It wasn’t chance that I discovered Rubhen. For he discovered me.
In 2015, as an entire generation sought a second chance on creating an identity – now online – the PR of the general teen had changed. The stolen jokes could set you up to be the witty boy, the lyrics next to your diagonal Retrica photo could establish you as the emotionally complex girl – the introvert and the extrovert were equals in the attention crisis. One of the first victors and inspirations was a 19-year-old boy who wrote the truth with visibly convent-school-educated-spellings and full stops. In my introvert head which was waiting for the intellectual in the popularity war, I was soon a distant admirer of the senior I had rarely heard of in school.
I don’t remember what the words were about. But that one fine day, he defied the first of many norms in my life – he texted first to a junior. Over the next days, as we understood common interests in poetry and writing – we realized we’re visiting the same event on a summer day in ’16. Rubhen was performing his poem 11:11 on the Anti-Social stage at Hauz Khas. I was visiting the same for the 17-year-old me wanted exposure to what the outside world possessed. This was the first time I was leaving home for something I desired to pursue alone. It was about to be an iconic day as it is as I memorized the metro route, the anticipatory butterflies of being the youngest in the room still juggling – when Rubhen informed me of his performance. We decided to meet.
Having no one to talk to, only a senior who I texted with online to root for and knowing I was his only ‘friend’ that turned up, I sat in the front row and decided to record his performance. Rubhen walked up to the stage with a distinct walk – his – with hands close to his body, head a bit bent and a quiet announcement to the world of his introversion. Over the years, as Rubhen established himself as the anchor around which hundreds of people knew each other – the walk never changed. I never saw anyone but him do that. Until I saw his brother take a bigger stage at a Church in Delhi three days after Rubhen died.
‘11:11’ was Rubhen’s go-to open mic piece. In my evanescent recollection of it, it was quite romantic in material. In texture, it was small sentences and pauses with a straight back. In context of our lives, it was a phase. Over the last decade, I’ve more physical memories of Rubhen talking to a larger audience than anyone else. They all sound clear, confident and precise. The audience is captivated and the silence is stunning. That day was no different. Months later, he told me of how he thought he fucked up that day. I dismissed it as imposter syndrome – for it was quite a talented room to be in. In hindsight, he left way more hints on his nervousness, his ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ attitude and his immense preparation before these seamlessly spur-of-the-moment monologues. The biggest evidence of the same was when at The Yellow Nights ’20, Rubhen asked me to help him out in one of these speeches. I was supposed to raise my hand and say an exact sentence when I received his cue. It went so smoothly that I almost killed it by my gushing. He went on like business as usual.
That’s what separated him and the rest of us. He was the jack of some trades and the master of some more. Keeping people hooked with him – laying his heart out was the soul of all Bin Nakshe Kadam trips, all Taameer Events, and all Yellow Nights. He knew despite spending nights designing trips, websites, campaigns, marketing and managing the logistics – the ultimate USP to be protected was him. It bothered him that he’ll never be able to delegate the same. A trip without him wouldn’t be the same. He voiced it out to me on a very long metro ride in early ’20. I asked him to be more comfortable without perfection, thinking long term and trusting the people he loves. It was a back-and-forth for the next hour. He was 23. I was 21.
“How do I explain Rubhen to people that don’t know him?” is a question just as frustratingly poignant today – over a month since his passing – as it was when we had just met. Even then, I struggled to explain to my friends what it did to me to think out loud in the same pixels of this universe as him. But today, of all days, it becomes important to make an attempt at it. Of all that do know him – know what he did. It wasn’t just depth of conversation, the textbook ‘making you feel heard’, the pace of storytelling or the details of his life that he decided to leak with you. It was what he did later.
In a generation defined by nonchalance, he’ll ensure he has the last word with his words of care. He would remember years later, and he would remind you the same night. Like a hot date – who isn’t supposed to call back first – he’ll ensure he texts you what stood out to him. He’ll close the loop of listening with the last step – to matter in his life. A walk that ended at 8 PM, would’ve a 11 PM textual reminder – that now you and him are bonded for life.
He knew he did that and that never played a part on his purity, for he meant it all these years later still doing consciously to people that had the destiny of meeting him. I knew that all these years back. The day he performed 11:11 at Hauz Khas, we went back together. That was the first day in my life I talked about something I had recently fallen in love with – films. I spoke for an hour straight to a focused Rubhen without breaking a sweat. The next years saw me writing every week, travelling to Mumbai, meeting film critics from around the country and getting published. I was often the youngest in the room, but I never felt it – because he never let me feel it the first time I opened up about it, while changing metros at Rajiv Chowk in the summer of ’16.
