Here Be Roses. Khilte Hain Gul Yahan.

The news went around the planet in forty minutes flat.

Sameera had died. She was fifty-three.

The call went from Anushka in Morristown, NJ, to Sadhana in Bangalore, India, then to Akanksha
in London. Another ethereal vein of telecommunication then opened from Anushka in Morristown,
New Jersey, to Sonia in Udaipur, India. Finally, Akanksha in London called Priyanka in Naples,
Italy, and the circle was complete.

All six of them remembered, simultaneously, the scene in the movie Sharmilee where the bright-faced
and wolfishly grinning hero, Shashi Kapoor, locked eyes with the green-eyed, pert-nosed, and petite heroine,
Rakhi, and instantly dented his head in love. And they especially remembered, all six of them, the song,
Khilte Hain Gul Yahan, Khil Ke Bikharne Do.

Here be Roses. Let them lie as they fall.

Sameera’s favorite song. The one she asked for again and again at parties and gatherings whenever
someone with an even passable singing voice happened to be present. The one that inevitably
made her eyes film over, gave her a faraway expression. As if she were looking back at a past that
had failed to materialize into the future it had promised. As though the present was the massive
disappointment it was. As though… If only…

They all heard the same song and also saw in their mind’s eye the luminous face of Rakhi, the Audrey Hepburn of India one might say, the unforgotten heroine of the movie Sharmilee, her hair in the bouffant de riguer coiffure for the glamor girl they say she’d become overnight from the leg-swinging, roasted-peanut-popping neighborhood tomboy-cum-fast girl she’d been before some famous film director spotted her and her Tequila eyes. The unforgotten heroine of Sharmilee, spotted at the party in the film by the every-woman’s-wet-dream Shashi Kapoor, ‘Army Officer,’ him with the canine-overload smile and the dark-dark over-the-forehead locks, falling into Rakhi’s Tequila Sunrise eyes and drowning forever. Rakhi with the petite nose and wide mouth with plump cupid’s bow lips. Winged eyebrows and hip-length glossy straight hair. And beyond all that, that undefinable, ineffable aura, that je ne sais quoi that made her outshine many other curvier, taller, and better dancing Bollywood actress.

They all remembered Rakhi’s dewy sex appeal but also Sameera’s when she was eighteen, when she couldn’t walk past a street corner choked with the usual gaggle of roadside Romeos, without creating a practical typhoon of catcalls and serenades. Mere Sapnon Ki Raani Kab Aayegi Tu. Etcetera.

They all remembered. And then also the last days. Last months. Of Sameera on the ventilator. The sawing sound of machine in charge of membrane. Of Sameera like a deflated inflatable doll. Her once-sparkling eyes closed, cratered. Drool sometimes gathering and dripping from a side of her mouth; drool the nurse didn’t always wipe away.

Sameera weeping at the diagnosis years ago; Sameera drinking her Scotch and soda; Sameera blaming everyone around and those far away for what was happening, what had happened, what would happen. Sameera taking to her bed for months when the doctors wouldn’t change the diagnosis though she told them they were wrong. Sameera in a wheelchair, her visible skin slack and puckered.

A rare disease. Incurable. Something that made the body give up on itself long before its due time. Cells muttering non-cooperation. Weakness and fatigue. Neurons not firing on cue. Muscles unraveling. Sudden bursts of energy and equally profuse surges of despair and terror. Even then she sometimes asked to hear Khilte Hain Gul Yahan.

There are women like that. They don’t want to live, they fall ill, unless life is like that.

Not clear what the song had meant. Story was Sameera had had a similar ‘filmy’ encounter with a similar handsome young ‘Army Officer’ in some army cantonment where she’d been visiting an aunt and uncle. Very possible. Sameera had been the belle of many balls. Petite, pert-nosed, almond-eyed, and very, very sexy in that very young, slack, Seventies sexy way. Everywhere she’d gone men had fallen at her feet and not been able to get up after she’d stepped over or trampled on them and gone on.

But as to this particular event, this moment with this particular “Army Officer,’ it was legendary and also a legend. It was her story, and only hers. The aunt or the uncle remembered nothing. None of her six closest friends on earth, her sisters and cousins, had actually witnessed this world-historical event.

Khilke Bikharne Do. Let them lie as they fall.

But it had the power of a truth beyond mere event. It was the Song Odyssey of Sameera and her six cousins and sisters, the carapace of their lives. It was a Credo to live and die by. Sameera had convinced them, at least for a time, that no other way of living was worth it. Sameera had proven that…Almost.