Wednesday September 21, 2016. That day my life took a great blow. He realized my most innate emotions and showed me how unexpected life can be.

Maybe if I had arrived earlier, maybe if I had called him, maybe if it hadn’t rained. All those thoughts were spinning in my mind. Every day I walked a short distance from my house to my math tuition. It was a cozy little room with what looked like hundreds of books and a variety of curious and interesting objects, in which four tables and some seats were somehow snug. In the middle of the room sat the most remarkable person I have ever met.

He never really liked being called sir, rather he asked us to call him “uncle.” He was a teacher in every sense of the word, teaching us not only math, physics, chemistry, accounting, and economics, but also the many twists and turns, the ups and downs of life. For the better part of 2 years I have known him and after these two years I find myself lost without him. Where everyone saw an abomination, scum so to speak, he saw a lost but innocent soul. More than just telling me about my problem, he took an active interest in solving it. After a long day of taking notes and solving sums, I expected to spend 3 more hours taking notes and solving sums. Why? Uncle. No one could give me what he did, inspiration. In everything he did he managed to inspire us, whether it was his days in the army, his relationship with his children, who are doctors but can teach you calculus in three hours, or just a casual epiphany he had last night. My only regret is that I never really told him what a bad student I had been. I regret that I did poorly on the math test. I have no regrets when I didn’t get to that college I always wanted to go to, even after which he still promised to help me so that next year the sun really shines on me. I was sorry the day I found him dead in the basement.

A walk down the street is the uncle’s house, where his wife, whom we originally called aunt, had her beauty parlor, and on the other side, the entrance to the basement of the dinghy that was our happy little license plate. That day I was going to give a test in integrals. I was a little late so I was making my excuse on the way. So excited, I made my way to the license plate. When I arrive I see the door ajar. Now here’s the thing, since the license plate is the basement room, you can only see the top of the door from the road. Approaching the door I see that the license plate is flooded. There is no sign of the uncle. A couple of chairs were knocked over by the entrance. I also saw a motor pump propped up next to the stairs and thought, “it must have been trying to empty the room.” Another step forward and horror hit him. Under those same chairs I saw the torso of my teacher. I rushed into the room and stepped into the water and was instantly greeted with shock, literally. I threw down the chairs and saw him clutching a wired outlet, facing the ankle deep water. I immediately went for the plug that I was holding in my hand when I touched it, which greeted me with another scare. I took it from his hand and put it on the table. I picked him up and turned him over and tried to resuscitate him all the time by screaming his name. When a minute or more had passed since I entered, I ran into the living room and reported to the aunt what had happened. Soon there were a dozen people at the entrance to the room. We took him out of the room and waited for the requested ambulance, but time was of the essence. So we sat him in the car with aunt and other people, and they went to the hospital, but I knew better. Even as he was thrown out, I saw his face, with lifeless eyes and an unchanging expression, I knew that he had died a long time ago. The staff in the room, the security guards across the street, and just me. They asked me to lock the basement door and gave me the keys. With shaking hands and a hard-pressed mind, I locked the room, picked up my slippers that I had somehow broken in the process, and went home. I walked into an empty room and cried, cried until I lost my voice. After that, I was silent. Only at midnight, when my parents really cared about me, did I narrate the tragedy. That night I did not sleep. I kept thinking about what could have been. If only I had come earlier, if perhaps I had called him before coming, could I have saved him? Even the aunt and staff claimed to have heard a strong band, but never suspected something so bleak.

I also sat wondering why his glasses were intact? The only plausible explanation was that he was still alive for some time before he died. The current paralyzed him, but if that didn’t kill him, surely the water did. Until dawn I lamented and blamed myself. Over time I realized that it was not my place to grant or take life. The next morning, I went up to the house and gave my condolences to the aunt and her son, who had flown to Hyderabad on an emergency notice. All who came were words about me. How I pulled the plug out of the water, avoiding more casualties, how I had this presence of mind, giving him CPR, straightening him out and everything else. With each passing second, this compliment just got stupider and stupider. What good is bravery if it doesn’t save the only life that really mattered to me? After some persuasion from family members and my mother, I returned home. Before going, I asked them to contact the students who were coming and tell them what had happened, as only a few who were out of town knew of the incident.

The next day, around 4:00 pm in the afternoon, the extraordinary man, Colonel Charanjit Singh Arora, our dear uncle, was cremated. So much irony here !! He dies a few days after a granddaughter is born to him. He showed me all his articles on here from the first one and he’s not even here to see the first one. He always told us that his time is near, maybe 10 years from now. But here’s the thing, we may have prepared for when the time comes, but we never expected it to be 10 days. Under his guidance, we had all thrived in one way or another, always learning something new and improving on the old. Even in his death he had taught me a lesson, “always care and live life with joy.” For the next 30 or so years of my life I don’t know what I’m going to do, but after that, I want to be a teacher, so one day I can also become someone’s “uncle.”