He wasn’t looking for a stranger. He was looking for himself.
The doctors had given him six months. That was two years ago. Since then, every morning had begun the same way: brew the kehwa, open the laptop, and scroll through the names of the dead. It had started as a morbid joke— Let’s see if I made the list today —but it had become scripture. He knew the rhythm of grief now. On Mondays, the page was full. By Friday, sparse. The language was always formal, a parade of “beloved husbands,” “pious souls,” and “deeply mourned by.”
Aged 58. Left behind husband, daughter in Canada, and a loyal pug named Kulfi. Cremation at 4 PM, Shamshan Ghat, Jammu. Daily Excelsior Epaper Obituary Today
Obituaries.
That evening, he did something he hadn’t done in months. He took out a pen and a sheet of rough paper—the kind used for wrapping vegetables—and began to write. He wasn’t looking for a stranger
The next morning, he opened the epaper again. The obituary page was there, as always—a fresh crop of names, a fresh geometry of loss. But Amar no longer looked for himself. He looked for the living.
Amar Nath clicked the mouse for the hundredth time. The Daily Excelsior epaper loaded, its familiar blue-and-white masthead glowing on his screen. But his eyes didn’t scan the headlines about the border tensions or the budget session. They went straight to the bottom-right corner of the front page, then to the inside pages—the small, dense box of text bordered in black. That was two years ago
He folded the paper, slipped it into an envelope, and addressed it to the editor of the Daily Excelsior . Not for publication. Just for keeping.
He found his own reflection in the dark screen instead. And for the first time in two years, he smiled.