Katja Caro

It meant a lot for me to remain connected with people who came to my life. But some how in the last four years, I have been so bad at it. All I thought about was the work, work and work. I slept on work, I dreamt of work and I lived on the work. Some where down the lane, private life thinned into a public space where I almost took it for granted that others also lived probably like me.

Four years before, when I came back to Bangalore from Oxford, I met Caro in a photo studio who was struggling some prints. I don't know why, I ended up offering to help her, sorted out the problems and later even dropped a CD with the pictures she was trying to print at her office. She was the tallest woman I had ever seen and whenever we went for a walk, I could see people curiously looking at her because of her height. Even for a German, she was really tall.She used to jokingly say that she probably would never find an Indian man she could marry because of this.I think I can probably count the number of times we had met in the last four years. We stayed in touch, met once in a while, the last time was when she was in Goa a month ago. I had recently been there to be with a friend who was in distress and was sharing my experience there. Later she kept on calling me wanting to tell me something, but I kept on missing the calls or replied back telling I am in a meeting and will cal back ASAP, which never happened.

Coming back after three weeks in Rajasthan and another three weeks in Europe, I got an SMS from a common friend telling, there is something she wants to tell me about Caro. Again, I was busy running between airports, I managed to call only this afternoon. I don't know if calling earlier would have made any difference, but yes certainly for my consciousness. Because Caro died this evening after being declared brain dead for a week or so!

It seems last Tuesday, Caro complained of aches on her left hand side of her body and was taken through many tests in different hospitals. Being the stubborn person she is when it comes to doctors, I can imagine that she walked out on many of them. Finally before they could diagnose what it was, she had a heameroge, cardiac arrest and as my friend SMSed me, "Katja's heart stopd by 4pm".

I was again too busy to have seen that SMS on time, because I was in a meeting at the conference venue, looking at the last minute arrangements. Probably its time that I take it easy and start connecting back with people who mattered once in life or those who still matters. One hug is all probably what we might be giving, but shit, you never know that could actually be the last!

Even if I have been silent because of 'my work', I shouldn't miss another opportunity to tell people what they mean to me in life!

Life sometimes doesn't give another chance!