Without boundaries

     Around January of this year, Vaishutai told me to watch a Pakistani serial - Be Intehaa. After our conversation, I started watching it. After a couple of episodes where I see the guy stalking the girl, I stopped watching it. Most desi tv-series/movies romanticize stalking, and it really bothers me. As a girl growing up in India, having experienced some parts of it, it is an absolute no-no for me. I told Vaishutai, that the series is not like Zindagi Gulzar Hai or Humsafar, and that I didn't like it much. I told her the stalking bothered me a lot. Vaishutai told me to watch the series, as she said it gets better.

     I didn't have time to give the series one more chance. Post corona, and post her death, I increasingly kept thinking about the tv-series. I started watching the tv-series recently, and after every episode shed a few tears at the missed opportunity of discussing the show with her. I still didn't like the romance angle much, but watched it b'coz I knew that she had watched it and b'coz we had talked about it. Half-way through the series, I find out that the protagonist has cancer.

      So many of the discussions, the emotional upheavals in the family, were so similar to what we as a family had experienced. Before Vaishutai's cancer diagnosis, I don't think I ever understood what grief was, or could ever truly understand movies about cancer patients. How I wish I could have seen the tv-series when she told me to. How I wish I would have talked about some of the things that were unsaid. 

    I now realize, how much I do love and cherish the ones I am close to. The regular conversations, the movie discussions, the presence. How we take everything for granted! We don't realize how much we love our loved ones till they are gone.

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