Thread by @TheRealDoctorT

He walks through the cemetery gates early in the morning. His footsteps are slowed with age and unsteadiness.

He is there almost every day, and the groundskeepers recognize him now.

“The old man who writes,” they call him.

And “the old man who cries.”

He is my grandfather. 1/

As he makes his way to his usual spot, he has a folding chair under one arm, and holds a bouquet of flowers.

He tries to hold himself firmly upright, back straight, even though arthritis has set in.

He used to be a Brigadier General.

Old habits die hard. 2/

Reaching his destination, his eyes fill with tears for a moment or two, as they always do.

“Hello love, my dearest friend.”

He reaches down and gently rests a hand on her tombstone, whispering a prayer. Then he sets up the folding chair. 3/

She was the youngest daughter in an aristocratic family, fiercely independent, and determinedly horse-riding while the rest of her four sisters married off one by one.

Her father was a nawab, a distinguished scholar, and an acclaimed poet.

They lived in a palatial estate. 4/

He was one of five brothers and one sister. His family was learned. They didn’t have much money, but they had their education, and this brought them respect.

He was rakishly handsome, with an offhand charm that won him many friends. A favorite amongst his military peers. 5/

Those were different times, in a different culture, and there was no courtship then.

The women in the families connected with each other, and matchmaking occurred in an intricately layered web of acquaintances.

My grandparents met for the first time on their wedding day. 6/

Right away, theirs was a true match.

She had never gone to school, but had been taught by tutors who came to her house every day. She spoke four languages fluently.

Every time he quoted her a romantic verse, she would quote him back its reply, and then the next verses too. 7/

India, in those days, was in the process of a great upheaval.

The end of colonial British rule, and the breaking apart of society along religious and cultural fault lines, led to the splintering of families and a bloody period of rebirth.

Change came for everyone. 8/

My grandparents found refuge and solace in each other. The strains on their relationship, as the world around them frayed and cracked, only brought them closer together.

“Humsafar,” like so many foreign words, loses much of its meaning in translation.

“Traveling companion.” 9/

But humsafar is more than just a traveling companion.

Life is a journey, a slingshot trajectory between two great unknowns.

A flickering transition between two infinities.

Humsafar means I will journey with you. I will believe in you.

I will remain by your side. 10/

The years pass, on this journey.

They have four children. Two boys and two girls. My father is the second oldest.

Education is their mantra. My father is an engineer, one sister is a teacher, the other is a doctor, and the youngest son an army Major and then teacher. 11/

There are not enough pages in the world for me to write the depths and breadths of a life well-lived, but inevitably there is the end.

If life teaches us anything, it is a bittersweet lesson in letting go.

She dies of breast cancer in 1998.

His beloved humsafar is gone. 12/

The light goes out in my grandfather’s eyes after that.

His doctors say he has a broken heart cardiomyopathy, and he eventually goes into kidney failure needing to start dialysis. He is dying.

But there is one area in which he flourishes.

His secret.

His poetry. 13/

He writes under a pen name, “Raaz.”

It means “a secret.”

As he sits by her grave, on his little folding chair, he writes, and he weeps.

After his humsafar leaves him, he writes achingly beautiful verses, elegies, inspired by a love that brings him all the words he seeks. 14/

When he gets up to leave, he lays the flowers by her headstone, and places several on the graves on either side of hers.

He never knew these people, but they are his beloved’s neighbors now.

He has always been kind to his neighbors. 15/

He finally leaves this world for a long-awaited reunion, in January of 2001.

At his funeral I am overwhelmed by how many people are there, how many have flown from other countries to be there, how many lives he has touched.

I hear my grandfather’s poetry praised repeatedly. 16/

To this day, I cannot read or understand his poetry. There is a language barrier I cannot overcome, yet. The translations I’ve read remain frustratingly inadequate.

It is perhaps one last irony. That the “secret” should remain hidden from me, when I seek it most. 17/

And now here I am. Walking a path that seems to reach out to me from the past.

Echoes of a life lived before mine.

Healing kidneys for a living.

Chasing the “secret” in my spare time.

Perhaps one day,

someday,

I’ll find it.