The day I am alone!

The desire to kiss Preeti was so strong that it woke me up in the middle of the night.

I sat up.

I looked around.

I was in Gurgaon. Alone. In my bed.

Was this a dream or a nightmare?

I had dreamt that Preeti was gone. And even inside the dream, I could feel the pain. It was sharp. It felt too real. What if it wasn’t just a dream?

Forty-six years seem to have passed in a blink, and the last twenty have been the most beautiful of my life. The love I have lived with during these years has only grown. First it was Preeti. Then came our two naughty boys, Kanav and Jay, who blessed my life even more.

But it seems like I have less than 20 years left now to experience this abundance.

No, I am not sick. Nothing is wrong.

I am just being realistic. Data. Probability. Life expectancy. Women often go earlier. Statistics do not lie. And somewhere deep inside, my mind has been preparing me for this possibility.

It feels like my mind has known this for a while. Maybe the dream was its way of preparing me. So I am trying to face my fear by writing it down. I want to be prepared if that day ever comes.

The question is not when I will be alone (hopefully never), but for how long.

Can I survive without my partner?

What will my days and nights look like?

What will my life become?

Will I ever enjoy life the way I do now?

Yes, this is selfish.

But why shouldn’t it be?

I love myself. I love life. I want to live, and I want to be happy.

So let me imagine what happens after she is gone.

The First Week

My heart is heavy imagining this and I am literally crying as I write.

I would cry loud and cry my heart out seeing you there but not touching me, not talking to me and just gone.

Every step would be heavy. Every breath would hurt.

I don’t know how Kanav and Jay will react. Will I be even able to talk to them? Who will console whom? We are just going to hug and cry.

Kanav would have his friends around him. He would not be alone.

But Jay would be.

Jay would go to the mountains, or sit by a lake, and cry through the night. He would want to be alone.

The pain would be unbearable.

People would come and go. I wouldn’t talk to anyone. No one would know who you were to me. No one would know our story. No one would understand what you meant to my life.

I won’t be able to sleep. I will eat whatever I can but I will cry every time I eat. I will cry every time I sleep. Nothing is going to prepare me for that day. Not even me imaging that day right now.

I would want everyone to just go away. I don’t want anyone near me. I want Jay. Jay makes me cry more. Kanav makes me strong but Jay gives me warmth. He has your passion and Kanav has my stoicness. I want to be with Jay. But Jay wants to be alone.

These days are going to be hell and I will be waiting for every minute to get over. I will want this to be over. I want to get over you. But you have just gone. I was not ready for this. I was not prepared. I wanted you to be there forever and now every minute is forever for me.

I go out for a walk, I run, I sprint……I will not pick up my cycle. I cannot pick up my cycle. It reminds me of you and I cannot sit straight on it. I cry as I touch the handles so I walk. I just keep walking till my eyes dry out, till my legs wear out, till hunger takes over me.

I again start running, I want to punish myself. Why did I not do enough? Why could I not get you back? I keep imagining what you were going through in your last moments. I keep blaming myself. I keep running. I stop, I cry and I run again till my energy dries out.

I sit beside a wall or a tree till I can find my energy back. I might have gone far away. I cannot go back now. I don’t want to call Jay or Kanav. I punish myself by walking the whole distance back. I am tired like hell. But I am not able to tell why I am so tired? Is it because of the walk or because I have been crying or because I am hungry.

I reach back home to eat something and sit in a corner where I fall asleep. When I wake up, I am calm. Till I realize you are not there. I just cannot stop the cycle. The pain is too much and it is not going away. I keep watching the clock. I know it will take a few days for me to get over this pain. But the clock is too slow and the pain is too much.

 Days are finally turning and people are now going away. The house is empty. Kids don’t want to leave me alone. But I want them to go away. I want them to deal with their pain and not mine. I push them out. I throw them out. I ask them to leave me alone. But Kanav does not. He is always nearby.

Every day I live, the pain increases. I want to hold you tight. I want to feel you again. I want to kiss you. I want to sit again in the car beside you and hold your hand as you drive. I want to hear your voice again.

I live through this pain, tiring myself out daily to reach the end of the week. I don’t want to do any pooja. You would have wanted it. But I just don’t want to do it. What use it is? You are gone now. I never believed in God. Even if he/she was there, I would have hated him/her now. I tell Tanu, I am not interested in any pooja. But please do it. Please do it because Preeti wanted it.

I cannot write more. The pain is so immense even when I am imagining it. I don;’t know how I am going to live it. Even writing down is not helping. I am now imagining if it was a good idea to write down?

Everytime, I want to end a paragraph, new feelings are bombarding me. But I want to stop now and look further into the days without you.

The First Month

Someone stays back with me for the first week. But the second week, I will be alone. I know I am going to be lonely now. I am spending time on the computer, watching your photos and videos. I try to memorize all those moments. I want to live those moments again. I want to go to the lake, I want to go to goa, I want to go to Kasauli, I want to cycle again.

