This morning my cousin called me from the US and informed me that his father, my paternal uncle, had passed away in the early hours of this morning. My uncle, lived in Wales for the majority of his adult life with his wife, but did live here in India from 1988 to 1999, and his two younger kids live in London. As my mother, her siblings and my cousins slowly come to grips to grips with the his death, it hits me that they all seem to get some comfort in the phrases and words connected to religion.

A lot of them are also convinced that they will see him in the afterlife in some variation of the Hindu concept of heaven. I have no such luxury and by the way my uncle had in his later years, well past the age of 70, revealed to my dad and me that he no longer believed in any sort of gods and was convinced that religion was a hoax.

As an atheist I comfort myself in having being lucky to have known him and have him as my uncle and remember the jokes he cracked, how he showered us kids with love and took us out for movies and days at the beach and ice creams.

I will miss him.