Sept 20
Just as I am about to leave for Kerala today news comes that my friend Luke, handyman, friend, died. Hr fell down and just died. I whine in disbelief as my wife tells me this. Yesterday I had discussed some urgent repair work on the house with him. And here he is: no more. Gone from this world.
Luke, friend, partner, r.i.p
Luke was Sri Lankan and I have been wanting to write a short fiction about him, his English, his gentle personality, his lack if guile, his readiness to help any time. This was a series of short fiction I am planning on the South Asian diaspora living illegally in India. I have already written on a Bangladeshi migrant.
Why he left a comfortable life in Negombo, Sri Lanka, to work in a remote valley in a satellite city is beyond me. I had visited his native town of Negombo when I had gone on a visit. We discussed its beaches, its people. His brothers are business owners he tells me, placed highly in the island nation. They had come to India to take him back. At the airport he ran back, out of the terminal, away from where his brother waited for him, to the country he had no wish to leave, because he loved that country. He said many times that he loved India.
Now he is no more. He was walking on the street. He fell down and died. He had long greying hair, a bulky body used to working, and the softest expression in his eyes. I remember his face clearly from our meeting yesterday. He had said, "you come back no, then I do your work, little, little, money give me anytime, no worry, only you be satisfied wid my work."
Those were his parting words.
(Sent from my mobile phone.)
P.S. I wrote a first person short story on Luke here. Do visit, read, and "share."
