It is a personal note. Regards to Soumitra da, and a feeling…. a feeling intermingled with a remembrance of another night up close and personal to me.

November is personal to me. I was born on the very first day at the break of the dawn. Many years later, on its last day, as evening fell, it was his time to say Goodbye. Baba’s sojourn was over with us. With the passing of Soumitra Chatterjee, the legendary actor, director, writer, poet, and most of all, an humanitarian, I can almost smell that time tonight. I can see it, like the film roll winding the reels, I can hear it as if everyone is in the next room, yet I cannot hold it close. Here I am. As hard as I am trying to get rid of Frozen’s song from my head, it would not let it go. 

We never thought we would be part of this time and etch ourselves in history. An invisible enemy made all of us vulnerable–  Covid 19 has already taken a lot away from us. 

It’s almost the middle of November, and it could have snowed here today, yet so much of autumn is around us. The entire last week, the weather was rejuvenating, like an ecstatic old lady, celebrating life to its fullest. The gracious old dame is charming, even with gray hair and wrinkles and, we were gifted with lovely days and luscious twilights. 

Days are full of a pleasant, pastel sunshine sifting through the parched, leafless gold of the oak, birch, dogwood, and maple trees, with crimson red sunsets over the Hudson, behind the majestic New York skyline. The soaring, prodigious bright skies of unblemished turquoise adorned with fluffy, plummeted clouds with whiffs and drops of autumn scent and paths strewn with painted leaves. But there is that gorgeous dysphoria hanging over. I am pouring it into my cup,  relishing it like an amateur melancholic.

Yesterday, across the globe, we lit up our ancestors’ dark pathways and hoping to shred the darkness from our lives—transcending to a new beginning. Dear Soumitra Chatterjee, sail safely to a safe harbor.
I am always running from one home to another, from one time zone to another. At times, I feel I am home and at others, I have no home, like an uprooted plant trying to secure its roots in the dust.

November brings me the agony and ecstasy of metamorphosis and metastasis as autumn transitions to winter, one festive season to another. 
Mother Nature continues to age gracefully, preparing for the cold and the bleak days ahead on the path. It spawns the compassion of gathering and closure, summing up and recollections.  

I must bring together everything I possess as close to me as possible, store up my warmth and thoughts, and burrow myself into a distant pit inside.  Create a cocoon of safety where I can preserve and contend what is prized and precious, and all that is very mine.

The grim and dreary winter days and the darkness can do their worst and try for a coup and climb their way up the walls looking for a way in. Still, they will not find me ready and prepared, comfortably numb, cocooned, smiling my warmth, and solitude. I am mindful of the mandate; it is coming, almost obligatory. I know I am not invincible, but I am tough, hard-nosed, and condoning, for I know that this too shall pass.

To posterity, happiness, and life, raising a toast to the joy of living and celebrating life. Sooner than ever, the coming days will carry out the darkness and bring hope.