"Don't worry I will hold you" that is the first line I remember when I look at the picture of both of us together..taken with the setting sun in the background, me trying to get a grip in the wet sand and his small chubby hands holding my wrists. He is five years younger than me, and i think i was 13 in that picture.

The next time we went to Goa he was towering above me all of six feet, he had grown quite a bit, but this time around i was not interested in what the family was doing, i had a boyfriend now, and my parents and the rest of the world look like my sworn enemy, all of 22 i think i suffered from boisterous adolosense late in life.On that holiday we went on one of them water scooters. He got on it and and then before he could get off the bike at the jetty, his foot slipped and he was gone..just like that a small circle of froth near the jetty and he was just gone. I froze, and my mom screamed. In a matter of seconds his head bobbed up and then they got him on the jetty. But we all were so scared i think it took us more than five minutes to get our voices back.

A few days later we went for a party, this time he tripped again. And i said, "You are such a spaz" He just grumbled and i think i saw tears in his eyes. This kept happening..and we did not think it was anything but just lazy behaviour. As i sat looking at the CT scans at the hospital, and then the next whole year of watching him deteriorate i knew the moments i spent wiht him are just that 'moments' i cannot have him the way he was even just a year back, fighting with me, smiling with me, singing the stupid songs we made up on parrots and neighbours. I was losing my brother to an illness, and there was nothing i could do about it.There are just so many things i share with him, that i cannot share wiht anyone else and now he lies blind, unable to move while my mom tries to coax him to swallow medicines. Our world fell apart three years ago. He still smiles when he hears my voice. But this time even if I want to say "Dont worry i will hold you." I cant.

There is a region worse than being alive and being dead, he is in that place right now. The only solace is pictures from the past...and the emails he wrote to me..and memories of books, pens, smells, smiles, games, fights, hugs and conversations. I want to go back to that evening when we were just laughing and playing on the beach. Just once. Just once more.