By Ashish Singh
I have been thinking about you again, not because nostalgia asked for it, but because memory has its own way of pulling me back to moments I believed I had outgrown. In these years, hundreds have died, on borders, on streets, in riots, in silence. Many more will die. Anyone who arrives on this earth arrives with an exit already marked for them. I once thought this was just a line spoken by tired monks or tired writers. Now I understand that death is not distant. It is the atmosphere we breathe. And somewhere in that atmosphere I realised I have died many times too, quietly and without spectacle, only to find myself alive again as if life wanted me to witness a little more, maybe even for you.
You once told me that revenge is best served cold. I remember how it pierced me, not because of revenge itself but because it forced me to confront my own anger. I used to argue that I could only judge actions and never intentions. It sounded firm then. Now it feels like the kind of mistake only pride can make. But I will not hide from anything. We both know what we did. And what we did not do. That ledger is clear. No revision. No softening. No footnotes pretending to explain the past. Memory is honest in a way that hurts. It keeps sweetness and failure with the same loyalty.
And sometimes it almost makes me laugh, this strange gift of remembering everything. An elephant’s memory, a Sherlock kind of seeing where the smallest detail refuses to disappear. Faces, pauses, tones, the meaning behind what was never said. I often wish I could switch it off. Become a bee for a while. Forget everything in moments. Leave no trace of my own thoughts. There is a kind of mercy in not remembering, a type of freedom that people like me will never get to taste.
And the world kept burning while we were trying to understand our small flame.
Pulwama left more than a crater. It left a wound that moved into the national voice. Delhi tore itself apart in riots while politics turned people into weapons. Operation Sindoor rearranged realities with the calmness of states playing chess. Sudan fell again into a crisis that swallowed families whole and proved that human suffering repeats itself across continents. These were not just headlines to me. They were reminders that wars never stay outside. They slip into you. They change the architecture of the soul. They remind you that the world owes nothing, not even understanding.
Somewhere between these events I went looking for my own answers. Not noble answers, only personal ones. I went to Kashmir where silence feels like a witness. To Kerala where the sea keeps secrets better than any person. To Mumbai where anonymity is a kind of prayer. To Delhi where power and fragility breathe in the same rhythm. To Uttarakhand where mountains ask questions without words. Everywhere I went I was testing myself, sometimes on purpose and sometimes without knowing it. The things you once said I could not do or would not do, I tried to do them all. Maybe I wanted to hear my own voice separate from yours. Travels are strange that way. You go everywhere only to discover that the hardest part is returning to yourself.
Then came the winter in Russia. Those months carved something out of me and placed something else in its place. Loneliness became a teacher. Silence became a mirror.
Money has not changed. Poverty is consistent. It waits. I remain on the same tightrope, trying to balance dreams with bank balance, principles with survival. Comrades kept calling from different ideological corners offering alliances and invitations. But men like me are ruined by their own principles. We question purity in everything, in ideas, in motives, in our own beliefs, and eventually we choke on our own standards. You can call it integrity or foolishness. The difference is never clear.
And while the world kept collapsing, it also kept celebrating. Bob Dylan received a Nobel while wars murmured in the background. Educate Girls received the Magsaysay while classrooms still feared the absence of girls who never arrived. Sudanese activists received the Rafto Prize while their own home cracked under grief. The world applauded and mourned at the same time.
And through all this you remained. Not as heartbreak. Not as fantasy. Not as a wound. More like an echo. A quiet presence that refused to disappear. Soft, steady, inconveniently alive.
What we had was not grand, but it was real. I return to that again and again. The softness of our connection. The way we did not hide our insecurities. The way we allowed ourselves to be small and flawed and breakable in front of each other. Vulnerability is a dangerous privilege and we gave it to each other freely. But real truth has teeth. It does not always protect the ones who speak it. Maybe that is why we moved into the ruins of honesty rather than the comfort of illusion.
Now when I remember, I do not feel sentimental. I feel clear. I see two people who were brave enough to be honest and naive enough to believe honesty would save them. I see beauty and fracture living together. I see mistakes that still hum quietly in the corners of my days.
And yes, it often felt like I died many times along the way. Yet each time I rose again, a little hurt, a little wiser, a little more awake. That is why I am writing this. Not as apology. Not as confession. Not as request. Only as recognition. A recognition of what we shared. A recognition that the world moved forward without asking either of us to catch up. A recognition that some part of me is still trying to reach the moment when I first realised how deeply a person can matter.
This is simply to acknowledge.
To honour what was real.
To place one small truth in a world filled with noise.
Something survived.
Maybe it was not love.
Maybe it was not regret.
Maybe it was not longing.
Maybe it was something quieter.
Something that does not ask for a name.
Maybe, in the quietest sense, it was you.
(Ashish Singh is a social and political scientist.)
