My dearest Preeti,

I wanted to write you a note while you’re still with us physically. You’re still here in body with us, but at 3pm today, you will be gone. You will be enveloped in flames and they will return you to earth, and the Thames will carry you home. You will be taken to the Thames on Friday.

Tomorrow, I will become a year older. For another year, you’re still a year older than me. And next year onward, I will keep getting older than you. You, forever, will remain 48.

Right now, I feel wounded by your absence. But I’m also grateful to you for all the love you have always given me. Thank you!

You are so beautiful and you will be beautiful and kind always. And wise.

Until 3pm today, I am still allowed to speak of you in present tense. So, yes, you are one of my best childhood gifts. Thank you for always looking out for me. I love you. I love you so much. Rest easy and rest peacefully always.  

And here are some stolen lillies for a May girl.

 

a letter to my sister, who is slipping away

My dearest Preeti,

I’ve spent the last seven days crying round the clock and wishing for your peaceful departure.

What kind of sister wishes for her sister to die? What does that make me? A monster. But it is true. For a week now, ever since I heard, I’ve been praying for you to slip away peacefully, quietly. It would be a reflection of your life in a way, you know?

 

I cry as I write this and crying seems to have become my coping mechanism to deal with your going away. I wanted to write to you while you’re still here so I can talk to you in my head, even if you are already slipping into a coma and can no longer read. So, here I am.

Maybe I will ask Pratish to read this to you while you sleep.

Yesterday, on the video call, I watched him pat your forehead, ask you if you want water, rub your legs. You lay there unaware of us. Or maybe you were listening. We will never know.

I put my lips to the image of you on my phone and kissed my phone several times, knowing it was my phone I was kissing and you were out there in the hospice, just waiting. I can never kiss or hold you again.

 

From across this great physical distance between us, I do not know what any of us can do to bring you comfort. But here we are, fighting among ourselves over what’s good for you and what isn’t. As if we know what you want. We talk about what should have been. As though that would change anything about your illness.

When you came home in 2023, I had told you to come back. I had said we would live our lives together as two old, single ladies and you had said you would, for a moment, and then said it was too late. You had built a world for yourself in London. You said London was home.

 

I wonder who is part of your London home. Who is in that world of yours, I will never know. All these years of sketchy conversations, I’ve wondered who your friends are. I can barely remember you talking about your friends. I remember your cats though. Five of them. Your babies.

It is only now that I know why you had to give them up. It wasn’t because you were moving. It was because cancer had started gnawing at you and you could no longer care for them. And yet, you loved them. Like you had loved Jimmy, all the way until it was time to put him down.

I know that pain, you know? Coz I had to put my Goose down too. Again, what kind of mothers put their babies down? I guess mothers who are left with no choice but to let go. Love is also letting go, my friend Priti says.

Ever since I found out you have been at the hospice, I’ve been playing scenes from our childhood in my head. I see you in your school uniform, mostly. Neatly ironed white shirt and the grey skirt wrapped around her thin waist. What a looker you have always been!

And your hair! You have the blackest, silkiest, shiniest hair I ever saw. It was your beauty! And then you came home to us in 2023 in a wig. Your head, like a mowed lawn. I asked what happened and you said you had been on radiation therapy for bone TB. You lied. You didn’t say it was cancer. You didn’t tell me you had undergone mastectomy when you opened your suitcase and showed me a bunch of 36D bras for me to take. They’re your size, I said, not mine.

How was I to know your bras no longer serve the same function for you? That they’re now a sign of something that has been lost.

You didn’t tell me you had been sick. I know now that you were trying to protect me from grief that was hurtling our way.

I know nothing about you, Preeti.

Poonamdi still tells me you have jaundice. How am I to make sense of anything?

Last night, after our call, I started hyperventilating. Seeing you lay there wan-looking , bleary-eyed, has been really hard. Every call, I see you grow more distant. And something has been breaking in me these days as I think of how you’re no longer going to be around. The sister who calls me baby, gypsy, darling, Pabhi. No one has such names for me in this world. No one.

With you, I’ve always felt unconditionally loved and understood, even if we didn’t talk so often. I don’t think anyone’s understood me like that, you know?

I sat up till 3am last night, reading our chats. Every time I asked you how you were doing, you said you had many challenges but you were coping well. And you always had nice things to say. You were proud of me.

I don’t know, this letter is incoherent too, like my emotions these days.

One moment, I’m crying, another moment, I’m thinking of the boys who crushed on you. I’m thinking of the poems you used to know by heart. Some of them, I still know from hearing you say them aloud.

