A year without you two. In October you are gone. In November
we came to know about your departure. Many a tear was shed. So many words were
written. A few condolence meetings. Yet, I do not know, you Avijit Paul and
Moumita Das, how many of us remember you still. I was with a couple of friends
yesterday night, drinking beer in silence and listening to a few old Rajesh
Khanna songs in television. My New Year Eve was like that; without noises and
shouting. Happiness was not overflowing and the shake hands at the strike of
twelve at night were more obligatory and customary than out of pure intention.
While listening to the songs from Amar Prem, a Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila
Tagore starrer from late seventies, I was thinking about you two. I was
thinking about you two so intently that I woke up with this feeling that I
should write about you once again. But then people will call me a pessimist;
someone who writes about the dead and gone on a beautiful New Year morning. So
I postponed the idea of writing about you two, two innocent souls that were
destroyed for no reason. Still I could not overcome you. I travelled from one
city to another. And I am here tonight, sitting in a new place, in a new bed
with a couple of boys to attend my worldly need of hunger. But I am still
thinking about you. May be your parents and relatives and a few friends are
also thinking about you at this moment. But be reassured, you are remembered.
There is a particular reason for me to remember you two so
intently. I was one of those few people who had met in a place to do something
towards commemorating you two. There were a few enthusiastic friends who knew
you better. I had not even met you two when you were alive. But I thought it
was my duty to be there and do something towards commemorating your lives.
There were a few plans and they were really good. We wanted to declare an award
in your names. We thought of setting up a few scholarships and funds for
assisting young artists who needed support in fulfilling their education and
international residencies. We had even thought of having a fund raising show to
give some money to your families, not as compensation but as a gesture of togetherness.
We wanted to tell your parents that we were with them and we would remain with
them so long as we live. We wanted to tell them that we shared their pain.
Everything was going smooth and I found my friends very enthusiastic. I
suggested crowd funding for it. And I was sure that crowd funding would have
worked better than forming a corpus fund through the contributions of selected
donors. Everything was going smooth and I was hopeful. My friends looked
earnest in their approach. I even wrote a concept note for the show that would
earn some funds for your families. I did not want any piece of glory from it so
I even I decided not to mention my name anywhere in the activities. My friends who
are good at organising things promised me that they would do the needful.
Nothing happened. I kept on enquiring about it. One of them
who took the initiative to organize the meeting that I had attended later told
me that the friends who promised their help soon turned cold towards the whole
thing. I do not know what happened. Was my approach wrong? Was my approach too
patronising? I do not know. May be those who live, do not want to spend their
precious time on the cause of the dead. But I am in a way guilt ridden because
I thought that I was doing something towards commemorating your lives. But
nothing happened and I feel that it was my failure in getting things done than
those people promised their help. I think a lot about you people on the last
day of last year and the first day of the New Year because I feel that I have
further done something wrong to you by trying to initiate something which turned
out to be a non-starter. I want to tell you sorry. I am sorry for doing that.
And I do not know what my fellow travellers who came around to do something to
commemorate you think about it now. But I cannot exorcise you two out of my
mind. I think you will live along with me so long as I live because I
understand the possibility of death in the mind of someone living.
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