For Abraham, forever ago

I met Abraham on a random telegram group when I had joined college back in 2018. He was the person who started Nexus SJCET which is the FOSS Cell of SJCET. His username was avron back then. I met him IRL in my second year of college during an event at his college, I still remember first meeting him and saying it’s nice to meet you finally IRL. That was the first thing that I recollect when thinking about him now.

Meeting him the next time was at a Hackathon but we didn’t talk much then because we didn’t knew each other that much. That was end of second year I guess. I don’t know truth be told when it was but it was during those times.

As you say third time’s the charm, I again met Abraham at another Hackathon in Munnar. Even though we didn’t knew each other that much, I kinda felt like I’ve known the guy for so long and we talked about all kinds of things. We talked about Code, Vim vs Emacs where Abe was an ardent Emacs user and was telling me join the cult but I refused and I was telling him to join the Vim cult. I still remember talking on all kinda philosophies with Him, Anusree and Levi during our “hackathon sessions” there. The four of us vibed off really good and we even began a new group on TG with just 4 of us. We used to have hourly long calls during COVID which made our bond really strong.

I invited Abraham and Levi to my home a few months later and we had a fun time together, I drove them to nearest spots for sightseeing and we made dinner using a grill. It was the first time I called him Avarachan, which stuck. Fun fact is that Avarachan was 4 syllabelles and Abraham was just 3 and I found it easier to call him Avarachan than Abraham. I used to talk to Avarachan almost everyday about something or the other. We used to talk about a lot of things.

When he got into his first job at BigBinary he used to always talk about the gripes of using a Mac machine. It was against all his ideologies and philosophies but he had to still do it for the work. He used to talk to me about how Ruby on Rails is so cool, the Object Oriented nature of it and how it gave a new perspective of OOP. He also used to talk to me about the improvements he made to their form system where he 400x improved the upload processing capabilities. Even I though I didn’t understand that much back then it was so cool to listen to him geek about it.

We used to geek out on all kinds of tech things and even beyond that, he introduced me to Nirvana, and later I introduced him to Foo Fighters, Porcupine Tree etc… Our music tastes were almost similar too.

Even when it was time for me to get a job, he helped me prepare for it. He was always there for me whenever I fuck up something at my work and I used to tell him all about my work and what fun things I did that week since our calls were moved to weekends.

We all went on a Munnar trip on 2022 October, where we all enjoyed really well. He always wanted to move out from Kottayam and he did on January 2023. I went with him to select his new flat. I used to visit his place every weekend, which I drove 50KM one side to geek out.

He went to Kosovo for DebConf 2022 and send us pictures of his outings in Kosovo and he was the one announced about DebConf 2023 happening in Kochi. He went through a breakup but I didn’t know how to help him out there. I tried but my consoling skills are very poor.

Avarachan passed away on 13th September 2023 in a kayaking accident during an outing of the DebConf 2023 event. He was my bestest friend, my bigger brother and my family.

He was there whenever I needed help, He would be the first person whom I’ll call whenever I needed guidance because Avarachan was years ahead on maturity. He always gave me feedback the right time I needed something like that. I always asked him about Life philosophies and all kinds of things. He always called me Kutta. He was Barney Stinson to my Ted Mosby, The Chandler to my Joey, always there, my bestest friend.

He was our Diamond and he shone so vividly that it changed many peoples lives. I always look up to you bro, always.

“Shine on you Crazy Diamond…”

I wrote the above a few days after his passing, from a really dark place. I had a lot of struggle within myself about accepting he’s no more. Accepting that I won’t be able to talk to him again, accepting that I won’t be able to see him again, accepting that I won’t be able to hear his voice again, accepting that I won’t be able to see his smile again.

I spend a lot of time fighting my gods, beliefs and everything I thought had some power over this to make things change, to make things better, to make everything go back to the way it was, with him on the other end of the phone or to talk to him for a few hours. I really wish I got a few more seconds to hear his voice for one last time and say Thank You and Goodbye. All of a sudden, Pink Floyd’s lyrics hit me. It hit me hard. The album “Wish you were here” tore me apart. Every lyric, every song was greiving.

But this feels like a cruel joke played on to all of us. Death, without any warning is hard to bear and hard to get over. Even harder to live with the reality that yesterday you had dinner with the guy and the next day you’re calling up his friends to say he’s no more.

Whenever I think of him, I recall the time when I was struggling with something and he told me to listen to “Breathe” by Pink Floyd.

“Breathe, Breathe in the air,
Don’t be afraid to care”