To lose a friend or a family member feels beyond devastation. To lose a teacher feels beyond comprehension.
To say that I learned how to write over the past four years is inaccurate. I knew how to write. I simply didn’t know that I knew. Dinesh Allirajah didn’t tell me I could write. He showed me. He gave me weekly gifts of Hemingway and Chekov and Chopin. He showed me that stories aren’t hugely involved epics with tragedy and love and burning buildings. He showed me how one word can say more than a paragraph. How each character has their individual right to be heard. He gave me confidence to write as myself. To be heard as myself. He showed me I can write. In person he laughed at my clumsy attempts at titles and my affinity for the word ‘fuck’. He made me read aloud every week. Despite my protests. He made me listen to others’ criticisms. Often inane. He made me have an opinion. Often inane. We exchanged little in personal words. But enough in mutual respect. For a few hours for a few weeks for a few years I absorbed what I could of his enthusiasm. His knowledge. His belief in my ability. This was his most valuable gift to me.
I said in my overly sappy introduction that to lose a teacher feels beyond comprehension. I offer no apology for my choice of words. I simply do not know how to mourn my teacher.
So why am I writing this? Why share my confusion and my misery in a public display of clipped syllables? Because this is what I have learned. Because spoken words are transient. Because anything less than permanence would feel a damned disservice.
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