One of my friends died and this is all I can think…

One of my friends passed away some days back in an accident and it feels weird.

For context, it feels exactly like how you felt after reading ‘Looking for Alaska’ or after reading the 2nd last chapter of ‘Norwegian Wood’.

Even though he wasn’t my close friend, I knew him quite well. It’s more of “he’s my bestfriend’s bestfriend” kind of relationship.

“He had an accident and is in coma right now”, my best friend said on the phone.

I was in Bangalore, walking my dog who is sniffing to find the perfect place to poop when I got his phone call.

“Mazaak mat kar yaar”, I said.

But it isn’t something to joke about, I thought. Why would anyone in their right mind joke about something so serious, right?

“Pagal hain kya?”, he said. “Why the hell would I joke about this?”

I was shocked. So shocked that I couldn’t move. Looking at my dog who has found his place and is now pooping with his back toward me, I thought about zillion things. The irony is I don’t even remember one out of it.

“Magar kaise?”, “Tu kaha hain?”, “Should I come?” — there were tons of other things I should’ve asked or said but all managed to speak was, “Chal theek hain, update dena mujhe.”

“UPDATE DENA MUJHE” — FUCKING CORPORATE SLUT IS WHAT I AM EXACTLY!!!

A few days later, he passed away.

My friends who were drinking out of sadness 2500 km away from me called me up to talk about him and this fragile thing called ‘Life’.

“Uske accident se pehle maine uske saath baith ke daaru pee thi yaar. Usko raspberry juice chahiye tha lekin kahi mila nahi. To maine kaha aaj Sprite ke saath pee le, agli baar pakka main Raspberry juice leke aaunga. AGLI BAAR duh…”, one of them said.

“Kuch weird tha yaar. Wo ladka jo hamesha end me plans ditch karta tha, wo marne se pehle har ek planned trip me aaya. Mere birthday par wo raat ko 11 baje akele Mukteshwar aaya tha. Kuch tha yaar. Sab likha hota hain”, said another one.

It was obvious that they were extremely sad. Maybe a shoulder is all that they need to put their heads on and cry their eyes out. I wish I could be there as their shoulder.

Because tbh, I wasn’t sad. I was just shattered and torn from inside.

His death made me question life. MY LIFE specifically.

But more than anything, it was the tiny, minute things that worried me the most.

Things like how he used to click a lot of pictures of everything as a souvenir and now, all those pictures are nothing but some additional storage on Google Cloud.

Or like how tormenting it must be for his Maa to see his phone ringing up now and then, whenever someone who doesn’t know that he’s dead, sends him a snap, or a meme on Instagram or calls him up for credit cards.

See, it’s not like I’m making fun of his death. My mind works this way.

Exactly like how when Richard fell to the floor crying thinking he was falling to the floor crying but there’s an element of ridiculous to it — he knew it would happen and even worse, while he was on the floor crying, he looks at the place where the wall meets the floor and he realizes he didn’t paint it very well.