This place is mine and I'm still here...a short one about death and what we live behind

“Pyre” is out today. It’s the closing track from Bobby’s Voice and one of my favorite tracks I’ve ever written. My dad was inspired to write the lyrics when he came back to his brother Bobby’s apartment from his funeral and felt his presence suffused into every surface of the place. Here’s a lyric video so you can read along if you want:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7qN6fccmN0

I was recently in Echo Park late at night and my buddy Kris showed me the apartment where Elliott Smith died (and demoed many of my favorite songs of all time) and for some reason that experience feels related too. It’s funny how songs can be prophecies. And it’s interesting to me how our cells will disperse into the places we’ve lived till they’re both imperceptible and inseparable. Like a cursed ship of Theseus.

I’ll leave you with my dad’s words on “Pyre”. I hope they mean as much to you as they do to me.

My big brother Bobby died on July 20, 2018 and I cremated him the next day. When I got back, and after all the crying had been done, all the chai had been drunk, the samosas had been eaten, the white saris had fluttered away, I sat in that apartment where Bobby had lived, his stuff and his smell still there. The grief crept into my heart through the obvious gate: Bobby’s death, but it spread, till it was impossible to isolate the precise source of my sadness. What was I grieving? That I’d never see my brother again? His sardonic grin? His evil sarcasm? His calling out “Oye Guddu, pick up the remote - it’s fallen again”? Or for the choices I had made? Going to IIM Calcutta for my MBA? Moving across the world? Would I have given up the opportunity to immigrate and give my wife and son the charmed life they have? Or was it for the loss of an indefinable presence, as though my parents had bequeathed me another family member apart from Bobby: that of caring for Bobby, an living, breathing entity unto itself. But it wasn’t all sad. Mixed with the grief, was a sense of relief. Even exhilaration. No more four times a year, economy-class, 16-hour flights to India. No more fiendishly uncomfortable attendant sofas in hospital rooms. No more hours sitting on those hard plastic seats in Arctic-cold ICU’s. No more NRI hate and disrespect. No more helping Kabir with his trigonometry homework over choppy phone connections. No more 3 AM conference calls with American clients from hospital waiting rooms as I tried to keep my job which would help pay for Archana and Kabir’s life and Bobby’s care. Maybe it wasn’t about Bobby at all. After all, everyone loses family at some point; why was my grief special? Was it just pure narcissism, my vague, shame-filled self definition as a hero, and the doubt: had I done my karma as a brother? So I sat there in that empty apartment with Bobby’s smell still there, with the strange feeling that he was still there talking to me. And in that dream-like state, this is what I heard him say.

Pre-order Bobby’s Voice here.