Over the years, he was at the heart of creating magic through the artivisits and travelling communities he found. Taameer, Bin-Naqshe Kadam and The Yellow Festival were all his babies and it’s hysterical what he had us do. Many rode the Rubhen wave to be writing letters to strangers lying down at the lawns of Arts Faculty at DU’s North Campus. Some more were then living entire lives while trekking in sub-zero temperatures of a December Himachal in absolute darkness, just because Rubhen knew the way. Many more were cleaning streets a day after Diwali. And perhaps even more were trusting people they had never heard of, only because Rubhen introduced them. It was unhinged, it worked and it was beautiful. What his 4 AM dreams do to hundreds’ 4 PM realities was unprecedented, is still not understood and will perhaps never be replicated.
In the last 10 years – I’ve gone from an all-consuming school, a dead-rubber college, a capitalistically fanatic B-school, and an organization that thrives on calling it a family – one safety-net after the other. I’ve hung out with friends that I intend to spend my lives with, with exes I might never encounter again, with middle-aged men who selfishly crave the extra 1% at expense of each other and with people who give me so much love and warmth that makes the heart grow soft. Yet, of all rooms I have been in – the one I aspire to be in again – were rooms where Rubhen set the tone. Where he switched on the light and was the last to leave. Such was the impact of the communities he set-up, the people I met because of him and the conversations my nerves let my muscles flow – that the benchmark never got breached. Now, as I write this in a flight that’s soaring above clouds, I stare out to the absolute finality of his passing. I sit on a window seat, unpopularly excited to look outside even when I’ve done this hundreds of times. He always noticed. He even once wrote about it me looking outside bus windows as one of the reasons he loves what he does. I look down into lonely hills, all reminiscent of the treks that never end and the possibility of a group of 8 people struggling to pull their overweight bags up. I look up into an even clearer blue sky above me – into a symbolic heaven – to feel him a bit closer to me. Maybe now he can hear my fingers tapping the keys of my laptop writing about him clearer than they could’ve when I did a couple of nights back struggling in my bedroom.
And over these 10 years, every time I’ve left rooms that I didn’t wish to leave to enter rooms I unstrategically chose to enter – my brain skipped to this peculiar conversation we had at the intersection of two blue line metro coaches. “Talk to those who you love today. You never know when you see someone for the last time.” The same thought has had me hugging my 59-year-old mother tighter. The same has had me saying “I love you” to my 61-year-old Indian father. Rubhen’s words, especially because they came from him, had me expressing my every last bit to people I cared about – my friends knew that I saw them evolve and it made me proud, my team at work knew that I saw their struggles in scorching rural heats every day, the same made me caress my 18 months-old nephew and niece even as they slept peacefully to say a goodbye as if it was the last. Of all my ways of living in this crippling-anxiety-ridden-knee-jerking-hands-nerving-voice-trembling always-in-the-past-or-the-future existence, goodbyes were the only seconds of the day that I lived in the moment. My brain, my body and my heart called truce and clicked a mental picture.
Yet, I couldn’t do it to him. As our frequency of our conversations dwindled over the last few years – logistics and otherwise, I always thought of reaching out the next time I was in our city. I saw him from a distance – new friends, getting married, new ideas, marathons and executing everything like only he could. He was manning his own personal brand alone and the pride I had in the 19-year-old who was disgusted by his poetry performance in ’16 was romantic until 10th March.
It has been two months now since I first heard the news. Since I understood the circumstances of his passing, the witnesses of tragedy, his face unbecoming in an open casket and its eventual burial on a Thursday evening. The pain, grief and perspectives have all three held me in tight ropes. The calls from those concerned have ended and even when they endured – explaining him and his impact on me is a pathetic little task. Some usual lines on how “he lived more in his 29 years than I ever will” have become muscle memory. In my head – “no one will ever understand” soon changed to “it doesn’t matter because it lives in my heart”. “It’s important to talk about him” is permanent. And hence this piece. This piece has kept me collected and as I look to finally end it today – taking over 2000 words for a percentage of what I understood of him, I think I should let it go. I’ll light a small fire to it and let it float in the sea of world’s memories.
It has been an intellectual struggle to process the loss of a dear human, a long-time friend and Rubhen. All three are to be grieved differently, all three warrant respect, all three deserve being talked about. A young-adult with ‘legacy’ firmly placed in all his social media bio(s) – gravestones for the living – he had already launched, become our responsibilities. He’ll live vicariously through me and the many others he shaped or influenced. He’ll continue to live in rooms where people listen, express, cry and create. In thoughts that brew into objective ideas and chaos that don’t escape the notes app. In my heart – as the only man to ever live that I looked up to, loved, was listened by and loved by all in the same metro ride home. In everything that I do, every piece I write, every person I love and every goodbye I extend – will contain remains of a friend whose intentions were too pure and spark too universal to be limited to earthly mortality.
I love you, brother. Just 5 minutes more for the trek to end.
– Mayank / Mandy
Finding Dan 