Tribute from Kartik Raj (Kodai Classmate)

It's now over two months since I found out that one of my dearest
friends was gone, and I still haven't been able to write a word about
it, beyond the messages that I wrote to friends and family on the
first day beginning to register my shock at the cruel abruptness with
which we lost Neeraj .

I sat down and had a drink the other night with a friend of mine who
had never met Neeraj, and talked about coming to terms with a loss
like this -- sudden, unexpected, unacceptable, the kind of shock that
makes you feel like you're not quite seeing things right, or your
backbone isn't locking into place the way it's supposed to... the
unsettling taste of sour metal in my mouth. And people tell me that
loss gets easier to understand with time, that you can rationalize
it, and that you can remember the good times and celebrate them. It's
strange because I feel the exact inverse relationship. In the days
that immediately followed getting the terrible news, every memory of
Neeraj I shared with friends always ended in some kind of chuckle and
a shake of the head about something flamboyant, goofy, outrageous, or
plain-nuts that Neeraj had said or done. And that took the edge off
the grief, or at a very minimum put it in relation to some other
emotion. That's not quite so true anymore - I find it difficult to
forge those relations with the other component parts of my memory;
it's just grief.

I would share an anecdote or two to cheer up all the others of you
who love and miss Neeraj too, or tell you all about how Dose made me
laugh or drove me completely up the wall, but that doesn't seem an
honest response. I've recognized the importance of a time to grieve:
when I write about him or look at an old picture, my throat is
blocked, my chest constricted, I'm crying, sobbing in fact. I miss my
friend profoundly - one of my best friends, and the more and more I
think about it, probably my most loyal friend.

I miss you Neeraj. Much love, Kartik