2008

I am quite happy to be out of the two thousand and eighth year. Really, it was long, tiring, and it had its share of disappointments and mini obstacles. Yes, that's what life is like, but sometimes you just want a small sign that things are going to get better. And it had loss. Profound, never-experienced-before, and nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-again kind of loss that will forever taint any future recollections of what the year was like.

It's still difficult to write about it. To use that word. The d-word. There's something very harsh and crude about it. At least when you use it to talk about someone you knew, not some distant murder victim in the news or a historical figure. I will think of any way to avoid saying it. All the euphemisms. He has passed. He is no longer with us. In Tamil we say, roughly translated, that he has surrendered to God's paradise. None of these has that punched-in-the-gut kind of feeling that comes from uttering the d-word.

Anyway, it has been a paradox. The simultaneous feelings of emptiness and tremendous heaviness. The attempt to "move on" and yet tenaciously hold on to every memory. Recreating moments in fine detail - the timber of voice, the gait, the laughter, the quirky mannerisms. It is full of contradictions, this whole cycle of life.

2009 - what do you have in store?