It Is Lovely To Miss You

There are some people who will always have a special place in one's heart 

It’s a quiet night and a friend of ours comes in with the moon. As the evening progresses and more whiskeys get poured, he suddenly remembers a gift and digs into his knapsack to unearth a beautiful black Buddha. A perfection in miniature.

I’m not sure whether it is the lighting or the Ardberg, I tell him the Buddha at an angle looks like his son, S. Everyone else in the room disagrees, but my friend who is staying away from his family, smiles wistfully and says, ‘I see him so much everywhere, even a leaf will have his face.’

I feel a bit bad that he has to miss someone who should be with him, but as you get older, the list of the people you yearn for gets longer and longer. School friends, college connections, that almost ex-flame, your parents, the cousin who pretended to believe your claim of being an alien when you were six-years-old, it’s a list of love, aching with affection.

A month ago, a hesitant voice on the phone uttered my name. Hearing her tone, I immediately knew who she was. It was N from school. The last time I heard her voice was a decade and a half ago. She was a year senior but we had an intense connection and then, somehow on attaining adulthood, we drifted away. She had unearthed my number and in that single ‘Hello’ all my memories about her came flooding back. As we spoke about mutual friends and past shenanigans, I realised how much I missed her. I just never knew I did.

I sometimes wonder how can one heart carry so many people? How are we capable of so much love? A friend of mine lost her father a year ago. He had gone through a long and painful illness and the family viewed his death as an act of mercy. When he passed away she never cried or spoke about his absence.

Yesterday, while we were walking in the park, we smelt the hot bhutta toasting in the winter air. To my surprise, she began crying silently, gulping down large sobs, ‘I miss him. He used to love to eat this with extra green chutney.’ We sat on the bench and I listened to her missing him in the wordless language of sorrow.

And then, there are those whom you care for but you can never stay with and sometimes, can even never meet. They hold your heart but they will also trample it with equal ease. At a distance, they are a warm memory, but in close proximity they turn into a mini nightmare. These are the only citizens of my heart that I love to miss.

Still Figuring It Out’ a funny, sad, questioning take on adulthood will appear every Saturday on Asianet Newsable. Arathi Menon is the author of Leaving Home With Half a Fridge, a memoir published by Pan Macmillan. She tweets at here. The views expressed here are her own.