To our eternal star

14th June 2020,
Lazing through my online class I receive a message on a group chat. I dismiss it as fake news. I check Instagram only to see tens of forwards of the same. With rising apprehension, I dismiss it again. And then, it’s everywhere.

Shock. Confusion. Disbelief. Grief. Numbness.

Fast forward to 4 months later. Has anything changed?
Yes, everything BUT the emotional conflict around your tragic passing.

Denial. Grief. Anger. Helplessness. Questions.

Four months, a hundred emotions, a thousand tears and a million memories.
Waking up to the same gut wrenching feeling. Opening the curtains to piercing rays of void and repeatedly questioning my sanity as to how is it possible to miss someone so deeply when you’ve actually never even met them.

From reading your insightful posts and profound musings to reminiscing about your life by watching all your interviews on repeat to tuning into the news channels every evening and being a helpless spectator to your name being dragged into a filthy political debate.
What has life come to?

A few video clips that now feel like a haunting reminder of the happier times are played on screen, and suddenly I am reminded of the charm and positivity that your persona always exuded and I am urged to do the same and find the silver lining amidst these clouds of grey.

In all the mayhem, the bittersweet reality is that even in your passing you brought strangers from across the world together and that is beyond beautiful.

From collectively raising our voices for the truth to laughing at your hilarious gimmicks, to standing united against unfairness , to gushing over your pictures, to introspecting into our lives, to aspiring to become a verb like you, to wishful thinking that you may magically come back, to crying over your absence together, you have carved a beautiful orchard from us all. An orchard of resonating feelings, thoughts and relatibility.

Guess some people are larger than life indeed. You left behind pieces of your life in each one of us forming auras of an invisible connect between you and all of us.

Breezy evenings, moonlit skies, starry nights and a fleeting life, now seem like fractals of your eternal imprints around us.

Until we meet again amidst the Chaos of these Cosmos. Soon, our Moon Child.
Until then, all we have is hope and a lifetime of a legacy that you left behind.
Looking up and Thinking of you, always, Sush.