Lost people

This essay is a whisper of quiet despair. About the people I have lost. As I moved from country to country, from home to airport to hotel to new homes, I met new people and thought my circle grew.

- IT CAME TO MIND | MANISH NANDY

But I also lost many — people I cared for, some who, I believe, cared for me. I lost them irretrievably.

They are not forgotten or gone. I have just lost touch with them. People growing up in the internet age, with easy access to people worldwide, wouldn't know how hard it was a few years back to speak to someone overseas. How expensive even to write. People told me how lucky I was to travel so much overseas; I got to see new countries, new people. They seldom realized how much I missed the countries where I had been and the people I had known. I missed familiar faces and friendly voices.

I missed events I would have given my right arm to attend. My father had a bad surgery and passed away while I was on a trip; my mother, with whom I had passed a year when she was ninety, died shortly afterward while I was on another. [loved attending a daughter's graduation but missed my other daughter's in another land. But the hardest miss is that of people I have known and cared for and have eventually lost.

I was born in Nagpur and loved our next-door neighbor, the gentle professor Dr Pendse and his gentler wife, Kaki, who made me feel that their home was just an extension of mine. Their two sons, Nana and Keshab, felt like protective elder brothers who were ever ready to take me on a bike or play soccer.