Our Self-Written Obituaries – Ashutosh Tripathi, The Book Shop
The 116th death.
[By Ashutosh Tripathi]
“Goodbye and God bless!” This seemingly simple text message, on a normal working April day, from his long-standing girlfriend, K, apparently took Ashutosh Tripathi’s life. Mr Tripathi struggled with tears through the day and died crying excessively.
It was only recently that Mr Tripathi had gifted K a copy of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey. Though K has a reading mind of her own, Mr Tripathi would often suggest books that he considered worthy of literary taste and merit.
Mr Tripathi was a keen word-enthusiast and was often heard quoting writers to buttress his arguments. One of the general lament against him was that he was lost, to which he answered by way of Tolkein: “All those who wander are not lost.”
Mr Tripathi was a trained journalist and a man of latent literary ambitions. He read amply, if not enormously. He was a committed reader of The Hindu and ‘The art of fiction’ interviews on the Paris Review website. According to K, he was keen to show off his learning and she had to intervene on many a occasion.
Mr Tripathi suffered from loving too strongly. He is survived by his heavily underlined books and a lapsed lover.
His epitaph would read thus: Ashutosh loved K passionately and immensely and the only thing he would miss now is her.
Our Self-Written Obituaries invites people to write their obituary in 200 words. The idea is to share with the world how you will like to be remembered after you are gone. (May you live a long life, of course!) Please mail me your self-obit at mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com.
This is such a crazy idea! Would love to send you an email someday.
Improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?
(O tyrant love, to what do you not drive the hearts of men!)
– Aeneid Book IV, Virgil