For K

My blog has told you most of what is important in my life. Sometimes, it has even told me!

There are pieces I forget, though. People who touched me so hard, albeit for a short while.
K is one of them...

K, by blood is my uncle. He refuses to let me call him uncle, says it makes him feel old.
About six years ago, I was very unhappy. With school, the circumstances under which I was living, Mum not being there...
I am not given to asking for sympathy, I prefer it if people just let me be. At that point, an empty room and a diary were my only sources of comfort. Neither would create a hullabaloo about me, nor get unduly upset and guilty.
I was 16 years old. K and I had last met a couple of years back. I had heard dozens of stories about him. A wild man with no use for structured education. A charmer who could talk his way into, or out of anything. He had been living in the US since he was a child, was now working in Sales.
I liked him when we met. He was funny, loose-jointed in every way.
But it was only after I moved in with the Gp's that he and I became friends. God bless Yahoo!
K is one of the most naturally empathetic people I know. I would talk about Mum being away, the GP's...whose worry for my future frequently translated into harshness, my friends, my growing disillusionments with academics and family....he listened and talked back.
He wasn't an uncle dispensing wisdom, he was a guy who had roughed it and was still learning and who liked my confidence in him.
I told him about my first real crush. I was the first to know when he decided to ask his girlfriend to marry him. He told me about the proposal...the weekend away, how he thought she might react. When I asked how he knew that she was the One...he said...'she is giving me something I have never had before, and I am giving her something she hasn't had.' He asked if I was surprised that he was taking this step.

I wasn't.

I couldn't attend his wedding, thanks to examinations. He came to Calcutta with A, his wife a few days after. We sat in my room..just he and I.. and talked. A, from the little I saw of her was quiet, steady and deeply rooted. K's complete antithesis, said the petty elders.

They left for the US a few days before my birthday. On the day, a bouquet of roses and a card was delivered to the house.
The card, in his scrawling hand, had a spelling error. The petty elders sniggered. I, who had been sternly loyal to the accuracy of the English language ever since I could read....didn't care.

The petty elders harp on about K 'not even being a graduate.' I always heard notes of derision when they talked of his work.

I don't bother to defend him. I've failed a class and been labelled many things too. Their little snobocracy wouldn't understand.

K has a younger half-brother J. Another great guy, and one I've also had long, deep talks with. He worships his big brother, and K has been as tender and caring as can be.
J, always a dedicated student, won a full scholarship to study physics at the University of Rochester in New York.
He is immensely proud of his older brother. 'He talks life,' J once said of K during one of our talks.


K now has a daughter and a son. We're not in touch very frequently. But I think of him very very often, and I wanted to write about him. He could romantically be called a long-lost uncle...but I'm guessing he wouldn't like that.
Thank you K, for being a completely unconditional listener and leaning-post. I was a mess when you found me and you made it seem normal to be messed-up. No one else could have done that.

Love you and miss you lots.