1. Sahil ignored my reassurances. P. He wanted me to remember him not through the spoken recitatives of memory and friendship, but through the written word. Q. I understood that he was entrusting me with a quite specific charge. R. He began to laugh and it was then that I realised that he was dead serious. S. Sahil knew all too well that for those writers for whom things become real only in the process of writing, there is an inbuilt resistance to dealing with loss and bereavement. 6. He knew that my instincts would have led me to search for reasons to avoid writing about his death.

1. Sahil ignored my reassurances. P. He began to laugh and it was then that I realised that he was dead serious. Q. I understood that he was entrusting me with a quite specific charge. R. He wanted me to remember him not through the spoken recitatives of memory and friendship, but through the written word. S. Sahil knew all too well that for those writers for whom things become real only in the process of writing, there is an inbuilt resistance to dealing with loss and bereavement. 6. He knew that my instincts would have led me to search for reasons to avoid writing about his death.