You will always be there

During the hot August days when the kites fly far above my head, I will picture you making ‘peacocks’ and ‘snakes’ for the neighbour boys from your colorful bundle of tissue papers, finally walking into the playground without a kite in your hand. You will be there in my August memories, like its inherent heat and the Sun that constantly smiles down on me.

Whenever I turn my Literature notes, which never went to the bin along with other books, I will picture you patiently explaining Elliot’s principals, desperately trying to make me not hate cats so much. I will remember you being sidetracked by an occasional hymn you sang at church and ending up teaching me its meaning instead of the poem we were supposed to learn. You will be there in that study-room memories, a teacher with a patience that hardly suited your age and a brain that I believed was too heavy for your little head.

I will walk on the footpaths we walked before, under familiar trees, which bore fruits, the taste and shape of which we knew so well. I will picture you acting my guardian and the elder brother who could never be as strict as you wish you were. Even if the those trees go to the axe and gateposts and car parks appear in their places, I will take along with me the memory of you, walking under the canopied trees, carrying my things on our way home after school. You will be there in my heyday memories, the one that never asked for a share of my success when others demanded a shred of my limelight.

I will keep playing the final few hours in my head and laugh at my childishness to follow you around the house when I ought to have been helping you with packing.  I will count the number of people who came to see you and your wife off at the airport, and wonder what could glue people to you in such a lasting way. I will picture you in your wedding photo- the proud groom who was desperately trying not be overjoyed. You will always be there in my awesome memories of grownup life, a skinny little boy who grew up to be the man he always aspired to be.

Friends walk in and out of life and some say they lost their best friends for men and women who become their better halves. I will say mine is an exception. On gloomy Sundays when there is no cricket to watch or no more music to calm me down, I will hear your lonely saxophone that summons my feet to a slow dance. The modern saint, surrounded by a bunch of church kids who thought you were their Einstein, your place will eternally be there.