From the day she died...

I entered the room with an odd feeling. This was the room of a dead person. Someone I didn’t know. Someone I am supposed to have seen 19 years back as a 2 year old. What I saw first on entering was a painting, on the floor. It was a girl’s face.
“That’s the picture she was painting before I dragged her out to the car…”
“Oh”. Her mother. Sangeetha’s.
“So this was her…” I didn’t know how to complete that line.
“Her last painting”
I was afraid if the mother would burst into tears again. She already did twice, I didn’t want to be the reason for her to do it again. I tried to think of something else to say, but she was still on that subject.

“I don’t know if she completed it. She was at it and didn’t seem to want to stop. And it was me, it was I who told her to come back and finish it later. I …”, she gasped. I knew she was going to cry. Again
“It is not your fault Aunty”
“That’s what everyone tells me, but I know, I know it is Kiran. There is no use pretending”
“You didn’t drive her to that accident Aunty, it would have happened anyway. Sangeetha, she…” I stopped. I was going to say, she must have had her lines drawn short, that she must have been destined to live a short life. I surprised myself. I didn’t believe in fate, in destiny… not before.
“Maybe. But if I just left her to that painting, she might have been alive today.”
I didn’t have an answer to that cause I felt she was right.

Not knowing what else to say, I went closer to the painting. It was a girl’s face, half of it covered by her hair. The other visible half was a sad face. Was the girl about to cry? There was blue, red, and green – a lot of green.



“Did Sangeetha always paint?”
“No, she didn’t. Very rarely, she takes out all that junk and sits on it for hours. That’s what surprised me. I am seeing her at it after years… did my girl know…”
Aunty left it at that.
What? That she was about to die? Why would anyone paint when they knew they were going to die? I wanted to ask. But I had enough sense not to. The picture was not that brilliant. Maybe something like what I might come up with. Come to think of it, its exactly the kind I would paint. I felt a sudden desire to know more about the girl. I looked around her room. It was absolutely untidy. Just like mine. So many newspapers were lying around, so many books and clothes. The clothes must have been tried on one after the other, and she must have looked at that mirror in the corner. I imagined her doing that.

“She always left it that way. I shouted at her everyday for that”
So did my Mom. When she was there…
With a sudden idea coming to head, I peeped under the bed. Yes, there was a rusty old guitar there. What was this girl? Another me?! That took me to the books. Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Robin Cook, John Grisham, they were all there. And more. She read non fiction too. She was way above my league.
“That girl was never seen without her books. It was so embarrassing when she would insist to carry it for weddings and visiting other homes. ‘I will be bored Amma, please’ she would say. And I couldn’t look at her face and say no. Only if I looked that night…”
I didn’t know if it was cruel, but now I wanted to know what happened.
“What happened Aunty? You want to tell me?”
“Yes… I do… I was hoping someone would let me”
“Tell me”
“There is nothing much to say Kiran. We were planning to go out somewhere and when I looked, Sangi was painting this picture. And I said enough dear, come we will be late. She turned to look at me and said Amma please let me finish it. How long will it take, I asked. I don’t know Amma, said she. I told her to finish it when we were back. Oh Amma she said. But she said no more... those were her last words. She came out in ten minutes. And I remember wondering then what’s eating this girl, why does she have to look so gloomy. I dismissed it cause I thought it was leaving that stupid picture. Of course, my poor girl must have sensed danger. She didn’t want to leave us so soon. But I made her…”

Something told me it was indeed leaving that “stupid picture” that made her gloomy. I should have in her place. But I didn’t tell Aunty that.

I came back home with Sangeetha’s books and diaries that Aunty insisted I should have. I didn’t want to read her diary; I knew how personal that was. But something made me feel I had a right to. Just like I feared, yes it was turning scary now the semblance with the dead one, she wrote like me. Our stories were different but we could easily be the same single person. I tried to remember my 19-year old meeting with her. No use.

