just a snippet

I have spent a lot more time with Pinky the past two weeks. She would always tell me to come into her room and it always felt awkward for me. I didn’t want to be rude, so I would go in and make an excuse after a while to leave. It’s terrible, I know, but things have changed since. The night the power went out, Pinky came into my room and while we practiced her English, I had her sing me some old songs when I found her hobbies include singing and dancing. ‘So she sang for me and made me sing…and then I asked her to show me how to dance—and she starts singing ‘I am a disco dancer’ and dancing around to it Indian-style. I was laughing and smiling and absolutely loving it. We went into her room and she made dinner, roti, malai, chai. And we talked about her home and mine as she cooked, she shared about what she does, about her family, about how she wished she could go home the next day (but the storms that had come through meant landslides would come). And I found that as I shared a little, it would stir something in her and she would talk more. She showed me her pohoto album and her best friend and her at her friend’s wedding, and then said that she had died of brain cancer. This beautiful friend of hers who had a little baby, her very best friend, who is now gone, ripped from Pinky’s life.’ I sat and looked deep into the eyes of these two women at the wedding of she who no longer lived, and finally saw deeper into Pinky. I think that is when my heart changed towards her and I no longer felt like an imposition or awkward sitting alone with her. She called me into her room a few nights later and wanted me to sit there with her, because she knew that being with me would ‘make her heart happy’ when she was depressed. She entrusted her struggles with her impending marriage (and desire to cancel it) to me, telling me to keep them a secret and calling me her best friend. To be honest, I do not at all feel worthy of these words. I do not include them to make myself look better, but to simply show the transformation in a relationship in my life. When I told her on Sunday that I was moving this week, it became real and I had a hard time talking about it. The feeling was mutual and I saw it in her face, and in her hug as we said goodbye yesterday when she suddenly was called home. I will see her again when I come visit in late October, but it does not change the fact that I will not be seeing my dear friend for a long time.

‘Every person, after I know them a while, opens up about their lives—and each has had a tragedy of their own that they carry deep inside of them. For Prerana, it is her grandfather’s death. For Pinky, it is her best friend’s brain cancer. For Anthony, it is his family’s estrangement from their relatives. And it breaks my heart that each has had their own tragedy, that each carries such a deep burden in their heart. But this is not unique to India, although the events may be more ‘tragic.’ As we grow older, each of us encounters tragedy in our lives—deaths of loved ones—family, friends, classmates—the loss of friendships, suicides, depression, hurt. I carry it too. But that in no way discounts their experiences, their hurts. We are bound by our shared suffering, connected in our pain. And as I slowly learn these stories, share their pain, I am mourning with those who mourn. I am learning their names, the names of those people in their lives most important to them who they no longer have. And I try to memorize the looks on their faces when they talk about them, the looks from when they were happy together in old photographs, when they were not wary of death on their doorstep.’

today, i moved away from khandi khal, my dear home of two months.