The One Who Belonged to Dead but Wise Men

By Tripura Arora

I have a very close friend circle. It wasn’t instant. It built itself into a friendship, word by word, over time, with every turning page. Each of us is wildly individual, and incomplete, and yet something about it feels complete. This circle is very active. Just one minor glitch: they’re all dead. Except me, well technically! And I’ve never felt safer.

Living people are scary. Their presence demands performance. Smile enough. Talk right. Respond, not too quickly, not too slowly. Be soft, but not too soft. Be strong, but not too harsh. Honestly, it’s a bit exhausting. I’ve tried. I still do. But disappointment isn’t the exception. It’s a set pattern. With the living, I’m either too intense, or not enough.

This company of dead men isn’t just eternal. It’s calming. They’ve already left. Wise, yet misunderstood. They weren’t trying to explain. They were just trying to survive, stitching meaning mostly for themselves, letting the world translate as it wished and staying unbothered, even when they were lost in translation. They don’t judge. They don’t talk back. But they respond. And ironically, they don’t ghost me. Most comforting of all, they don’t arrive when it’s convenient. They just meet me as I am, as they are, in a needy moment. I open a book, in any mood, and someone from the group just shows up. Every single time.

Since love trumps logic, I often find myself walking to Camus. Camus is the brooding lover I never had, but always imagined. He looks straight into my eyes, not to reassure, but to quietly dismantle all the illusions I’ve built for myself. He doesn’t believe in flattery. He despises happy endings. He smokes meaninglessness like a cigarette and passes me the ashtray. He teaches me to embrace the absurd. To accept it. Some days, he even wants me to flaunt it, like it’s my most expensive attire. One night, when I told him I felt hollow, he didn’t flinch. He just lit another cigarette and said, “There is no love of life without despair of life.” While I kept searching for warmth, he came with wisdom. Not a remedy. Not comfort. Just truth. A quiet belief that I wasn’t alone.

At times, when I’m wrapped in absurdity, I feel the urge to be understood. I metamorphose. I fly to Kafka. Kafka is the silent observer. He lets me be me. I never have to explain myself to him. I don’t have to fill the silence between us. He prefers it that way. In the process of being me, if I ever tumble, he lets me fall. And then, quietly, offers a hand to help me rise again. I think the chaos between our minds brings us the quiet when we are together. He doesn’t offer unsolicited advice, only the occasional sentence—short, sharp, and so painfully precise, it slices straight through my being. I once asked him if I even mean anything. If life does. If anything ever did. He said, “You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.” And suddenly, stillness didn’t feel like failure. It felt like the reassurance I had been craving, delivered like a prophecy.

When reassurance fades and meaning begins to slip through the cracks, like an alarm set for 2:43 and snoozed at 3:19, that’s when Edgar comes. Uninvited. To the world, he’s Edgar Allan Poe, the strange, the haunted. But for me? He’s my partner in crime when I want to stare at the ceiling and cuss the world—or even the universe. He can join my spiralling thoughts in a blink. Sometimes, I feel his body aches too, when mine refuses to rest. He doesn’t try to cheer me up. He joins me in the sulk, quiet, heavy, familiar. We don’t fix anything. We name it. He hands me metaphors instead of tissues. And in those moments, it’s enough. One night, when grief became the monster under my bed, a well-fed one, he was almost amused when he said, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” I didn’t need him to save me. I just needed someone who could see that scary monster, and simply stand with me, just long enough for me to gather the courage to face it.

When it all becomes too much and I just need to have a good time, Oscar Wilde arrives. Dressed like a diva, carrying a bottle of tequila and tonnes of gossip. He is my mischief, my drama, my escape hatch. He flings open my wardrobe, critiques every piece with theatrical disgust, yet still makes me try them on, all while fixing his own smeared eyeliner in the mirror. We laugh till our abs tighten, mock the world’s pretensions, and flirt with sadness like our eternal crush. Once, I caught myself taking life too seriously, and he interrupted mid-spiral with a smirk: “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Then, with one stylish back-kick, he shut the door to my overthinking. I confessed, “It’s a door I’ve opened far too many times, and one I’ve struggled to close, even with my best efforts.” He rolled his eyes, waved his silk scarf in farewell, and muttered, “Drama queen.”

Then, eventually, the drama settles. The jokes lose their sharpness, and the room begins to feel empty. That’s when I find Dostoevsky. No sarcasm. No gimmicks. No performance. Just presence. Dostoevsky is the one who stays back. Not because he’s soft, oh no! Not at all, but because he holds too much to let anyone else drop. He’s the older sibling who takes care without being asked. Protective. Alert. He tries to pass on wisdom from his own setbacks, subtly but consistently. At times, at the cost of being confrontational. He never minds staying sober at a wild party, just to make sure everyone gets home safely. I once asked him how he manages to carry so much. He placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” He never forces strength. But somehow, you feel empowered, just sitting beside him.

When thoughts and feelings rise just enough to consume me, a window opens, and a smooth, silky breeze enters. That’s Khalil Gibran. He believes. He has faith. Not screaming, shouting, chanting, preachy faith, but a gentle push forward. He never comments on how happy I am or how sad I look. But he notices the dark circles from sleepless nights and reminds me that I’m still growing, even when I feel stuck. He makes sure I stay open to believing in belief again. He doesn’t prepare me for some grand miracle, but for small things. Like healing. Like retaining softness. Or simply… being me. He notices me flinching with that idea, and says, “Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.” While his words feel like a forehead kiss, very subtly he builds confidence in love and hope.

While I keep playing with my own wits and puns with life, a bright ray of sunshine comes, almost to bother me. Like a colourful outfit that giggles “joy,” even on a gloomy day. The very popular Pu. La. We are attached not only by our love for puns, but also by a shared reverence for our mother tongue. No wonder his jokes make me tickle extra! He walks into our literary circus with a grin and tells us it’s not a pretty sight to look at some rejected metaphors. He reminds us that poetic pain and philosophical aching are just a part of life, not the life itself. When I once asked him for advice on life, he just shrugged his shoulders and said: “दु:ख अपरिहार्य आहे. पण रडत बसायचं की हसत पुढं जायचं हे आपण ठरवायचं.” (“Pain is inevitable. But whether to sit and cry or smile and move ahead—that choice is ours.”) Just like that, he made me realize life is very long. And it’s my choices that will decide its worth.

Together, they create a map for my ideal world. One I can trust. Where I can always return, like a permanent address. Even when the living gets too loud, too sharp, too eager to fix me, I rush back to the ones who never asked me to be anything else. They don’t offer solutions. They don’t try to fix. Maybe because they never thought I was broken in the first place. With them, there’s no pressure to be whole, or healed, or even happy. We meet in the middle of our flaws. Awkward, bruised, and still alive. We sit with the questions. We hold the grief. We share the quiet. They stay. No questions asked. 

And mostly, that’s just enough. For me. So, I am bound to feel… I just belong to them.

By Tripura Arora