I am waiting for the day my friend Margaret comes to haunt me. She decided she would assume the form of a kingfisher. It's not been a week yet since she finally slipped away, succumbing to the cancer she fought so bravely to the best of her physical and mental capacity. Those of us who were privileged to be part of her community of writer friends knew this was coming. She had been preparing us. She had been nurturing us, inspiring us to make our peace with the fact that she would soon be no more. I kept wishing and hoping and praying that the state she was in when I visited her back in March was temporary, a transient rite of healing.

A month before, when I had spent some hours at a Homoeopathic clinic in Delhi getting her the medication she had been recommended by one of her doctors, I felt hopeful that it might deliver her from her unease. I couriered it to her and slipped in the invisible weight of my prayers. One thing I would soon come to learn was that she was not afraid of death. She told us she had had a big, ambitious bucket list, but she had done it all and she had lived joyously enough to nurse no regrets.