The Yak by Hilaire Belloc.

The time you went to Pokhara, I was so envious and I hated you for not taking me with you. You were ten then and it was probably the only time you ever went to Pokhara. I wish now that I could share all my Pokhara lone trips with you-- over two dozen of them.

I’m thinking of the silly things you used to say. You’re the girl who first talked to me about masturbation. And yet, when we spoke in 2023, you said it was hard to believe life had passed you by without a lover. How is it, you asked me, that you had never had a lover? I still have no experience of sex, you said.

Preeti. 

 

I always thought you and I would grow old together. 

I saw you come and live here in KTM. I saw us grow old together. But those are images I was conjuring inside my head. I know you will never grow old now. You will always be 48. You turned 48 today. Happy Birthday, Preeti! I love you so much.

Yours,

Gypsy  

P.S. Had I been in London, I would have brought you some flowers. Here, I've stolen these online.
 

Pokharaing

 The best things in life, are things that are here. And now. I felt like I just had an epiphany, but maybe this is something I read somewhere? 

The calmness of the lake has been my friend for years and years now. I can't even remember how long it has been since I started coming to Pokhara just to sit by myself and work and read and write and walk and bike.

And once in a while, I've had company. Friends and family have joined me. And still let me do my thing because Pokhara is been my thing since forever.

And now I have found a friend, who lets me be me in Pokhara, gives me enough space so I can sleep, wake, eat, walk, read, all on my own. But also punctuates my moments with some lolling and goofiness and stories from across time and space. 

We first hung out together in Pokhara in March 2021 and since, Pokhara has taken on an added meaning in my life.

I'm giving my thanks to the universe today for all the wonderful things that get sent my way. We are always so taken care of, we don't even see it unless we pause to listen and rest.

And eat a slow meal in solitude. The luxury of doing that! :)

A desk of my own

There really is no competition to that moment when I start my computer and sit at my desk every day. I think it is the single, most happy moment of the day for me. It fills my heart with gratitude knowing I have the luxury of a desk and the time to sit at a desk. 

Maybe it needs to become the reason I wake up every morning!

It's Nepali naya barsha today and the new year's day is supposed to be an indicator of how the rest of the year will pan out. Today is going to be a busy working day for me. And I like it that way.

Except, I find that I am longing for some forest sounds and the smell of trees. If you happen to read this, I wish you those things and a storm to clear the polluted sky. 

Wishing you trees and wild flowers!

 

Bindu's curse

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the story Mamu told me about how Bindu Taama's curse might have killed a man.

When they were little girls, their home in Boudha had pigeons. Baajya had built a pigeon stand on the terrace and the birds lived in little house-like holes on that stand. The family fed the birds grains and talked to them. 

One time, a neighbour came over to ask if they could borrow two pigeons for a pooja. 

When they didn't bring back the pigeons for two days, someone from Mamu's family went over to enquire. And they were told they had sacrificed the pigeons during the ritual, because that was what it demanded. 

When they heard, the little girls-- Mamu and her sisters-- got very upset. They wept. And then Bindu Taama spat a curse. She said: Die! Sheema!

In the weeks that followed, they heard the man who had come to borrow the pigeons had hung himself.

Sometimes, I've done what my Taama did. Muttered a curse in anger and grief.

When my neighbours got together last week to cut down six trees in the hood, I went into a spiral of grief and I hoped the trees would become ghosts and haunt the men and women who had ordered the trees to be cut down. I hoped they would suffer from severe stomach pain and die mortifying deaths. 

The next time I ran into them, I was bowing my namastes to them-- muscle memory. And I wondered what had happened to the witch in me. 

and there's always Pokhara

 it is here that i heal. 

i hadn't realized it until this visit in the truest sense, but it is in Pokhara, i've always managed to heal. i've been better since i got here. something about the lake calms me. to be near it, to be aware of its presence, seems to aid healing. i've come here in the past to heal from heartbreaks, to run away from life situations, to just hide and work mostly, and this time, it's healed me physically. 

i feel very grateful for this trip i'm making with my nephew, et. al. 

i've slept better and my gut is in better form too. i hope to go home healed and reformed.

i've also written a letter to Mamu. Went to the post office yesterday to post it. that's a story for another day!
 

this too has to pass

 my head is so heavy. the medication i am on for my gut gives me strong headaches. am constantly in pain now. what might it be to not be in pain for a few days? for a few months? years? i wonder.

am just going to wait for this to pass. we must all wait.