I remember going to burn his corpse. It was a January morning. He was dead when I came down for breakfast. Nobody had cried. He was garrulous, stingy and a bachelor till his last breath, lived with all of us.

I disliked him sometimes. But sometimes, I felt so sorry for him that I would run to the terrace and cry.

Nobody took him to a hospital; when he was sick, the doctor never came on time. The day before he died, someone got into a fight about spending too much money.

They carried him on a wooden bed. There were fifty corpses that day to be burned before his.There were crying women and children. There were men running around.

I was in college then. I had never seen so many corpses together. Most of them were old, some looked younger; there was one of a little girl. She had a little wooden cot.When my grandfather's turn came, they picked him and placed him somewhere else. They broke his wooden bed into pieces as a part of the ritual. I donot remember much after that. I only have faint memory of a furnace and some chants and snippets of conversation with my father's friend. Everybody kept up a firm face and looked busy.

My older grandfather had died a few months before him. I used to like him a lot till his ears got weak. He couldn't hear much by the time he died.

I donot remember feeling very emotional at their demise. I kept up a firm face, too and everyone thought I were brave.

Tonight, many years later, I suddenly feel their absence. I miss them, I want them, I want to go back.

For years, I haven't been pampered with mangoes and eclaires or have held their hands to cross the road.

For years, I haven't hidden under the bed to scare them and for years I haven't cried on their shoulders.

I haven't seen them for ages now, and I will never see them again.