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| Chai/Image Credit: UTE |
And one day, he disappears.
Just like that. No grand exit, no foreshadowing, no poetic last words. One moment, he is there—singing, laughing, telling stories of the railways, drinking chai, and talking about life as if it would never end. And then, he is gone. The void he leaves is not just absence; it is a rupture in the fabric of your reality.
You are stunned. You are furious. You are helpless. You have no script for this.
Because death is the one truth you have always treated like fiction. A distant event that happens to others, never to the ones who make life feel infinite.
Perhaps it is because we are raised on stories where the good live on. Villains perish, but heroes endure. Even when death finds a place in our narratives, it comes for those who deserve it. Rarely do our stories prepare us for the death of someone good, someone kind, someone who makes the world feel lighter. We are conditioned to believe that goodness stays, that warmth lingers, that joy does not vanish.
So when it happens—when that person, the one who made life bearable, is no longer there—something within you shuts down. It is not just grief; it is an incapacity to enjoy anything anymore. Because joy was never meant to exist without them.
He was not my father, but he felt like one. He called me Sunday Wala Beta because Sundays were ours—chai, conversations, stories about the railways where he had worked for forty years. My own father was a quiet man, never one for long talks, but this uncle, this Muh Bola father, filled that silence. His advice was simple yet sharp, the kind that seems casual when said but lingers long after:
"Money is not everything, but money is everything. You don’t have to succumb to its power, but you need enough to enjoy life. And ultimately, it is about enjoying life."
And then, one Sunday, I saw him for the last time.
He acted normal, just as he always did. We had chai, talked about his diabetes, about buying property. He spoke as if there were a thousand Sundays ahead of him. I left without a second thought. And a month later, his son called—not me first, but someone else, asking them to fetch me alongside. I was angry for a moment, but I understood. My parents are ill. He didn’t want to add to my burdens.
Tomorrow is his funeral.
I don’t know how I will feel. Nothing has hit me yet. Maybe it won’t, not tomorrow, not the next day. Maybe it will hit weeks from now, when I hear a train whistle and think of his stories. Maybe it will be when I drink chai and instinctively wait for a voice that will never speak again. Maybe it will come when someone jokingly calls me Sunday Wala Beta and it suddenly doesn’t feel funny.
If I had one more moment with him, I wouldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t ask for wisdom or closure. I would just sit with him, drink chai, and listen to his stories. Because in the end, that was enough.
And now, all that remains is silence.
But one day, I know—far from the noise of mourning, far from the weight of loss—I will sit with chai in my hands, hear the faint echo of a train in the distance, and remember.
And in that moment, he will still be there.