My thoughts are, more than ever, back home today…because in Chennai it is tomorrow… and a year ago, I drove down to see a bundle of clothes .

My sister-in-law has coped incredibly with her loss and grief, and the thousand mundane things that act as little daggers to a sorrowing heart. And she is alone there. Yes, surrounded by friends, but we aren’t there with her.

Do I hope that my brother will be somewhere around? Do I believe in that, at all? I have no answers.

With his death, I lost all the people of the immediate family I was born into. I didn’t expect him to die at the age of fifty….

Am I feeling miserable? Or guilty that I didn’t know that he would die, and I went to Thattekkad? I am so mixed up, I don’t know what I feel. Unusual…

Another unusual thing…I have never been able to have photographs of my parents or my brother or of Mohan’s parents to look at. I just cannot look at them. I carry my memories in my heart.