sleep, dearie sleep

this morning marked a personal loss as well as a loss for my school community. we lost one of my favourite professors and it still hasn’t sunk in. i’m trying not to think of our first email thread or the time he appreciated the presentation my group made at the end of the semester, after we had been a bundle of nerves for days. i think it’s the little nods of acknowledgement, saying hello in the hallways, the books i think i’d take a lifetime to make my way through, the times i got a five-star chocolate for correctly answering a question in class. i don’t think i saved any of the wrappers, because i always thought i’d get another one. there’d always be another question to answer in class, another triumph. i got home today and looked for the tiny glint of the golden wraPper in the drawer. perhaps a tiny, tiny piece that had somehow managed to stay behind. nothing.

the last few months haven’t been easy by any means. i think i’ve brought it up time and time again but the deep sense of loss lingers. i’ve lost people i loved to bits- to age, to disease, to things i can’t quite put a finger on. it catches me in the middle of an iced coffee, at a table surrounded by my friends. it catches me in the middle of a sunny street when everyone seems to be going about with their day just fine. or when i’m humming along to my favourite song in the shower. i remember sharing this with sir at the end of the ninth semester, and thanking him for his patience and words of wisdom throughout. one of his presentations had a quote frOm sun tzu’s ‘the art of war’, which read ‘every battle is won before it is fought’. it stuck with me for a long time, to the point i had it up on the whiteboard in my room for a whole semester. i’d look at it on the bad days and the good ones, on the days the raindRops felt like sickles and on the days i found the cold side of my pillow.

last week, i made my way through the final season of the crown. the last episode beautifully explores ageing and the ultimate bagpipe march to death. i remember watching the end credits with a heavy heart. i don’t think there’s anything that prepares us for what lies beyond. are there traffic lights and ice cream shops and titan watches in the afterlife? are there consulting firms and brand managers? i don’t know. i remember wanTing to talk to sir about my love for the crown, and how i thought he’d enjoy the show too. i wish i would’ve had that conversation earlier. this is the closest it gets to a punch in the gut. a conversation you can’t have anymore.

i think i’m still swimming in the shallow pool of denial before it plunges down the cliff of acceptance. i should’ve asked more questions and prodded him on for more stories. more pictures from trips across the world. i should’ve written more handwrittEn notes.

a few weeks ago, i had the opportunity to make a speech on behalf of the graduating batch, on the final day of our fest. i don’t usually have butterflies before going up in front of a crowd- i’ve made more presentations than i could count on the fingers of all my friends over the last five years. however, something about being up on a stage with lights that were a tad too bright felt so strange. because the light was hitting me, all i could see was the first few rows- and sir was right there, in the first row. i remember looking at him each time i’d pause, just to see if he was listening. he was. he always has. i hid tiny references to his classes in my speech and i don’t know if he realised- but it meant the world to me to be up on a stage that was too bright, or maybe just the right amount of bright so that i could look right at my teachers. even though it was a room full of people, it felt a little like time had stopped and that i was talking to just them.

i’ll be graduating in a few months. i’m not sure how if we would’ve got a pep talk during our final class before the exams, or a pat on the back on our graduation day. or a chance to keep one book that we think would have a considerable role to play in shaping our caReers. i don’t know the answers to al those questions.

the auditorium we graduate in has a fixed seating capacity. we might not get to bring our parents or friends along- but that’s just how it is. what i do hope, however, is that sir and my dadu get the seats with the best view, no matter where they’re watching and cheering me on from.

i hope he rests in peace and says ‘aha!’ to himself each time one of his students cracks a case interview, bags a major project at work or even better- starts a library of their own someday.

i hope i touch lives in the ways he did over the course of mine. if i have students of my own someday, by some stroke of luck, i hope to have a cabin that feels like a warm hug and an unlimited supply of five stars for chocolate questions. i hope i let them borrow all the books they like, just like he did. and i hope i push them to excel and make the best presentations of their lives.

sleep, dearie sleep.

we’ll miss you more than the answer to the guesstimate on how many tennis balls could fit into a blackhole.

-dhruv