Fred.

Dedicated to a friend who is a brother above all, a brother who has shared the emotions and experiences of a most fascinating and fulfilling month in this Life I have been given; a blessed journey through what Life truly is, and one that has taught me many-a-lesson and made me a slightly-more-whole human being. 

And Fred leaves. Never has a friend felt so much like a brother. Traversing the whole of Russia, Mongolia, and China together - the Gobi, Siberia, the communist capitals of the world; going through literal shit together, buses that never came, freak snowstorms, desert heat on horseback, trudging up and down sand dunes; poking fun at people, the neverending jokes and laughter (even when being stopped by the PLA in China); sticking it out in a ger together, putting up with a cat in the house (multiple times), late-night starscape photography in the middle of nowhere in the desert, exploring neverending Hutongs while making a million-and-one friends and enemies along the way; eating our way through the world, one country at a time; driving top down through a city come-to-life in spring, my dearest Berlin, zipping about tree-lined avenues just bursting with red, green, yellow, purple, with radiant blue skies overhead as the wind whips through our hair and caresses our faces; coasting down the autobahn, liberated from the world at 220 kilometers per sixty minutes, pure black asphalt opening up before us, the way the icy lake did as we coasted down hills on our not-so-little quad bike in our baggy pants; all this - this joy, this happiness, this overwhelming positivity and radiance of bliss and sunshine and life - was it really but a month? 

Never has a friend felt so much like a brother, one who feels so close to my parents that he can’t bear to call them “uncle” or “auntie” or “Mr./Mrs. Sohan”, and instead lies in limbo, for calling them “mom” and “dad” may not evoke reciprocal emotions and instead perhaps the opposite coupled with pure awkwardness. Emotions - what I feel now, sitting at my table, sipping the tea we just bought at the cafe made of coffee bean shells, in an empty and quiet home, so devoid of life, even as the cheerful sun fills the room with its golden light and the cool spring breeze scents these four walls. 

Strange bittersweet nostalgia seizes me as the birds chirp in the garden, where we had a barbeque what felt like yesterday; and I can’t be either happy or sad, joyous or depressed - I lie in limbo too, for memories are to be locked in the deepest recesses of the heart, to be savoured in those special moments when life seizes you with joyous nostalgia, and life is truly lived. These words I write capture but a fraction of what lies in my mind. To choose the pen or the sword is an inane query, for as the world spins around and around and day turns to night, it is only we, who sit so small and alone beneath the vast canvas of the starry night in the steppes and plains in that gentle valley of simple joy - it is we who feel and we who smile quietly at the beauty of recollection, of memory. 

In memory of this beautiful month, 1 April - 1 May, 2015.