I pick up my cycle and start riding long distances. I am just gone. I started travelling. I try to go to your favourite places. Naina Devi would be one of them. I go to Dharamshala on cycle. I don’t have anything to wear other than what I have on my body. I buy and discard clothes every day. I want to go to the same road on Spiti which you drove. I don’t know if I can go back to the world. I am just travelling and let my thoughts tire me out.

I imagine and live every memory. I am meeting people. I am meeting cyclists. But I cannot tell them about you because I would start crying. Possibly I do too when someone asks me over a bonfire. Possibly I make a bond on the journey.  

I still can’t sleep well most of the days. But cycling is tiring me out. It is because of my cycling that I am able to sleep. It is because of cycling that I cry every day because I know you are not driving behind me and I am all alone.

Cycling is not my freedom, I have just realised it. It is because of you that I have been cycling and even when you are gone, I am still cycling because of you.

I keep seeing your photo. I want it to be in front of me always.

I try to remember how I lived without you in Gurgaon. But I cannot recall those days. I don’t want to recall them. I just want this pain to die down slowly and cycling has been helping.

I stop taking calls from everyone finally as I want to be at peace. I tell Jay and Kanav when I will switch on my phone and for the rest of the time I keep it off.

Should I give up the world? Can I meditate? Can I live in the mountains?

I kept thinking this the whole trip and realized that I need people around me. I cannot be alone anymore. Kanav is so happy to see me back. He had been talking to me daily. Jay did not call me. He knows I want to be alone. I call him once or twice and we both cry every time we talk. He is coping up the same way I am. He is out alone in his world.

I just hope he has someone to share his pain with. For my partner is gone and I have no one to share it. I know my pain is stronger and it will take time. I am enduring it and the days are slowly becoming shorter and nights longer. Sleep is less and I wait for the sun to rise again so that I can cycle.

You have been my life for so long that life isn’t anything without you. But I know you are gone and I have to move on. I need to live a whole new life without you. I know I have to live it alone and I cry because of it. It is going to be tough but now slowly I am getting used to it. But then one day, I decide that I have traveled enough and I want to go back. I want to be in the place I have most of your memories. But I am very far away. So I started pedaling.

Because I want to be at a specific place, the distance now is longer. But the cycling training has taken over now and I have my mind diverted most of the time.

As I reach back to the place, it looks like the pain has reduced. But when I reach back, the walls again remind me of you. Have I done the right thing by coming back? I don’t have a choice anymore. I ask Kanav to stay with me for sometime. He finally gets me to normal. Jay is also steadily bouncing back. We know we have each other now.

We talk a lot about you. We decide to stop crying. We decided to celebrate you now. You were our life. You made our life and we go to all those lovely places where we went out to eat. Kanav and Jay finally take me to have a cup of tea at night. We are finally having fun.

And life seems to be bouncing back.

The Second Month

I don’t want to think much about it but the thoughts are coming back. Why did you leave me so soon? Why was I not strict with you? Why did I not push you to go to exercise? Why did I not wake you up in the morning? Why did I not train you myself? Why did I not create a schedule for you? Why? Why? Why?

And everytime, I get the answer that you would never have been able to do anything I told you. You were too strong headed. Whatever I told you, you would do it for a day or maximum two and then the enthusiasm will die down.

Why did I not keep a home trainer for you?

You would have never been able to dedicate your time even then. You will have work even when you had training time. The trainer finally would have become weary and finally stopped coming.

I would have tried to block these thoughts and tried to live your memories.

I would get back to the world and I was now hating the pity I was getting. Jay and Kanav now call me daily to check upon me and I would have told them how much I tried to help you. They want me to stop repeating that.

But these thoughts keep coming back in my mind and by the end of the second month I would have started hating myself. I would have hated myself for being left alone.

But now I cannot do anything.

Have I made the biggest mistake of my life? Was I too selfish? Was I so selfish that my selfishness has cost me loneliness?

By the end of the second month I would be blaming myself and would be partly depressed. And now I am cycling again to keep sane. I want to stop cycling and stop getting fit. But then I know, I sacrificed a lot of time training myself to live a hundred years and I still want to do it. But without you it is going to be hard.

I want to stop blaming myself and I want to turn away my thoughts.

 The first 6 Months

I check the money left with me. What am I going to do with it without you? I don’t want to travel without you. I don’t want to have fun. But I want to live. I want to be happy again. But I cannot find myself doing it.

And slowly and steadily but surely, I start blaming you for leaving me. I start blaming you because you were lazy. I start blaming you because you never bothered about me. I always thought about you. I never wanted to die and leave you alone. But you never bothered leaving me alone. You never took care of yourself seriously.

