I was sitting on my back porch this morning drinking tea, when I saw our neighbor, Vasu, walk over with Java tucked under his left arm. He was holding something bulky in his right hand.

“Payal ji, here is a binder I made of all the letters we have received for Sid. Please read it.” He had his hand held out as he was walking towards me. I smiled and quickly put my tea cup on the table and walked over to him to take the big binder into both my hands.

“The azaleas are blooming. I will put this guy next to them and come.” He pointed to the cat in his arms and turned around. As I sat down on the chair with the binder, I cracked it open to somewhere in the middle and turned the pages.

Last summer Sid, Vasu’s son, had been an intern at the human-computer interaction institute at Carnegie Mellon. Colin, his fellow intern there, had written,

Sid, my brother, this hole in my heart is my memorial to you.

 

After I met Sid at the hackathon in DC, we traveled around Europe for 35 days this past summer. I would like to call it our biggest free spirited travel around the earth. Well, our adventures were many, paddle boarding in Slovenia, hiking in Austria, art galleries in Amsterdam.

 

Sid was into everything, and he enjoyed diving deep. His passion was to cook. During the pandemic, his IG was filled with videos of his experiments around his kitchen. At a-hole-in-the-wall Chinese place once in New York, he had argued with the chef on the authentic recipe for Char siu baozi, a Chinese steamed buns dish made with barbequed pork.

 

At one point, Sid nearly got trapped in Romania. The border police took a look at his passport photo, and took him into a back room. They called us one by one and asked why we were trying to cross the border for and how we all knew each other. Yang and Nikol were of not much help because they were always ready to burst into laughter no matter the situation, so we told them before hand to shut up and not volunteer information. 15 minutes later, they let Sid join us and handed him the passport saying, “You were very fat.”

 

The first thing Sid did after landing back in ATL was to take a new picture and apply for a fresh passport.

I realized I was smiling as I finished reading. Vasu had been sitting next to me quietly all along. He looked at the page I was on and said, “Right after the trip he had told me, ‘There’s so much to do nanna, we must understand the dire poverty of people in Amsterdam and Romania.’“

The two of us sat in silence for a few minutes.

At his funeral last September, I had seen 21-year-old Sid lying with his eyes closed in an open casket. They had put a bright light green sherwani on him. Lakshmi, his mother, was standing next to him and staring at him. There were 500 of us that day in that crowded funeral home, but with his golden blonde hair and bright outfit, Sid stood out. 

As I ran out of tea, I managed to interrupt the silence between us, “Kritika did a brave job of lighting the candle last night. It was a beautiful ceremony, Vasu.”

We had just been together at Georgia Tech the night before. Sid’s sister, Kritika, had lit the lamp in Sid’s honor in the event that GT holds every spring to honor its community members who have passed the previous year. 

“The dean of the Computational Media department talked to me yesterday. We’re planning to create a scholarship for intelligence and interaction design in Sid’s name. We’re pledging $5000 for any prize money they want to announce.” Vasu sounded tender and excited at the same time. 

As he spoke, I turned the binder over to its first page. It was a handwritten note from Sid to his family. They had found this note after they broke into his apartment bedroom, after they all simultaneously received a text from him on a Wednesday morning at 8. “Please visit me today. Sorry.”

He had tied his belt around his neck in his apartment closet. Out on a small table, they found Java sitting on his blanket inside a cardboard box.

“Amma, if I’ve to tell you the truth, my heart is broken for you. For me and for all of us too actually. Isn’t this all so meta amma, that I am the hero of my story, and the antagonist is my own mind? 

 

Today, I made myself some black bean avocado tacos. They turned out so good, especially with Cotija cheese on top. In the box where you will find Java, I’ve left all my recipes. Please make the apple bread you love so much whenever you think of me. 

 

Amma, please forgive me for all the times I destroyed the kitchen with my experiments. Those times you would walk into the kitchen while on a call and both mouthing yells at me and laughing uncontrollably at the mess, are my favorite memories. We were truly united in our shared despair in those moments ha ha”

The last time I saw Sid was at Nidhi’s Diwali party.

“Are you partying hard Sid?” Sid stared at me and looked around to see if anyone heard me asking him that. Noticing everyone else was busy on their phones or chatting with their own groups, he said. “Kind of aunty. You still helping out crazy kids aunty?” he chuckled as he squeezed his phone with his right hand, while adjusting himself in the sofa he was sitting on.

He seemed to have a Pina colada drink in his hands. There were other kids in the room, most of them I had watched grow up into successful young adults.

