Letter from his grandparents

To a friend who has stood by me for a time longer than I have memories of.

Disclaimer: The facts have been played around with. Mostly imaginary. VERY dark - about death.

He took his seat in the plane. In no time, he pulled out a pen and began to write. Like a gas cylinder that bursts out when opened, words spilled over on the paper - often making him strike the lines off twice and thrice.

"Can't believe you're gone", he wrote in a beautiful handwriting - an art which he had developed due to his grandmother. She would read out sentences to him and ask him to write them down. Slowly, words began to appear exactly the same size and structure - that day, his grandfather got him a chocolate bar as a prize.

He was going back to India to attend their yearly death rites. He was talking to them already through the poem he was writing...

"Can't believe you're gone..

Seems like yesterday that I took grandfather to the temple...

And just the day before that grandma made upma for me..."

The poem went on for a good fifteen lines when he felt a choke being put on his thoughts - he began to feel suffocated under it. Why wasn't he able to complete the poem? Why had, what had started to come out as a poem, stopped itself?

The plane took off. Like always, he felt his ears blocking. A strange warm feeling. There was a slight pain too. The pain grew and he heard them... talking back to him....

"Yes we're gone.. and not in the clouds like we told you as a child. When I, your grandpa, left, I looked at your grandma and your mother. And then I looked for you. I did not find you. Miles away in a country I had never seen, I tried to wake you up. You only felt sweaty that night."

The grandmother spoke, "When I joined your grandfather, I felt better. The part of my journey with all of you was so incomplete without him. However, I couldn't, just couldn't help but loiter around your books and your diaries. Your poems and the beautiful handwriting that you wrote them in. I was proud of you for being a grandson whose words never failed his emotions....

I am proud of you for being what you were and for being what you were to us. I am proud of you for wanting to write this poem.

For wanting to keep us alive in you.

For holding on to us. We can't let this go down, child. We can't let you forget us.

We are scared that you might. We can't see that happen. We can't let you complete this poem... "

The voices went down. He woke up, folded the paper and kept it in his pocket. He had realized he would never be able to complete the poem.

The flight had just begun....