Dear Manny,
Sushant, I just finished watching Dil Bechara and I am crying profusely, but it’s not for you. It’s not for you, because your loss isn’t something I’ve come to par with. It’s a wondrous star that I continue to wish on, only to see that smile again, the smile I found in Manny.
Hence, I am crying because there was a Manny who taught the meaning of life and I wonder if it’ll ever be the same for me. What I also wonder is — did he teach you the same? Because as far as I could know you from this distant — Manny was you. You were Manny.
“Perhaps the difference between what is miserable, and that, which is spectacular, lies in the leap of faith.”
Isn’t that what you opened our life to?
Manny, you taught me that even after it all ends, one is to smile. The smile which sustains as a constant forgery to the meaning of life. A smile that we share with the person who is, and who will be, forever — in the heart.
You taught Kizie that there is always, a ‘hamesha’, that lives by, it’s on us that whether we know how to live it. But you taught me, that forever is always in a counted number of days because, after that, it’s the memories of the forever that lives with you.
Manny, you taught me that you are your own Rajnikanth, and only you can pull together the reel of life in faith of real life. That smile, that smile is everything that matters in the end and he had that smile, the one that can light up rooms and live by the end of times. I’ll heart that smile. I’ll live that smile, in the hope that it still exists — somewhere beyond the time of now and forever, beyond life and death, with you and with me.
Manny, you taught me that love does come easy if we open our arms to it, beyond the idea of a heartbreak — something I had never learnt, and probably wouldn’t ever.
Manny, you taught me that the idea of life and death is truly not in our hands, but the silliest of contemplations can gift you a lifetime of memories — because that’s how one chooses to live — it’s a decision and I’ll choose to live silly here on.
So, thank you for leaving behind Manny. Thank you for leaving behind a part of you that I can always fall back to whenever I hold that empty feeling in the heart, because in the end, or another beginning — Manny was you, and you were Manny.
Love,
Another Kizie Basu,
Of the lost world.