I went to her home often. Something stopped me from asking for her photos. I was scared if I might end up looking at myself. Thankfully, we were completely different there. Sangeetha was a beautiful girl, sharp nose, eyes and lips. Her only problem was her cheeks- she had none. She was too lean. “I don’t know if that girl ate at all. She would forget if someone didn’t tell her to eat”, Aunty cribbed.

For some days now, Aunty started talking like that. Like Sangeetha was still there. It sounded like a parent worrying about a child and nothing more. No one would suspect the child was no more.

I spend most of my time reading Sangeetha’s diary. I liked her so much, if only I knew her before… but like someone said, of all the words that has been said, these are the worst – if only it were so. Maybe God didn’t want 2 of his creations so exactly same living together and called one back earlier. Alright, that was a girlish thought.

Aunty too started noticing our similarities. She knew I liked lime juice more than coffee or tea, that I liked to brush each time I ate, that I slept faster on a couch than a bed. So when she said “you don’t watch TV right?”, I knew she knew I didn’t. “No Aunty, just like Sangi”. The mention of Sangeetha’s name didn’t bring tears anymore to Aunty. Not when I said it.

Sangeetha’s friends were all interesting. Aunty had invited them all one day and of course I was there too. I was afraid if Aunty would announce “Meet Kiran, Sangeetha’s new version”. Thank God she didn’t.

Divya was her best friend. “She was just like a little kid, she wouldn’t do anything until someone reminded her”, Divya said sadly. Varun, another friend added “when it came to books though, she needed no telling”.
It was really odd listening to her friends talk about her. I was beginning to know someone after her death, and really like her so much that I started worrying. I mean I didn’t feel anything when I heard her departure, but now I wish I never heard it!

“I had a dream. That I went to the Moon. What a lovely dream. It seemed so real that when I woke up I felt out of place in earth” – Sangeetha’s last diary entry. No, there was no element of intuition there. Although Aunty might have thought there is – “going away, my girl knew she was going away”

I should have known I went too much into this whole Sangeetha thing. Cause that night, she came in my dreams. I don’t remember what I saw, but I wish I didn’t. cause I woke up mourning her death. Its been over two months now. And I simply cant get her out of my head. Yet, I was digging to know more about her. Every time I went to her house, I would look for something more. I would call her friends and talk to them. In a few days, I knew the girl inside out.

It hit me one day. I was desperately trying to make her real, make her living. Trying to make believe she had only gone some place far and would come back. I thought I should consult a psychiatrist. Its been 4 months now. And the dreams, they were coming too often. Divya and Varun tried to solve it with me, yes they were my best friends now. “Just don’t think too much about it man, so you like Sangi, so what” – from Varun.
“Oh Varun, Sangi was a sweet heart, but its not good to think too much about someone who passed away” – from Divya
“People don’t you understand? I didn’t know this girl! I mean I had no idea who she was! Why am I worrying myself sick like this?” – from me!

No one could help me. I began to think what would have happened if I did meet Sangeetha. Would we have become great friends? No doubt, yes. Would we have fallen in love? And I knew…
That’s what happened now. I have fallen in love with a dead girl and it pains me to say that. I don’t know how I let it happen.

Days passed without a solution, till she came to me. Sangeetha’s mother. “I know what is worrying you beta”. I looked at her but said nothing. “Would you let me advice you?”
I nodded. “Be her”
I looked up “What?”
“You be her. I have lost her few months back. But after I met you, its like I found her again. Its like she came back to me again and called me Amma”
“But… Aunt…”
“You are alone son… like me…”
I nodded.
“And this is how Sangeetha wants to tell me she wont leave me alone. She send you to me”
I didn’t agree with that but I accepted her proposal. To be Sangeetha. To be her son.
Sangeetha I knew wouldn’t have ever wanted to leave her Mom or leave her with anyone else in her place. I knew her, I did. So becoming her was no hurdle for me. But when I die, I am going straight to her, first thing, wherever it is. I was too late here on earth but I cant afford to miss her one more time. I love you, Sangeetha.