Missing you...

When I started writing this blog, I thought that it seemed a good idea to have more and more people read the blog. Somehow, the statistics related to the number of visitors to the blog fascinated me. I even tried to trace the IP addresses of the visitors to know who visited my blog and how regularly. Lately however, I have been writing some things that I really don't want to invite people to pry into. The question that comes now is that if I really don't want people to know these things, why am I writing them in the first place. I don't know the answer. I have been writing for only a month now and yet, I have somehow started to depend on writing stuff to take it out of my system. It is such a relief when I sit down and just put fingers to keyboard and let out all that I have been thinking for the past day. Also, there is another thing that I promised to myself before I started writing this blog. I would be honest, if not to others, then at least to myself. And so the journey continues...

I am not sure what hit me yesterday. I had been getting signatures on my release form and just meeting up people generally. Since Puneet had a dinner engagement at his boss' place, I decided to call it a day and return home at about seven. All alone and biking through the Chennai traffic on a relatively cloudy evening, my thoughts automatically turned towards Nana. It has been difficult for me to digest the truth that he is no more. Since I just went to Patna for the funeral and came back immediately after, I have not really felt the loss. Since that unfortunate day, for the past eight months, Nani and everyone back there in Patna has been feeling the absence of Nana everyday in their lives. For me however, it is nothing different at such a radical scale. I am still away from Patna. I still talk to everyone on phone. I am still not actually meeting anyone physically. It is almost as if Nana is still there, waiting for me, reading his newspaper on the front verandah, with his eyes looking up every once in a while to check if I have come yet.

I grew up in Patna, did most of my schooling there as the schools in Buxar were not good enough. I did not know enough at the time to appreciate what Nana and Nani had committed themselves to, and all for my sake. They had taken over the role of my parents and how well they performed it! I was more close to Nana that I am to my own father. He was so much to me that even if I want, I can not count his blessings. Somehow and for some stupid reason, all this and more came back to me yesterday. I spent the entire 15 km stretch from office to my flat crying...literally sobbing aloud. I don't know how I managed to control the bike with images flashing across my eyes of Nana buying me comics everyday, Nana taking me for rides in the office jeep, Nana helping me cut my birthday cake, Nana lying motionless on the Ghaats, as if waiting for me to come and pay my last respects before he moves on....so much and yet, so little.