Losing a friend to life

In the past year and a half I have lost 3 close friends. Two to cancer and one to a paragliding accident. The latest to go is my friend Vijay, rather our friend from the paragliding community who remained India's number one paragliding pilot consecutively for many years now, retaining the spot by religiously competing in paragliding comps worldwide every year while running a paragliding school in Kamshet that has produced many good pilots. Alisha his student is heartbroken. She is sitting in Macedonia waiting for the authorities to release his body, as a person becomes a body after death. Vijay was a great coach to her, a great mentor and possibly a godlike figure. Alisha, all of 22, belongs to Bir. The only local girl from the village to get many podiums internationally. Just last month she returned from Kazakhstan with 14 medals and 3 trophies. Vijay was ecstatic. He called me a couple of weeks back saying to go the airport to receive her. "This is huge!" he said. "If no one is there atleast you receive her. No one has ever got so many medals." I couldn't go, so I texted him last minute. I had a root canal appointment. He was in the UK, doing some training or practising, I don't know. I called him later in the day asking about Alisha. He had managed to get the Aero Club of India reps to go get her. We spoke for a bit. He was persuading me to move to Kamshet and work with him. He had many plans. Plans around Orange Life - his paragliding school in Kamshet, Maharashtra and a beautiful property he had built that was always work in progress. 

Last I met him was in February. I had gone to Pune for a friends wedding. I didn't call him for the week I was there wanting to spend time with my friend instead. Towards the end of my trip I called, and he instantly said, "Why are you calling so late? Come now." I said I will come post the wedding, which was in Talegaon, closer to Kamshet. He said, "You come here first, take my car and go to the wedding." I said ok. I reached Orange Life amid a welcome home reception. Alisha was there, Basu, the incredible cook who looked after the property and Savitha was also there, who worked in Orange Life and had become a good friend of mine over the years. Julie and Shadow, the dogs were super happy to see me. I felt I was home. Vijay quickly came and said, "Beer?" And we laughed our crazy laugh. We got drunk. I told him I cannot drive to the wedding now and that he and Alisha must come with me to the wedding. So they did. We ate food, wished the bride and groom and left.

Vijay was one of the craziest people I knew. Never stopping. I had never heard him say that he was tired and needed a break. He was crazy enough to kayak the entire length of Narmada - from Amarkantak to the sea- ending his expedition in Kutch. While the others who had started with him slowly dropped out, he made it to the sea, alone. He called me one fine winter morning when I was shooting the Farmers' protest saying he wants me to come with him to film the expedition. I never doubted that he won't finish it. But I couldn't make it. Over the years he would just keep reminding me to edit the footage he had collected from that trip and another road trip we did together and I would just be loaded with film work or something and couldn't do it. So he would say, "Just come here and chill then." Orange Life had become home for me. He treated everyone like a family. Speaking to Basu today about Sir's loss, he says he is having sleepless nights but will not let Vijay Sir's dream die. "He was like a parent to me," Basu says.

Everytime I visited Bombay for meetings or work, I would be eager to finish my work and head to Kamshet to be at Orange Life. On one such trip while I just went to recuperate for a few days in 2018, he convinced me to drive with him to Sikkim. I had finished editing Glide and the work was over, distribution and all was done. I was looking for work in Bombay and got a documentary to edit. But instead he convinced me to sit with him in his Thar (the old one which was a jeep without windows and all), and that morning I left on the best road trip ever with my two t-shirts and shorts in December. There was a paragliding competition in Gangtok which Vijay had organised, a first of its kind that he got to India so local pilots who did not have resources to travel abroad for could compete here itself in the sport. And so we were on our way making the Thar our home for the next one week.

That morning he said, "It would be great if you came. I will have help driving. Else it is seeming difficult." So we drove, between the two of us, some 3500 kms from Kamshet to Gangtok. I told him frankly that I am broke and will not be able to chip in for the stay. He said don't worry I will take care of it. But I didn't want to bother him so I called each and every person I knew along the way from MP, Bihar, West Bengal to ensure that we don't pay for the stay. At one point in Bihar we found ourselves stuck. The stay planning work was divided between me and another friend, who we picked up along the way from a random village in UP. We couldn't find anyone we knew in the state. Just then I had an idea. I asked Vijay how much of a detour would Patna be? "80kms", he said. "But no problem." I decided that we would spend the night at the Patna Sahib Gurudwara. We reached there at 2 in the night, four of us. The gates were opened for us. Next morning we had the langar, attended the service and left by afternoon for Siliguri. Vijay was feverish. But he insisted on driving. I told him to come on the back seat and rest. We had sleeping bags and all. He refused. He liked to push himself a lot. But finally he relented, saying he needs to nap. I took over the wheel and had the best drive of my life through Bihar on its newly constructed four lane highways. I had no idea the state was so beautiful. 

Somehow we reached Sikkim soon enough. But the trip always stayed in our hearts because it brought us closer as friends. Recently I told him that let's plan another road trip since it had been years. May be we head to North east this time and he was on board. He was always on board for an adventure, crazy that he was. 

Vijay was much older to me. But he remained one of the closest friends who were always there for me, especially in my lowest phases. Usually not knowing what to say when I was going through tough times, he would just tell me, "You come here. Come and stay at Orange Life. Chill here."

Orange Life was home. I have spent months there, sometimes looking after the property when he was travelling to Europe for comps in summer. He passed on his love for Sahyadris to me. The ghats became a longing for me everytime I was in Maharashtra. For someone who loved the Himalayas and could not see beyond them, I gained massive respect for the ghats, thanks to Vijay. He took all his friends to crazy hikes in the ghats, sometimes to escort groups who were spending weekend at Orange Life, and sometimes to visit the jungle at night to look at fireflies. On one such hike when I was taking young children and Vijay was dealing with their mothers, he came close and whispered in my ear, "Be careful now. We are crossing a tiger corridor." And I was like you cannot slip that in so casually. But I remained calm, even though I was quite scared from within. 

Loosing friends is very tough and the past year and half has been a process of letting go, making peace and moving on, only to have another friend go. 

How do you make sense of a loss, of a presence so huge in your life? People you may not see, but you know they are there until they are not. Jigish, another friend in Bir, says, "People are just memory. How do you know they are really gone? If you keep the phone now. Even I become a memory." But you know. Something within you shifts and gets heavier and heavier. May be it's shock. But it's a weight that starts sinking within you and numbs you. 

We are often told that life and death is one. Somehow that makes sense. But mortality is what we know and no matter how many deaths we see around us, when someone you least expect goes, it is difficult to come to terms with it. Amit and Vatsala, my other two friends were taken by cancer. And knowing they suffered was painful for me. Even though they must have stared at mortality in their hospital beds, still their end seemed abrupt to me. But end is the only truth of life, if there is one.

I know I am getting better at receiving the news of loved ones leaving and becoming more accepting of this aspect of life. For Vijay the only consolation is that he died doing what he loved, which is flying, and he didn't have to suffer much. Hopefully he continues to fly in his afterlife because if it's boring, he is not going to stay there too long.