Where you be, how you be, my brother

A week and a couple of more days slipped by unnoticed. There were the usual and regular tasks and very few odds to grapple with, so I was largely at peace with myself, within myself...

In the warm company of Deva, Hari and many others who used to pay frequent visits to our house, there was not a speck of hint that anything could have turned sour or gone wrong...

Then one day after the heaviest rainfall of the season, I were to show up at our local temple at Rajghat and received a piece of tiding that snapped the bouyant, good humor from my heart. A cousin brother enrolled with a Delhi University program ushered me into his cabin and broke a painful news: my younger brother in Arunachal Pradesh no longer lives in this world.

Much much tears, grievious heart and so many questions to God asking why, why, why...it takes a big time in this world to come to term with loss of a family member, relative, friends, well-wishers. I managed to come to term over time. As I started to regain composure, I tried to move outside the house out on to the streets, take a few bus rides, sometimes playing on the grounds under the sun...until fully recovery, sudden emotion and sobs would return sometimes in the middle of anything that I was doing that led me to pause in the kitchen, halt during jogging, walk out without a words as the favorite TV channel played, losing grip of the soap while soaping my body...
The time was 8 years ago. It was the monsoon season. The month was August.

Over time, all good or bad simply pales into history. Then, one needs to take a long mental walk down the memory lane to get to it again. You'd start to really recall it only if you consciously consider all the current family members and sense what is amiss. Once in year time, you'd get flowers and place it on the resting ground with a painful heart. This summer I was home and walked to the cremation ground of the brother we lost. With dhamma prayers in mind under a bright sunny sun, I thought of the beloved brother.

"I will live up to each day of my life with the special thought in my heart that I had a brother younger than me. I will welcome dawn of my life reminding myself that you lived. I wont't cry anylonger that you are not beside me. Instead, I will cherish the brother you were. On and on and on....inside the core of my heart you'll reside."

"Your deeds, actions and strengths have always pleased me. No matter if you were younger to me, you have long surpassed me with your honesty and sheer hard work. "

"In our past, years in and years out you'd look forward to meeting me every summer holidays, I promise as you leave me behind, my man will always remember your face, your voice, your virtues"

"Where you be, how you be, that's beyond a human brother thinking power. Sometimes I search for you hoping to see you again; among the cluster of twinkling stars high above, in the ring-well's water reflection, underwater of the spirited, gurgling streams; inside pages of novels I read, on petals of jasmine, in the streak of afternoon sunrays penetrating into my room..."

"A drop of tears or two, let them as a token of gratitude for your unconditional love, the company you gave me and I am sorry if I hurted you with the little mischiefs I played on you. Adieu, my brother"