| About 2xus | My Articles | My Blog | My Business | My Pictures | My Portals |

Soul Mates

I don't have a brother, but if I did, it couldn't have have been anyone else but him.

He came into my life one fine day in 1974 when we met on the Brindavan Express headed for Chennai. Both of us were going there to attend an interview. Both of us were selected - he for the prestigious Management trainee position and I for the Executive Trainee position. He accepted and moved to Delhi. I didn't and found work in Kolkata, working for a British multinational company. However, we both kept in regular touch.

One day he sent me a letter to state that he had resigned from the Delhi company as he had secured a good job in Bihar with a paper mill. He would be going via Kolkata. Could he stay with me for a few days?

I was only too delighted to have him stay with me and we became close friends in those few days. When he left to Bihar, I saw him off at Howrah station and warmly insisted that he come and spend the weekends with us at Kolkata. He agreed and I was very happy to see him come as often as he could.

He adopted my favorite music as his own and also took over my Jawa bike, which no one else was allowed to touch.

We went to movies and pubs and had fun whenever he visited.

When I got married, he declared my wife to be his sister and the twosome became a happy three-some.

When my wife was pregnant, and got the sudden urge at 10 pm one night to have tomato soup, he rushed off in the rain in search of a taxi. We were able to satisfy her urge for a tomato soup, on that occasion, and, for the various other dishes that pregnant women seem to demand, on other occasions.

When he got married, we were at his marriage. I had demanded that I be accorded the exalted status of  official photographer. My request was granted.

In those days (I am talking of the 1970s), color film was in short supply and so I stocked up on my Kodak 400 ASA film and pictured and shot roll after roll of his marriage.

He honeymooned at Chennai at my insistence, since I was now posted there. A good friend of mine, lent me his Yezdi for a few days and the four of us went hither and thither on our motorbikes.

Years passed. I had two children - a daughter and a son. He too became the doting father of two daughters.

One day he told me that he had secured got a good job in Kuwait and that he would be leaving for there. I felt really happy for him.

Then the time came for me to get a job in Dubai and I spent six happy years there. However, though we kept in touch by email and, occasionally by phone, we could never visit each other due to the draconian visa rules of Kuwait. For some unknown reason, he never came to Dubai.

During my stay in Dubai I started an online Dubai Discussion Group and he promptly applied for membership. I thought he would be an active participant but I found that he had a preference to lurk. Staying in the shadows, watching but hardly participating. The same held true for the various Yahoo Groups that I began, including the Bangalore Quiz Group which I started in September 2004.

His visits to Bangalore became fewer and fewer and the time that we could spend together became less and less largely due to the demands of his wife.

One day he emailed me to say that he had arranged for a quiz in Kuwait and could I do it? "Yes!" was my enthusiastic reply.

The quiz was being organized under the aegis of the Kuwait Kannada Koota.

"I have discussed with them regarding the amount they should pay you" he wrote to me. "Would Rs. 20,000 be OK"?

"Yes, that will be fine" I replied.

Soon I was winging my way on a Kuwait Airways flight to Kuwait. When I landed at the airport, I looked around for him but he was nowhere to be found. I waited for an hour and looked everywhere for him and suddenly spotted him standing and talking for a friend. He apparently had missed me as I came out of immigration area. I didn't realize it them but looking back, it was a foreboding of the vast gulf that was to come between us.

When he took me to his lovely home, I soon realized that relations between him and his wife were strained. His marriage appeared to be on the rocks.

When I asked him about it, he laughed it away. When I persisted he told me that he had a lot to talk to me but this was not the time. "We will sit down one day, just the two of us, and I will tell you all my troubles" he told me. I just nodded.

I later learned that he had paid the Rs. 20,000 from his own pocket to mw to conduct the quiz but had pretended that it came from the organizers.

I returned to Bangalore and resumed my daily routine.

In January 2008, I developed a kind of sixth sense that told me that he was having a harrowing time mentally.

"I am worried about your mental health" I emailed him. "Please confide in me and let me help you." There was no reply.

In February 2008 he visited Bangalore and came home. "Why did you ignore the email about your mental health?" I demanded. He just laughed it away and then, sotto voce, again told me that he would come back in a few days and spend a few hours with me and discuss his problems.

He never did.

He had to suddenly cut short his visit and return to Kuwait.

By now, my wife had got a job with a well known international residential school in the outskirts of Bangalore. Since all the teachers and admin staff had to reside there full time, she relocated there. I invariably  visited her on the weekends.

One weekend, at her school campus, I was startled to hear the high pitched whining of a pup. It appeared to be in considerable pain and kept calling out every fifteen to twenty seconds. I had never experienced such a situation ever in the school and found the loud noise that it created very disturbing. This  went on all night and continued well into the morning. I was unable to sleep and kept tossing and turning all night.

I was getting more and more agitated by the sound and by around ten in the morning could stand it no longer. I decided to go and investigate.

The sound seemed to be coming from the block of flats behind ours and so I went there. I saw a Nepali security guard sitting nonchalantly in spite of the racket.

"Why are you ignoring the noise of that animal?" I asked him. "Do something about it! It is very irritating!"

"I have tried everything Sir" he replied. "I have tried to give it water all night but the animal seems to be in great pain and is not responding."

"Where is it. Show me!" I commanded.

He took me around to the side of the building and pointed to the small pup that was the source of the noise.

It was lying on its stomach, crying pitifully. It was bleeding from the mouth. Why, I just couldn't fathom.

The moment it saw me it stopped crying out. As I stared into its eyes, time seemed to stand still. I developed what can be best be termed as a "tunnel vision". All I could see was the pup and nothing else. I looked deeply into its eyes and seemed be to be seeing strange emotions there which I couldn't understand.

I felt a terrible longing to lift the pup and hold it against me tightly, warmly, but I resisted.

I stood there for what appeared to me to be an eternity. In reality, it must have been a few minutes. I then came to me senses and found that the security guard was no longer next to me. He had gone back to his post. I looked at my watch. It was 10.18 am. Forty five minutes seemed to have passed in a flash!

I turned and walked back to my wife's flat. The pup remained mercifully silent.

I returned to Bangalore that night and reached home at around 11 pm.

At 11.30 pm got a call from my wife. "I just got a call from your Kuwait friend's sister-in-law, who is my close friend. It appears that he had a massive heart attack and died this morning at 10.18am Indian time." she said.

10.18 was the exact that that the pup and I broke eye contact. My brother had left, leaving me all alone.

I'd like to think that I was with him at the time of his death.

By Prakash Subbarao

To the  Article Index!

All articles © Prakash Subbarao. All rights reserved.