Standing there on the terrace, the early whispers of winter
in my ear, I was thinking of us. When I looked down at the courtyard, I saw it
come to life with a DJ, the veiled women and all of us dancing our first dance
together like our last dance. You see memories are like an army waiting at the
gate, waiting for a single drop of the fist or a call to attack so they can
charge in unrestrained. So in that one moment, I could see Cabiry teaching
Govind how to belly dance, Philip’s futile attempts to play a few English songs
on the console, Sarah’s sagely advice to Johann on not smoking, Josselin’s
imitation of Ranveer Singh’s Ram Leela moves. I saw red wine on the windshield
looking eerily like blood, our little game of guessing what colour the next
fireworks in the sky would be. I remembered Shakti. I remembered Gerti and
Anna. I remembered a place and a moment that would never again be.
Did you know then that we would never see Shakti again? Do
you know where Gerti and Anna must have gone to since then? One of my complaints with life is that all of us will quietly grieve, fall, and lose in different corners of the world and nobody else amongst us will possibly even
know. After all the happiness we shared and all the cheer we brought to each
other, we will never have each other’s shoulders when we need them. What I do
know though is that people as beautiful as you will find strong shoulders and
deep-running friendships to help you beat back the maelstrom of life.
You may not have known this but each one of you has changed
me a little, and when I put all of that together, I realize how everything that
started that new year’s eve was to change my life forever. On that cramped
dance floor of On-The-Rocks, in that classroom where we rolled our eyes in
resignation when the prayers were recited, over the many drinks on that terrace
in the biting cold, beside Esme’s twinkling eyes, Sorcha’s ready wit and Lilli
and Sarah’s chirpy banter. When I walked through those lanes of Jodhpur, I
walked again with you. And that’s the thing, you didn’t just change me, you
changed that city too, indelibly.
Maybe one day all of us, some of us at the very least, will
find ourselves back there together. A ‘revival,’ as Sarah would call it. Maybe
then, we will get to wipe off the old imprints and leave fresh ones. That would
still be a different us. Not the ones that sat on that terrace laughing
tomorrow away and wondering exactly what it was about Josselin’s lighter and
Chilly’s rear.
