six years, two cousins, three emails, and a failed reunion: closing another unfinished conversation

Ed,

I guess you're keeping busy. Too busy perhaps, even for the old "Bryan Adams Cousins in Music"! Funny... how life can change since high school, isn't it? A bit heart-breaking too. But I guess there's nothing anyone can do. Times change... people change... life goes on.

In your first surprise email, in six years, you had expressed a desire to catch up, and an interest as to when I leave. I was surprised, pleasantly of course, to hear from my old 'cousin'. I was even excited at the prospect of a probable reunion. The only one I would have agreed to since 2006. I have been waiting for your response to set up the appointment... for the last two months. I still am... against all hopes. Hoping against hope seems to be an incorrigible habit of mine. Nevertheless, I felt I should at least keep up my end of the bargain, and let you know of what's going on at my end. Why, if you ask... well, one thing I've learned during the last six years is that goodbyes always hurt. But a goodbye hurts the most when you don't get to say it. That teaching has only recently been reinforced, rather painfully. And I for one, will NOT do that to anyone again. Not even to those whom I utterly despise, and I despise very few people. Hence the next few paragraphs.

I will be leaving on the 22nd of December, 2011. I don't know if we will get a chance to meet again. But, I wanted to tell you that, in spite of our falling apart, you were one of the most amazing persons I've ever met. The two years we were friends... well... lets just say, they have given me a lifetime of memories. I always hoped we will continue like we used to be... 'cousins', if only 'in music'. It was actually heart- breaking when you left. Then I lost the love of my life, too. Well, that one was my mistake. I left her... she didn't leave me. But the directionality of a mistake, as I keep realizing, has very little to do with the damage they cause in terms of heart-breaks, and the price you pay, in terms of tears. I have kept awake many a nights, wondering what happened to our good old days, thinking about the night the three of us walked back from Mrs.Srivastav's house, down the road by that old lake... heaven's lake, as I have pitifully come to call it. I have searched and searched for a way to bring those days back... to relive those feelings all over, till I finally realized that some times you can't pick up the threads of a life gone by. It hasn't been easy, but I think I am coming to terms with it slowly. My years in Hyderabad taught me that sometimes, even as Life takes away a 'cousin', it also gives you a brother. But I will not pretend it has lessened the trauma at all. Losing her, and you going away were two of the most painful experiences of my life. But what could I have done differently? Where did we go wrong? I don't have any answers to that one, mate! It was great while it lasted... divine and blissful... That is my only consolation, if there can be any consolation at all. I guess time ran out.

As I look forward to my days in Auckland, I feel a strange sensation of pain, resignation, mixed with apprehension and excitement. What lies ahead? What kind of life will it be? There will be new people to meet, new experiences to go through... and a remembrance of what was, what is, and what could have been...

I have never been much for goodbyes. No. Not me. Perhaps it's a weakness. A folly, may be? What else can you call this incorrigible tendency to fight the inevitable? And is it not justified too... is it anything but utterly proper? All good things must end, they say. Then, by extension, perhaps, so much the more for all things 'great'. As Oscar Wilde would have put it, had he been alive and chanced upon my letters ;

"Oh! The tragedy of the youth... They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever."

So, goodbye then, my long lost friend, my estranged 'cousin'. I will hope, since I've long ago found myself incapable of praying, that you find life as you wanted it to be, that you make it big, and that wherever you go you might bring a fraction of the joy you brought to my life during those years of trials and tribulations, to whoever might have a need for them as I once did. I will always remember you fondly, and hope that the feeling is reciprocated. For in those memories, we, as 'we' used to be, will live on.


Best
Sam