Teerath, My Friend

                                                                    Late Teerath Mal

Death is an undeniable truth; it must come to everyone. I have carried on my shoulders the bier of many relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and I have gone as far as the graveyard and the cremation ground. But some partings are such that they shatter the heart.

I still can't believe that you are gone forever. But the truth is that you are gone. Friend Teerath, you have left behind such a separation, such a wound, that perhaps it will never heal.

Yesterday in Hyderabad, at the condolence gathering, your father, Kaka Rewa, Kaka Daya, and Dr. Pehlaj were receiving those who had come to offer their sympathies. For a moment I even saw a smile on Kaka Reva's face. The pain behind that smile, the pain of losing a grown son, is beyond words. You know, for parents, the greatest sorrow is the loss of a young child.

Friend, I am a soft-hearted man anyway. If I watch a sad or emotional scene in a film, tears come to my eyes. But you have left such grief that my eyes have not dried.

Now childhood memories float up in my mind, one by one. Dada Natho's grocery shop, the house where I sometimes came to study with you, playing cricket at home... Among those playmates was a cook, Saropo Thakur. The tea he made was wonderful. In your own style, you used to call Saroop "Saropo Bandan Karopo."

Besides cricket, you loved singing songs as well. The song you sang still rings in my ears:

"Hai mubarak aaj ka din, raat aayi hai suhani,

Shadmani ho shadmani..."

You sang songs in America too, and shared those videos with us.

We studied together from primary school to matriculation. Then you went to Hyderabad. Muslim College, Mehran University Jamshoro, IBA Karachi... From finishing your education until you started working, we kept meeting; we kept having long talks, and our friendship carried on.

In all that time, besides your coursework, you also read Sindhi literature. Siraj's novels Parhado Soi Sadh and Maran Moon Sain Aao, the poetry of Shaikh Ayaz... You not only read yourself, but also encouraged many friends, including me, to read literature. You kept a diary and wrote poetry too. Once you recited a verse to me. Judging by its style, I said, "This is Latif's!"

And you said, "This is my own verse."

The university hostel, Kalhora Colony, Tando Wali Muhammad, and Rabia Square, those places where you lived, were also the haunts of Nabi Bakhsh Premi and me. Flat number fourteen in Rabia Square was in such an easy spot that whenever we passed through Jhirk, we would show up there.

In the year 2000, when I went to Karachi and began my first job at the newspaper Hilal-e-Pakistan, mobile phones had not yet become common. When you heard that I had come to Karachi, you made many trips to the newspaper office to meet me, but we could not meet there.

Karachi is a merciless city anyway. It doesn't let anyone go free like a bird. Even so, our meetings continued.

In 2007, you came to my office at ARY News. We sat there for quite a while and talked. Later, when you were about to leave for America, you tried to contact me again, but we could not meet. Nabi Bakhsh told me afterwards that before leaving for America, you carried a longing, a regret, that you hadn't met me. I have always been sorry about that.

In 2017, when I came to America, I was deeply longing to see you, but sadly, I never got the chance to come to Texas. We did stay in touch by phone, though.

In 2018 you came to Pakistan. That was our last meeting. We visited Jhirk and Keenjhar, met old classmates and had a long, good chat. Who could have known it would be our last meeting?

Friend Teerath, in that whole friendship spread over more than forty years, I saw you as a cheerful, sociable, well-read, cultured, sensible, graceful man who loved his family. A Teerath who would give his life for his children and who gave his friends a place in his heart.

But was there some turmoil, some storm, some flood building up inside you, of which we had no idea?

What were the reasons? What were the compulsions? What was the pain that you kept bearing alone? Perhaps none of us knew what battle was being fought inside you.

Sometimes a person has a smile on his face, laughter on his tongue, and long talks with friends, yet what agony he is going through inside, even the person standing next to him cannot guess.

During the Corona pandemic, Dr. Harish said something: if there is hope in life, even eighty-year-old men face life with the desire to live, and if there is despair, even young men of thirty or forty give up on life.

Perhaps that is why it is necessary to keep hope alive in life.

Teerath, after you are gone, we have your memories, your smiling face, the books you read, the songs you sang, your company, and those more than forty years we spent together.

Teerath, there are so many stories, so many memories, so many incidents, so many tales....

You are not physically with us, but in which graveyard will those memories of friendship be buried? In which cremation ground will they be cremated?

Perhaps some people never die; they live on in the memories of their friends, in their conversations, in songs, and in hearts.

Teerath, you are one of them.