My youngest sister Sonali was a bright and beautiful lecturer with an immense love for teaching. She was living in a small town near Goa. She was ten years younger to me and was close to me to an extent that there was hardly anything that we did not know about each other. We were dependent mentally and emotionally on each other.
On the 16th of April 2014, she was suddenly taken ill and deteriorated rapidly and was admitted in the ICU. My mother had travelled to see her. All the time she kept on telling my mother to call me up so that she could speak to me.
‘I will get well only if Didi [elder sister] treats me. Please tell her to give me medicines.’ She told repeatedly to my mother.
Unfortunately, the phone lines were down and I could not talk to her. When I could connect, I could not talk because of the doctors rounds and then providence ensured that I could never speak to her again. I lost my dearest sister on the morning of 20th April 2014.
I was besides myself with grief. I had never imagined in my wildest dream that she would pass away. How could she just leave me and go away, I kept on asking her. How could she possibly take such a decision without informing me?
The whole night I grieved while arrangements were being made for her funeral the next day. Since I stayed in a remote part of India, it was not possible for me to attend it. Besides I had become too ill to travel.
I got up early on the morning of 21st. It was 5.30 a.m. I was sitting on a chair while tears flowed out from my eyes.
‘Bordi!'[eldest sister in Bengali]I heard my sister call.
Probably a figment of my imagination, I thought while I continued sitting on the chair.
‘Bordi!’ I heard her again accompanied by voices.
Curiously, I peeked inside my bedroom when I saw her and my father holding hands standing. She was looking thinner and healthier and her face shone with an unearthly joy. She was wearing a dress she loved while she was alive. My father looked in his thirties and handsome with joy on his face too.
My sister was telling my father, ‘Bordi is crying so much! We are so happy and Bordi is crying so much.’
I watched stunned and the next moment I could see them no more.
I have managed to control my grief over a period of two years. Whenever I feel drowned in grief, I remember her joy lit face and tell myself that if I really love her, I should be happy in her happiness. I also try to make use of my remaining time on this earth to the best of my capability. I tell her that she should wait for me till I come there and not take birth again. I want to see her face one last time and tell her that I was privileged to have had a sister like her.