Why did you not reduce your weight? Why did you not cycle? Why did you not go to Gym? Why did you not go to do yoga?

Where did you waste your day? Why is setting home so important? For whom did you do that? Why did you not tell your kids to do it? Why did you not keep a helper?

What was so important more than taking care of yourself?

Thoughts start just from here and then I start finding flaws.

I don’t want to look at your pictures anymore. It makes me angry now. I don’t want to talk about you to anyone or with the kids. I just tell them, let us get on with our life. She is gone and is not coming back. Let us live better than we have lived till now.

They still love you. I don’t want to tell them about these new feelings but I have slowly started hating you. I cannot stop loving you. I still love you for you were my life. But now I also hate you for you have made my lifge hell. And it is all your fault.

The love starts going down for I don’t want to think about you. Every time I think about you, I find a new reason to hate you.

I loved you so much. I remember the days when your body was not well and I wanted to make love to you. Your body had undergone so much change that it was unwell most of the time. So much so that we made love hardly once in a month and then finally two or three times a year. Everytime, you tried hard to not let me know that you were just doing it for me. Your feelings had died down for your body is not well because of kids, because of menopause. You had never gone out to take help.

You had stopped giving yourself and me that beautiful feeling of loving one another with full passion. Why did you punish yourself? Why did you live your life so badly? You could have easily become healthy. Probably the kids became lazy for sometime because of you. They just saw you not taking care of yourself.

I finally thank myself for at least getting our kids' lives back on track. If everyone can do it, why can’t you? What stopped you? Why could you not get out of bed, take some time out of your routine to take care of yourself? You did not love me enough! I was not selfish! I burned myself to keep myself fit for you and the kids. You did not make any effort. You loved your comfort of the bed. You did not want to spend life with me. You just wanted to spend some time and go away.

These thoughts start becoming more wild. I now blame you for almost everything. You wasted the years with kids. You spoiled them completely. You never took time out to teach them Hindi and Punjabi. The only subjects I requested you to teach them. Every year, just before the exams, you would ask them to get their books and copies. And for 3 days, you would make them write and write and write. Just shouting and complaining that they don’t do anything. After their exams you would forget about it. And the cycle repeated for 10 years till they completely started hating both the subjects. It was not by chance. It was by design that you made them lose interest. You had your own priorities. These priorities were your house. For what? For whom? Who was asking you to give priority to sweeping the floor every day?

But even that was not well done. The house was all over the place. Because you did not get your priorities right ever. It was not my mistake. It was yours. You could not manage your life. But why? I don;t know. Even when I tried talking to you about it, you started blaming yourself. You never took criticism well. You just went into a shell. Instead of discussing with me on how to improve, you started defending yourself or went into a shell. I got frustrated a lot of times. But I wanted my head to be stable. There were liabilities and I wanted to ensure that my head was in the right place to cover them up. You had not become my strength, you had become a liability once you have gone. I miss you and I now hate you.

Why did you not learn to get your priorities right? I might have thought about this when I pushed you to do your MBA. It could have taught you a lot. But then the BBA exams were a farce too. You did not put in any hard work. Not even a single assignment was written by you. Every question which you wrote was cheated. You did not study at all. I studied it. I did BBA, you did not. And if someone commented, even our kids, you would piss off and go on a bad trip. Why? One one side, you did not work hard and on the other side, you don’t want anyone to make you realise it?

What was it with you and working hard?

Had you worked hard for even a year, I might not have spent so many years in Gurgaon missing my kids and you. Kids grew up without me. I could have done better in their education. I could not! Because I could not live closer to them. I cannot get those years back. I can never get the time I missed with my kids and with you back. I cannot get any more time with you. Why? Because you did not work hard enough. Not on yourself, not on your studies, not on your kids, not on your kids studies, not even in the factory.

Why?

I treated you like a princess. I think it was my mistake. You were very capable of working hard. You drove the car behind me for hours. You would travel long distances, work hard to help me as I struggled. But you did not do anything for yourself. It was no dedication, it was selfishness.

And now, you are gone and I now hate you a lot.

As the years go by

The hatred increases and the love keeps reducing. I keep hating you for going away because it was all your fault. I start hating people who don;t take care of themselves. I become angry everytime, I see Jay putting on weight because of his laziness. He reminds me of you. I am now angry all the time. You made me angry. You destroyed the years which I wanted to enjoy.. It is becoming difficult to live. I don;t know if I will remember any of the love we shared? I don;t know if we will even remember the moments we made love passionately? Only these thoughts of hatred remain because you never made an effort seriously enough.

This is what I sense is going to happen if I lose you now. But can you change this? I want to write this again in 10 years from now. I want to die a happy man alongside you. I don’t want to live alone. Can things change?

Wrote this down on 27th February 2026 while travelling in Shatabdi Train from Gurgaon to Delhi