I am stone

 “Are you stone?”

Someone asked me across the lunch table on a Friday afternoon while I was eating spicy biryani. The golconda briyani in the campus food court was most sought after by everyone on a Friday and so do I. I was annoyed at the question first but I had heard that question too many times in my life. I lost count. People look at me, watch how I react or don’t and they decide it fits me. A stone, no reaction, no emotion only if they had a chance to see through me they would have known me better. Being called a stone, I felt safe at that point, the boundary I drew around me so people don’t get close to me.

But this time the question wasn’t really to hit me. This question involved him. A beloved brother for everyone and my attitude towards him.

I never called him brother.

Inside me, he was always a brother. Not a word, it’s an instinct. It’s that connection. A certainty. But I never said it. Everyone else did. Everyone in my team called him brother . It was the most natural thing in the world for anyone to call him brother and he deserved it”

We were a bunch of fresher straight out of four months training and stepped into first project. He coached every one of us. Not just the technical coaching. He coached us on how to survive corporate culture. How to speak. How to stand for our views. How to take hits without breaking. So people loved him. And they expressed that love in the easiest way they knew by calling him brother.

I loved him deeply too, but why would a guy express love? My whole life, I never expressed my love to a girl even when I liked someone, let alone a guy. Back then I believed saying it out loud was weakness. Love should stay hidden. Love should be understood, not spoken.

That was the early part of my life. I was an angry young man burning with energy, passion, attitude, and youth. I thought I was indestructible and I thought feelings were optional.

He would call me in the middle of the night when something broke. Some system down, some mess no one wanted. I would sigh and ignore the call. Then he would be knocking on my door in the next twenty minutes.

And I would fix it even if it takes the whole night.

Not for money. Not for recognition. Not because anyone would clap. I fixed it for him. So tell me, wasn’t that enough for a man to know I loved him like a brother? Why should I say the word like everyone else?

With everyone, he was a brother. People leaned on him for advice, for consolation, for strength. With me, he treated me like a friend. He leaned on me and I silently leaned on him. It’s my ego that never accepted to lean on him openly.

I would work on a module over night under tight deadlines, and he would simple stay to help me and take me out to smoke. He smoked only with me. Those night, picking a tea from late night food court counter, standing under the gazebo to smoke and talking for short 10 minutes were my life treasures. We both would look at the stars and wonder who would be the first to become a star one day. I didn’t know the answer then, I would have been different if I knew. He called me a “north star.” His beloved north star. And me, a stone, you know , I would feel uncomfortable and would just ignore it with a careless glance. I didn’t bother if it hurt him. I didn’t care.

Or maybe I cared and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I acted like I didn’t.

It was that rainy midnight when he called me to his room. A room, read right, yes, a room where four bachelors stayed with an attitude that life was temporary and sleep was optional. I went in and I didn’t talk much. He just handed me a number.

“Call,” he said. “Speak.”

I called. His uncle or someone picked up.

“Hello,” I said.

“Thambi…” the voice on other side broke before the sentence did. “His dad passed away.”

Then the voice went silent and when I turned to him , he started crying. heavy, helpless crying. I have never seen him  like that and he cried like someone had ripped the floor from under his feet.

I didn’t cry.

I mean… I couldn’t. I don’t know why. It was that period in my life where all my tears were already dried up. Not because I had nothing left inside me, but because tears felt meaningless. To me ,tears were just a liquid from a gland . A function. Nothing holy. That’s also why I accepted it when people called me stone.

That night I booked tickets for his dad’s funeral. Travelled with him. He cried all the journey, telling me story after story about his father. What his dad meant to him. How big he was in his life.

I didn’t listen.

I just slept.

I could have tried staying awake. I could have tried being there. But my mind kept saying, Is this going to bring his dad back? Everyone is going to die one day.

Looking back, how foolish I was.

No, it wouldn’t have brought his father back.

But it would have made his pain less.

After the funeral I stayed with him for a week. Then we decided to get back to work, even grief has office hours. We have to feed our family.

On the bus back, after all the lights were off and everyone slept, he woke me up. I never boarded a night bus sober, that night wasn’t different. In the furious moment of waking, I yelled at him,

“Everyone will die one day. You, me, everyone. So now shut the fuck up and sleep.”

I saw his face in the dark. He wasn’t upset.

He was calm with trembling lips. 

Then he asked, softly, like he was asking about the weather without any emotions,

“Will you cry… if I die?”

I said, “NO,” in as cold tone as I can and went back to sleep without even looking at him.

Years passed.

I travelled to client locations. We got mapped to different projects. Life did what it always does. It showcased its cruelty and separated people who mattered, without any dramatic goodbye.

He pinged me every now and then to check on me. I ignored mostly. I kept walking my path like I had unlimited time and people could wait forever. 

He meant so much to me. But I never expressed it. We started chatting once in a while on social media. Long night smoke chats has now become small messages, safe messages, messages that didn’t demand expectations.

Last year, a message dropped in my LinkedIn messenger from a mutual friend. It came simply as a message.

He passed away.

Organ failure.

Age forty-five.

Just like that. one line, and a whole person erased from my future.

It pushed me into deep silence. And then all the moments, all those precious moments flashed inside me like a sharp knife. All the chances I had, the simple chances, to call him brother… and how carelessly I let them slip out of my hand.

Now I want to call him brother.

But I can only scream into a void.

“I don’t know you can hear me now, I missed every moment to tell you what you meant to me. To tell you how much I loved you. My pride stopped me, my ego swallowed me and now I can never get you back, not even for one last puff of smoke, not even for one last “brother.”

That question you asked me on the way back from your father’s funeral kills me every day.

Yes. I cried when you died.

But I told you I wouldn’t.

You never knew this stone would cry for you.

And even though I know it can’t happen, my mind keeps wishing you would come back, just once so I can call you brother one last time and send you off.

Sorry for being a stone my brother.