She didn’t know where to begin or where to end. In times like this, she missed him the most. It seemed so cruel of him to leave her the way he did.

She still remembered the last time she met him. It was one of those hot and humid monsoon days, sometime in August. He had been in town, though she didn’t know it. He had called a couple of times and she had deliberately ignored the calls. Then her phone screen flashed his Dighalipukhuri landline number which she had saved as “Nana Residence.” She answered promptly.

“Hey! You are in town?” she asked and without waiting for an answer, added, “You should have told me earlier!”

“Earlier?” he replied, laughing loudly.

There was a long pause.

“I’ve been here for the last three days. I’m leaving the day after”, he said.

She didn’t even have the courage to say “sorry.” She hemmed and hawed for a while feeling completely at a loss for words.

“I long for the coleslaw and the baked fish,” he finally broke the silence.

“It will be there tomorrow evening,” she replied as they hung up.

The next evening, he arrived with his cousin from his father’s side, someone she barely knew. Both men ate greedily, finishing the food in minutes. The meeting was brief. It must have lasted maybe an hour and a half. Before leaving, he hugged her tightly, kissed her cheek, and reminded her to answer the phone as he told her, “Do answer when the phone buzzes!”

It was the last time she ever saw him. He had worn a light blue, faded denim shirt and three-quarter pants. He had gained a little weight and she thought he looked good. Infact he always looked good, but now with that weight gain he looked more handsome.

She wished she had known it would be the final meeting. But life offered no such warnings.

The weeks that followed were difficult for her. He called her relentlessly at odd hours, speaking endlessly. Often, she could not understand half of what he said because he spoke whatever came to his mind without context, especially when he was in a drunken state of mind. It became overwhelming and she decided she would stop taking his calls.

One morning, she saw 127 missed calls from him. She was startled and sent him a sharp message, asking him not to call at odd hours. Then, she added all his numbers to her “call reject” list, something she regretted deeply much later.

Around the same time, she got herself a new phone number. Not to avoid him, but for practical reasons. It had more to do with the bill plan and the most efficient service provider. This was just a few years earlier before the Department of Telecom had rolled out the Mobile Number Portability. After the new number was activated, she shared the new number with friends, except him. Slowly, her phone became silent. She missed him, but over time, she got used to it.

She still feels sorry for doing that. Even today after a decade has passed.

And then one day, Gitashri, her maternal cousin called out of the blue. You know the kind of cousin you only see at social functions. You exchange hellos, but you’re not close enough to stay in touch regularly. So when she called, She was surprised. They spoke about everything… inflation, weather, weight gain, health and the ruling Government. So basically they were wasting time and in her head, she kept thinking, “Come on now Giti (Gitashri’s pet name), will you please come to the point…”

And then as if Gitashri read her mind, she finally said, “Nana is in rehab in Kolkata. Do you know about that?”

There was a long pause.

“No. I didn’t know,” she said.

“The last time I met him was a year and two months ago. I haven’t spoken to him after that.”

Gitashri continued, “He will be out of rehab in three months, in January.”

“I hope he doesn’t go back to alcohol once he’s back,” she replied and the ended the call.

She remembered him as the world stepped into another new year. She kept thinking, “He must be out of rehab now. I hope he takes care of himself.”

There were times when she desperately wanted to call him and if not call, then at least a message to share her new number.

But she didn’t.

Days passed. Her life was going through major changes and she was occupied. Staying alone in a city with a six-year-old daughter comes with a lot of responsibilities. And she was investing all her time in managing her job, her house and her child.

Once in a while she remembered him. But she decided she would call him on his birthday and surprise him. His birthday is a date no one forgets easily. Its 25th December. So she waited. She had made up her mind. She would call you on 25th December and wish him a Merry Christmas and a happy birthday.

Like everyone she wished life was as simple as we plan.

It was a wintery morning of 21st November 2014. She had just reached home after dropping her daughter at school. There was a call from one of her aunts…someone she rarely spoke to. They spoke about random things, on that November morning like the way she had spoken with her cousin, and then her aunt asked,

“Did you get the news?”

“What news?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not sure… but Nana passed away last night.”

Her world stood still.

There was nothing to say.

Without saying another word they hung up.

Immediately she called his best friend Peter Nongrum from his St. Edmund’s days in Shillong and he was as shocked as she was.

But yes. It was true.

Nana was no more.

She took the Inter City train the next evening to Jorhat with the aunt who broke the news first and a family friend, the writer uncle. Her daughter was too young to understand death. It took a lot of effort to tell her she wouldn’t see her Nana Mama again.

When they reached Jorhat, they checked in at the Assam Agricultural University Guest House on purpose, not meaning to be a added luggage in a family that was mourning.

As they reached the palatial Assam type bungalow at the Club road, she realized, his body was still kept in the morgue. Everyone was waiting for your younger sister to arrive during the later part of the afternoon from London.

She arrived around two in the afternoon, and by then, there was a lot of movement. People were arranging your sangi, Zulu uncle had already left for the morgue and I was getting uneasy. She didn’t want to see him like that… being driven in an ambulance straight out from the morgue.

She told to herself, “You were a handsome man and shall always be. I always said you looked like Sly Stallone. That is the only memory I wanted to carry.

That same evening, they took the Inter City train back to Guwahati. Before heading to the railway station she went to see his younger sister and jethpeha for one last time. As she hugged her, she broke down for the first time.

It’s been close to eleven years now, but she still can’t accept that he is gone.

“Nana… your phone numbers are still on my call reject list. What’s the point of removing them now? I will never hear your voice again. I will never have the brother I loved so much. I will miss the way you pampered me. I remember how much cajoling and emotional blackmailing I had to do to get you to part with your Ralph Lauren golf shades. You said they were limited edition and had cost 500 dollars. But you still gave them to me — and I still remember saying, “Aah! These shades! You could have given me one of your T-shirts instead!”, she still muses.

She wanted to learn golf from him.

She wanted him to live long enough to see her grandchildren.

She wanted him to see her grow older and fatter.

And now she know, if you really want to speak to someone, don’t hesitate or wait for the right moment. It may never come.

25th December will never be the same again.

Nana, she hopes he is in a better and more peaceful world now. He will always be missed.

Footnote: This essay was originally published on the author’s personal blog in 2015, three months after his death in November 2014. He was her first cousin, but in a tightly-knit family like theirs, they were all brothers and sisters, not just cousins.

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