An Ode to a Future Friend*

(in Memory of Pravesh Shrestha)

We came to this place together.

I’ll always remember our first night here.

We were talking along the bar and you grinned.

We laughed and conversed.

You told me that you were Nepali . . . that you spoke it.

You told me that you were Hindu . . . and this was our bond.

I believe you and I had come a long way,

And now you have left this place to me,

and I will conquer it for the both of us.

Although I did not know you,

I know this is what you would have wanted.

And this is all that I have at heart my friend,

for I knew you not in the past,

nor in the present,

and yet I will know you in the future.

*adapted from a poem by Maryann Elizabeth Pekara

Amar Rajagopal Chadaga

MSI