Late Latif...

You lay there amid the crowd all alone. You had people all around you wailing and screaming but that did not disturb you. You looked so serene like there was nothing in this world that will ever bother you. You looked like you would just wake up and smile at us, but you didn’t Latif. You left us, you left us all so suddenly that we are yet to come to terms with it, we are yet to believe it.

There are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself if I dreamt of you leaving us alone. There were so many things that I would have wanted to tell you, so many things that I would have wanted to know from you, had I only known that you would go away without even saying bye.

I still don’t believe that you are gone Latif, I still don’t believe that you will never come back again. It feels like you will be there in office tomorrow when I come and would hold my hand and sing a song for me. It feels like I will see you on stage again emitting the energy that you did always and making us all feel proud to be a part of your life!

You have left a vacuum that will never be filled by anyone. We are trying to pretend to be normal but your thoughts keep hitting us all the time. There is a sudden and a very uncomfortable emptiness in the space around and it kills us. Nobody is talking to each other, nobody is laughing out loud, and nobody is fine without you. Yet everyone is trying to comfort the other. There are times when suddenly while doing something tears just roll down and we are all trying our best to hide them. Nobody wants to meet anyone right now. This is the void you have created or your absence rather.

You lay there all alone on the hospital bed without anyone allowed to be by your side and it gives me a shiver to even think of what were your final thoughts, what all went through when you knew you are breathing your last. You were alone, all alone… We could do nothing even while we wanted to.

I watched you with your eyes shut and I had all the snapshots of you come before me, the first time I ever saw you, the first time I taught you, the time I saw you as Kabir and the way you made us all feel proud of you, the way I hugged you after your first performance, they way you and your friends made us sit on your shoulders and danced on the stage after the first show, the way you played guitar all day when you came over, the way you worked for the impact study and the way I would feel proud to see the laptop only for you, the way you have remained grounded after all your triumphs, they way you have been a role model for a most of the kids and a lot of us, and the way you quietly went away giving us no time to react.

You have become an inseparable part of us, you have lived a life of substance, you have now become Late Latif…

The more I think of you, the one thing that always comes to my mind is the song you sang, it seems like it was just meant for you my STAR...

I close my eyes,

Dream of new places
A thousand faces
All turn to me
On the silver screen
Dancing and singing
Praise for me ringing
A STAR I'll be
Ek din hoga,
Jab mujhe dekhke
Sab yeh bolenge
Chamka Taara
Main naachunga,
Dialogue bolunge
Hero banunga
Chamkunga main
I'll be a star
You'll see how bright
The crowd will shout-out in delight
I'll be on top of the world and I will be larger than life....
Its going to start,
my new beginning
A whole new feeling
Of being free
The world and I
We are done waiting
No hesitating
A Star I'll be!!

I join hands with all the innumerable lives that you have touched and pray for your soul to get all that you ever wanted... You will always remain a part of us, you will always be remembered... fondly, just like the way you like it :-)