Written For My Deceased Twin Putul On Our 36th Birthday

Puti do you know, what it is to feel the snow?

Puti do you know what it is to see the sea?

Puti do you know how it is to fly in a plane

Puti do you how it is sitting in the class

without you beside me?

And she knew the answers to everything!

With Puti do you know???? I have grown!

With her knowledge, I knew about the sea

With her experience, I flew in a plane!

She said we are the same yet different

So we may have to sit in different classes and live in different planes!

One day she had explained at length

The difference between pollution and population

And I had imagined a rising smoke and people cluttered together gasping for breath!

We read Tom Sawyer together and she explained to me what was Tom's slumber!

The two of us and then Bhai too pretended to be the 'Five find outers'

And the invisible ink she discovered.

She told me the entire story of Heathcliff and Nelly'

As she finished reading Wuthering heights before me

She had typhoid and she told me what the fever felt like.

I told her 'diabetes was nothing

Because it never hurts to take insulin

She asked me how it was to lie in a hospital bed and I described how it felt!

We decided 'Harry Potter' is our religion and turned Potter's heads.

Although we knew we were not like the naughty George and Fred!

She put inside my head all genetics and biochemistry

And slapped me when I did not perform well 

She was the proudest when I got recognised...

When she visited Renn and set the Indian flag flying high

I felt like I had seen the French sky!

Her more than significant discoveries in science

Are all mine!!

When SS entered our life

We talked of his day and night!

For the first time, the same person aroused different sentiments.

Now to share we had distinct experiences!

Then Pata began growing inside me

And Puti and I prepared for the grand mommyhood!

As Pata turned in my womb

Puti's tummy wriggled too

And we had a fizzy drink together 

To make the room spacious and better!

We started living in different cities 

She lived here, I lived there

We lived together

As we knew our places from each other!

When Mr C came to dwell in her

She told me how it is to have cancer!

I wanted to fight with her

We went about bravely the entire time.

When she was operated

I was away chanting before the divine.

When she gained consciousness, she asked mommy to tell me

That she was free!

Then as she was home, she described how she felt empty as well as full

To have one of her breasts removed

I felt somewhere mine is gone too!

She told me the operation was nothing terrible

But I knew not how she had started hiding her troubles!

Then she felt dizzy, 

She described how it feels

She fell down at the doctor's

Yet it was nothing she confirmed

She had brain mets the reports told

She was sleeping, unaffected and bold

I stopped asking how it felt like

For I was scared to hear about slipping of life

She was good, then she was suddenly bad

As I reached beside her

She got worse

But she never told me how terrible it was

I knew her drifting away and felt cursed!

I prayed for her to leave 

And one day, as I was away on the train, she left.

I knew somehow as the sun peeped through the train window

That is the new day, I am breathing alone!

I turn thirty-six without her, 

but the experiences of different worlds do linger

I tell her how things here are

We gossip about what not!

I wake up after a nightmare and see her lying beside me with a permanent smile!

I wipe her forehead to set things right!

I checked her fever the other day, but the glass was cold as death on a wintry night!

I asked her to get out of the glass

She did that and I touched her warm hands!

Together that night, at each other we smiled!

As my temperature dropped, she was gone inside the glass.

She helps me to live

But I could not help her to die.

She never shared her experience of death

I did not know how it is to die

But I will never accuse her of the lie

That she kept telling me of things were getting fine!

Because now I understand the truth in her words.

Dying is prime and perhaps primes are always fine!