If you’re a regular reader of my work, you know who My Brave Lady is, isn’t it?
So, before I talk to you about her, let me thank you for accepting and welcoming me wholeheartedly to my previous blog. I feel elated to be here again.
Today, the 16th of March, marks my best friend’s birthday – who’s popularly known as My Brave Lady. And the biggest irony is that I never remembered her birth date when she was alive. I would always confuse myself between 16th and 19th March and end up asking her for the correct one.
Ever since she left this world, it became the need of the hour to remember the right date as she’ll no longer be there to pull my ears and correct me.
Now, when I see the month of March coming, my heart sinks. I regret not planning any surprise birthday party for her when she was here like she did for all my birthdays. Don’t I sound like a pathetic friend?
It’s astonishing how we value people after they’re gone, forever.
My love for My Brave Lady is inked in my second book. My school best friend once said, “You have kept My Brave Lady alive in all your reader’s hearts. I am proud of you”.
The other day, she also started reading the book for the second time. When I asked her the reason for reading it again, she said, “I don’t know. I felt like reading it and picked it up”.
Another friend of mine called me and said, “I was going through all my books and when I was flipping through the pages of My Brave Lady, I found a couple of pages were stained with dirty brown spots. I felt extremely sad about it and thought of sharing my feelings with you”.
And both the above incidents happened in this very month – her birthday month. She never fails to surprise me, not even after she’s gone.
I wonder what would she look like on her 30th birthday. Would she have bangs like she did in the pandemic for a while? Or would she have long nourished hair after applying all the ayurveda knowledge she would keep gathering? Would she have put on some weight?
Sadly, she would look the same as she did on her 27th. We might develop white hair, and our body structure might change over the years, but My Brave Lady cannot grow now.
This brutal truth sometimes haunts me. Many times she visits me in my dreams and we have a nice time working on our dreams, where we publish books with my writings and her drawings.
My editor had to take a break after reading the first chapter of my manuscript of My Brave Lady. But she was curious and came back to the story in a couple of days.
If you ask me, today, even I find it difficult to read the chapter on the funeral. Maybe because I’ve experienced it first hand or maybe because I don’t want to picture it all over again.
But I would still insist you read My Brave Lady now to know who she was and to know what she went through all by herself.
If you buy the book today or gift it to a friend (if you think he/she should read it), I will be happy to see My Brave Lady reaching more people and finding a place in more hearts.
So, click here to buy the book and wish her a happy 30th birthday. Before that, here’s a little snippet from the book:
Dearest Divya,
How are you? I hope you’re at peace out there. I know you’ve left halfway and that there were several undone tasks on your life’s to-do list. With this book, I’ve ticked off at least one of your dreams, or I better say, ‘our dream’. Our book is finally out. I’m not happy as you are not with me for the launch. But if you want to see me happy here, you ought to be happy there. Will you? I take it as a ‘yes’. Because I know my Divya finds happiness wherever she goes, isn’t it?
Do you remember the Vipassana center? I called it the torture centre but loved staying there and had promised another visit there. I think you’re on your next stay, but this time it’s forever, with no hope of you coming back from your meditation sessions. I hope they’re serving you well there, and you’re missing me; you better miss me, okay?
