Alex had a terminal disease. I spent hours in her company, jamming with her, talking with her, mostly listening, trying to figure out how she felt. I wrote this song for her. She was supposed to sing this one. She often wondered what wrong did she do to suffer like this. She asked me why everyone else got a healthy pass at life, except me. Why Me?
If you have a healthy functioning body, you’re the lucky one, cause there are millions making regular errands to the doctor just to breathe another day. Don’t take your health for granted. Value it.
I met Alex when she was 13, in May 2013. It was a job to compose music for her album. At the time I had no idea about her condition. She was taking vocal lessons at the time and she had a beautiful voice, however, she had a lot to learn and wasn’t up to mark with her vocals. I started composing songs for her, while we trained together. We did a few covers over a couple of weeks and became really good friends. And that’s when I found that both her kidneys had failed and she visited the hospital thrice a week for dialysis.
She was a very happy and hyper-active kid, but she had a lot of restrictions, she couldn’t do a lot of the things a 13-year-old was allowed to do. She often despised the little things. I’ve never heard her be afraid of death at any point. I don’t think she understood the concept of death, perhaps she hadn’t gone through a death in the family. She missed a lot of school time because her health was sensitive.
Luckily, her parents were rich enough to take care of all the complications of her illness. She had an older sister who she adored. We both called her ‘Ji’. Alex had a stuffed toy called ‘Froggy’. But ‘Froggy’ was code for something else altogether. We were both Avril Lavigne fans. She loved singing Pop songs. She’s done a few covers of Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato. She loved Card Captors, I was too old for Card Captors and hated it. Although I did watch all the seasons of Wizards of Waverly, I loved the character Justin from that sitcom, and Alex was a fan of Selena’s character, where she got her name from. Alex loved talking, she was a chatter-box. Since our timings wouldn’t match for a call, Alex would either write me 3-page emails or send 15-30 mins long audio recordings every day. That’s how she liked talking.
I wrote ‘Why Me’ and finished it in 2014. Alex was supposed to sing it, but she could never get her vocal skills up to the mark that I could take her to the studio and finish it up. So, I did a rough take with my vocals and finished it up so it could be a reference point for the producer. But, in 2014, I moved out from Lower Parel and shifted to Sanpada, and our jam sessions were put on hold. There was one more complication but I don’t think it is wise to disclose it. And the point that I called Alex an asshole for behaving like a manipulative little chipmunk, for which Ji made Alex promise to stop communicating with me.
I think it was an overreaction, but I stepped back, Alex was just 15, she should listen to what her guardians think is right for her. And that’s how our communication died in Dec 2014. We can continue the rest of Alex’s story in the Reaching Alex chapter.