“Take care Sid,” I said as I patted him on his shoulder. I saw Nidhi’s 84-year-old mom, whom I know from the Swaminarayan temple, moving towards me slowly as if to hug me. I did not get a chance to speak to Sid again.

Vasu continued talking to me, “He has more than 10,000 commits on Github. All his Java scripts have some names of food, one of his most downloaded is called, A dash of thyme.“

I don’t usually understand what technologists say, but I had learnt that Sid’s rescue cat was named for his love for the computer language Java.

As we continued to chat, we saw Kritika walk out to our common property line and look for Java. It was the same place, where 3 years ago, Sid had asked my permission to take prom pics with his friends across our property lines and I had happily obliged.

Vasu, stood up eagerly to help find him, but Kritika looked back at us and smiled wearily. Vasu, sat back in his chair and looked at me.

Whatever Kritika was going through, she was being a great support to her parents. At the funeral, she did the impossible task of addressing us.

“Hi, I am Kritika, I am Sid’s older sister. Thank you for being here. Sid has lost his battle with bipolar depression.

 

Since he has been gone, I have thought of how our lives would have been and how we would grow old together.

 

I just had relied on him so much, I didn’t realize until he was gone. As the older sister, I was only dispensing my wisdom on him, but when I look back at my messages to him, he was the one who was there for me when I was struggling in school. He was the one who taught me thrifting. He was the one who taught me how to tolerate our parents.

 

He thought of travel and cooking as an amazing way to become a worldly person and to learn how to put yourself in others shoes. Siddu, I will miss you raa.

 

I’m asking all of you to please create a space that’s judgement free in your house. The world is a cruel and competitive place. Let your child be themselves under your guidance. Give them help and encourage them to ask for it.”

“How’s Lakshmi?” I asked.

“She couldn’t sleep, so I gave her Restyl at 3am. She’s still sleeping.” He said.

As a psychiatrist, I see this pattern over and over again, parents refuse prescriptions for their kids depression and anxiety, but trust over-the-counter sleep aids they bring back from their vacations to India.

Over the years, I’ve seen Lakshmi’s confidence go on an upward trajectory. She was a timid new bride who had moved in next door almost 25 years ago. “How will we afford college Payal ji,” she would say whenever she would come over for chai.

In later years, she would be talking about how she has not had to spend a dime on their education, even as Kritika was pursuing her pediatrician degree at Johns Hopkins.

The second page in the binder, was a special note to his older sister from Sid.

“Kritika, thank you for telling me that its Ok to not be Ok. Yeah, even food and travel was not able to rescue Bourdain after all. Prisoners don’t know their last night. For me, I knew it.

 

You always thought I could be a moss pole. I don’t know how much I encouraged others to grow around me, but I tried. I’m mostly sad that I truly couldn’t tell you how crazy my mind is going. Even though you’re 24, you are still under dad’s insurance, so you’re not the adult you think you are.

 

It’s not your fault I am doing this. You were everything to me.”

Vasu got up to leave. “I’ve Googled it and it said that when a cat is dying, it will not want to disturb anyone. It tries to stay far away from its loved ones. But, I can’t let Java die. Sid asked me to take care of him.”

He picked up Java who was now near our porch steps and adjusted its collar that Sid had embroidered for him. The black and red collar looked discolored and very loose on the frail cat now.

Vasu scratched his hair in the back with this right hand, and removed his cap to adjust it and put it back. He gently tucked Java under his left arm and walked back to his back door.

I continued flipping through the binder. I saw recommendations for Sid’s eagle scout approval, a certification for 1st place in a Swedish gaming hackathon. He won 3rd for an innovation award for creating an app that helps trade recipes from around the world.

I came back to Sid’s final note to his family.

“Tell about me to everyone.

 

Life is a laughable matter, but sadly depression is not.

 

Amma will need sometime for herself.

 

Times may be hard, but you must be grateful. They strengthen you into who you are. The world may seem to be against you, but it is actually rooting for you. Everything happens for a reason.

 

It is hard to be a good man. It is painful to be resilient. It is heart-breaking to love. But you will never quit, and your patience will pay off. Have faith. You are beautiful. You are a fighter till your very last breath.

 

I am sorry amma. I am stuck between my past and my future. I have tried everything, I cooked, sang, danced, I did everything I humanly could do. Don’t think I’ve lived a sad life amma. I was alive and really well most of the time that I was, except that I don’t want to be unhappy and those times are getting increasingly unpredictable and unbearable.

 

Nanna always keep saying there might not be any second chances in life. So, I guess he’s right.“

I fought hard to not let tear drops fall on the pile of papers in front of me. I let the empty cups of tea remain unattended for the rest of the day on the porch.

– 0 –

On Life, Love And Desires In Fiction