Dear Kitty,

Do you remember our neighbor’s dog ? You may remember him as that big German Shepherd who barked when your wanderings took you close to his house. Well, a few days ago, he joined you where you are. You may have seen him there. The dog followed my friend so much, even as a puppy, that they named him Shadow. One thing about him that I remember is his start in life. My friends got him from a friend who found him abandoned on the median divider of a highway. I can’t imagine the heartlessness of those who left him that way. I remember the heartlessness with which your owners abandoned you. But I thank that heartlessness, bless it often, because it led you to us. He died short of ten years with them, a few days short of the anniversary of the day you left us. And in his death, I was reminded again of the days and months and years that I spent feeling bereft when you left us.

The other day, I came home late from work, after Maya was home from her jaunts with the nanny. When I opened the front door, I heard Maya’s little feet go pitter-patter as she raced to the front door calling me. “Papa, papa, you’re home”. I remembered how you would come racing the same way, the evenings I returned from work, meowing your delight. Most days of course you had already smelt my coming and would be waiting by the garage door.

My eyes usually don’t tear when I think of you, haven’t in a while. I smile when I think of you. But the memory of your departure is a wound that has not fully healed. Every now and then, I feel the scar of that moment, a kind of terror and fear I’ve never felt before or after. I finger it gently, for I know that I haven’t yet fully learnt the lesson of death. Despite all this time.

When you go away the wind clicks to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years          – When You Go Away, W.S.Merwin 

I’m a reading a book now, Kitty. It is a science fiction book, a kind that I haven’t read in a long time. The book is called “The City and The City”. It is a strange, weird book, set somewhere in the broken regions that once were part of the Soviet empire. It is strange because it is set in this city called Beszel that has an alter-ego city, Ul Qoma. The two cities occupy the same space and time, but the residents of one city do not acknowledge or treat the other as being part of the same space and time.

I thought of the various parables that the two cities may represent. One that struck me, maybe because it is so close to your anniversary, is that maybe the living and the dead occupy the same space and time, but do not, cannot, acknowledge each other. I found strange comfort in the thought that maybe you’re still sitting by my side, its just that I cannot see, hear, smell or feel you. Oh! I do miss you still, Kitty, and I suppose I always will. I suppose I can never unlearn the lessons you taught me, especially that there are things I must accept, they’ll always be the way they are.

I know you cannot read my letters or hear my thoughts. But maybe where you are, there is a babelfish, a translator that can translate my memories of you into meows that you can understand. And maybe you can still feel the love I feel for you.

Yours, as always,

Dinesh

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