Thank You

It's been a whole month today. One month, without you. It's been a shitty fucking month.

This month, I found out that you are a whole lot more sentimental then you let on. You had cards and letters from when we were 18. I threw mine away eons ago. I hate clutter. I also expected you to last as long as me, so I didn't see the point in holding on to them. I found the True Love perfume box last night and smiled about it.

I started reading some of the letters I wrote to you, but honestly got bored. Thank-you for reading through that crap. No one really thanks friends, for the times we bore them to tears. Yet they still stick around. Thank-you for reading that meaningless drivel and still sticking on in my life.

There are other things I want to thank you about, like the way in which you trusted me. We had this strange conversation once, where I told you about this friend of mine, who didn't trust me around her partner. I remember you calling that girl, "a true idiot". For moments like that, small little thing that mean so much, I thank you.

I want to thank-you for all the times you listened to my dad's insane rambling about religion. And for never bringing it up again. Never embarrassing me about it.

I thank you for being in my life. For knowing when to give me a ear, and when to tell me to get a grip. If you were around now, would you ask me to get a grip?

The last words you said to me were, I love you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for upgrading me to best friend status, in 8th grade, in a True Confessions book.

If I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know, knowing how much pain  you would end up causing me, I'd still pick you. I hope you'd pick me too.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, Debooh. Lisa and I are skipping celebrating this Valentine's day, because it kills me to know that you had so few with Rakesh. And so few in general.

Also I can't remember us celebrating Valentine's day together. Did we have any weird tradition of exchanging chocolates or gifts in school? Can't remember.

Debs, I have been meaning to send Rono a message about how much I hate that he gave you pain. You had such few years on earth, and he made some of them painful for you. I will never forgive him. Despite Arpita and Arun warning me not to send him this message, I did today. Somehow that today is Valentine's Day made this appropriate.

I think you would have been ok with it. You always liked how firmly I hated Rono. I think it made you feel like you were important to me and that you had my complete loyalty, which you do. There should be vows for friendship. Formal vows that recognize how important we are to each other.

Anyhow, this is what I said "you can never be sorry enough. she had very few years on this earth and you made a lot of them painful. if there was a god, this would have happened to you and not to debooh."


Also Rono, wrote back to me to say "u r a slut and you know that. die!" making it really worth my telling him. 

Debjani Mukherjee Nov 19th 1978-Feb 2nd 2011 : Something Like a Eulogy

I write this not because people need to know how awesome Debooh was, but because i need to start grieving. When i was younger, i always said that long term sickness gave loved ones time to prepare and while it was terrible for the patient, it was better for the family. I realize now, that some things you can not prepare for. your best friend dying at 32, is one of them.

i have been in so much pain about her, for so long that i am not sure that i fully understand that i will never see her again. as i was writing this sentence i wrote "may never see her again". but one day i will wake up, and i'll have this thing that i need to tell debooh about, and that day, i'll finally get it.

we were good to each other. we were always there for each other. we can't be faulted for not being the best we could to each other, because we were, and we deserved more time together. we were supposed to enjoy this part together, the part in which we are both stable and have stable, boring lives. its not fair, that we don't get to enjoy this part together.

one of the earliest memories i have about debooh, is when we called each other frantically during our study break for the ICSE exam, and we both said "you will not believe what i did today"...turns out we were both drinking rum and coke instead of studying for our ICSE.

Our friends (mostly our male friends) would get annoyed because Debooh and I could talk without speaking and we had perfected the look we gave each other, when we thought someone was being an idiot or lying or generally being annoying. we used to say, for men may come and men may go, but we go on forever. i was cheated of that forever.

We also didn't keep secrets. Our running joke was that "oh xyz told me this and no one is supposed to know"...we couldn't believe people would tell us things and expect us not to tell the other one. In our opinion that was pretty dumb, and frankly, if you were that dumb, you got what you deserved.

when she was diagnosed with cancer, i would walk into parties, and look at other people and wonder why debooh, why not these other people? some of these people were friends of mine, but i would rather it be them. love is selfish and i am not apologizing. sometimes i would mull over, if given a choice, how many people would i give cancer to, if it were just taken away from debooh. hundreds, thousands, millions. easily. no regrets.

when she stopped communicating with me, i started writing her emails, that i would't send but saved as drafts.

• i love you and miss you so much.i hate that you're struggling and in pain. i hope i dont smother you
• miss you...i want you to have your health back. i want to just hang out with you. i want to grab the first flight to bombay to be around you, but i dont want you to think i am panicking. So i wont. I'll stay here till you get better and we can just be again. there is not a moment that i dont have you on my mind. i hate going on with my life as per usual as you deal with all this pain and shit, but i dont even know what else to do. its such helplessness watching your loved ones suffer.
• i regret not being there with you. any part of last year. i know you said, you cant handle it, but i am going to spend new years eve with you.

there are a lot more of these and of emails i sent her long after she stopped replying to emails.

Her parting words to me were "i know a lot has been left unsaid"...i never got to tell her that I would never replace her, that her place in my life would always be just hers. That now there will always be things I can't tell anyone, because the one person i would have said it to isn't around. That I will always have to use words to communicate, because with everyone else, I need words. These are the things that got left unsaid. I also didn't tell her I was mad at her, for cutting me out of the last year. I understand it, but i was still mad. And now she's gone and i feel petty being mad.

i loved her. I am not sure, how to face a prospect of a full life without her. I hope she knew this, i hope she knew that i was scared of losing her. Really, really scared. Really angry, that it was her and not someone else. Really bitter, that it was my best friend. I hope she knew all this about me.

I gave her a card once, it said "your good friends deny rumors about you, your best friend knows the rumors are true, but loves you anyway". she wouldn't have cared that i wished cancer on others, she would have known it's true, she would have loved me anyway.