Miss you Papa … It's been a year. May Waheguru ji be with you 😇🙏🏼. Memories, until I go …

Memories until I go … 

Barkha Dutt’s FB post dated April 27th 2026 about her father’s passing away during COVID around this time that particular year,  left me feeling heavy. It stirred that familiar question ... 

What is life, and why does it hurt so deeply when someone we love is gone? 

Why do we feel our hearts crushing & how can this heal. 

Then I console myself saying this is for life .. stay with it. I truly resonate with what she said. 

Grief doesn’t really fade with time .. it settles into your life and becomes something you learn to live with. With each passing year, it doesn’t disappear; it simply finds a place within you. 

•  I find comfort in talking to my parents through their pictures. There’s a quiet solace in that. 
• Sometimes, a song from my childhood is enough to bring everything back—memories of GeetMala and Chitrahaar, moments that feel so alive yet so distant. 
• Old ghazals pull me into a space where I sit with those emotions more deeply. I wrap myself in their shawls, holding on to what remains of them. 
• And when I miss hearing them, I listen to their voice memos—just to feel that connection again, even if only for a moment. 

It’s especially painful that I no longer have their gadgets or personal belongings .....things that were dismissed as clutter. What some see as replaceable objects were, for me, pieces of memory, fragments of a life that meant everything. I only wish people understood this better ......that these aren’t just things. They are anchors to love, to preserve a past that still lives within us.

 A little more empathy and sensitivity can go a long way for those of us holding on to these memories.

Papa, Mama, main twannu phirr milangee ..