a garden which one would you pick?’ The most beautiful one offcourse.
He could’ve been so many things, but he didn’t get the chance to be.
I don’t have much more to say about him. I thought about him now, only when I got to know about his death. But for some reason, I feel like I owe him something.
To the semi-stranger across the hall, in the other class, I owe you a promise. I know, you probably dont remember me, my face, my name, my existence in any way…that’s fine. I’m sorry if you think I’m writing a romanticised post capitalising your death…
God took you, a beautiful mortal away, when he had a choice to take any of us…
I think we owe you a promise to live a life responsibly, meaningfully, wearing a smile on our faces,..just like you would have. I’m going to keep that in mind.