That Wake-Up Call

When we come to terms with emotions…

- Kavita Panyam

In life, there is a lot to learn and even more to unlearn. I As each day passes by, most people end up carrying yesterday's baggage, so much that accumulation leads to manifestations of sorts. It has been 21 years since my only brother, an Army officer (Martyr) left us and I must admit that it has taken me more than a decade to come to terms with reality.

Though I had been attending to my duties and routine, a part of me had remained numb, the void that longed to be filled. In the hope of finding friends who would understand me and offer support to me, I had not realised that I had actually been withdrawing the same from my family. The situation was soon becoming tough to handle and required some solution quickly as I was getting into a rut. I had made a foray into content writing 2 years ago and was quite successful at that. The only trouble had been that I was inconsistent with my schedule which can be a dampener to a good career.

Things had come to a standstill and my hard work of 2 years was all set to travel downhill and believe me when I say that it would not have rung home as I had gone beyond reach. No matter how much I tried to remain afloat, I only managed to sink further. While grief had done a good job of enveloping my core and I was losing hopes of ever coming out of its grip, something happened that shook me out of my dazed state.

One evening as I was sipping tea immersed in my musings, the phone rang and I set the tea cup down to answer it. As soon as I had wished the person on the other side, I could barely control my surprise when I learned that the gentleman was my late brother's course-mate from the Indian Military Academy (IMA) and had been wanting to trace the next of kin of my late brother, Major T Shyam Sunder! The next big news was that I had just been invited with family to attend their course's silver celebrations at the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun!