About A Man Dead Long Ago

This is about a man who died of cancer quite 25 years ago. The episode which I intend to narrate here was recounted to me by my friend with whom I have lost touch now.

The man was my friend's colleague. I joined that office a year after the death of the man due to blood cancer. He was hardly 30 when he died. His cancer was diagnosed and death predicted six months before his death. His colleagues saw him eaten away slowly by the disease. So, every one was very friendly and sympathetic to him. My friend, being a woman of very amiable nature, was also very sympathetic and friendly with him so that he could be happy in the last few months of his life. One day, when she happened to be alone with him in the office, he expressed his grief that he was going to die an unmarried man because of his cancer. He had told her that he had never had sex with any woman and regretted that he had to die without having sex. Even as my friend was trying to divert the conversation, he had asked her whether she would mind spending a day with him in a suit in Mahabalipuram. He had told her that no one would know that and he would be able to die with one major desire in his life fulfilled. My friend who had just been engaged to be married was shocked to hear that. She had politely told him that it wouldn't be possible. The subject did not figure again. The sick man died a month later. When my friend, narrated this incident to me, she had two children. It might be a few years after that incident and she said that their conversation and the shock that it left in her were still very fresh in her memory.