The Last Chai We Never Had

My grandfather used to make me chai at exactly 5 PM
Every single day, he would call out from the kitchen 'Arre, chai peeyega?' and no matter what I was doing, I would drop it and sit down across him on the little wooden table. We should talk about inconsequential things like the weather, cricket and which of the neighbours has bought a new scooter. Small things that held no meaning.
I never realised that these things matters.
That the things in life are often the only things things that last.
Until last winter, I started to get busy with a new job, a new city, a new version of myself that rarely had the time or the patience to make tea for my grandfather. 'I should call him this weekend' I would say, and then the weekend would come and go.
One morning in July, my mother called me. Her voice was strange, hesitant before she even said a word. It was a strange kind of silence that announced the kind of news that only comes once in lifetime. That he had quietly slipped away in his sleep, the way he always did.
The first thing that came to my mind was not some grand goodbye or final words or even an image of him as he looked in his final days. It was the little table. The chai at 5 PM. The sound of his stove turning on. The trivial conversations that I had somehow managed to put off, because I had thought I would always have more time, Time to do it another day, Time to say goodbye.
I flew back that week, and sat down in the empty chair where he always sat. The kitchen smelled faintly of cardamom. I don't know how long I sat there. Grief is an old thing. It doesn't announce itself with fireworks or the suddenness of a thunderclap. It creep up on you in strange ways. Sometimes in the stillness of an empty room, sometimes in the loneliness of a steel cup, waiting to be filled. Sometimes in the laughter of a son or daughter who reminds you of him, just for a moment.
Here's what I want you to take away from this story.
Call the person you intend to call someday soon. Tell them that the weekend is not luxury you can afford. That you will do it sometime this year. Call them now. It doesn't matter how busy you are. Call them, even if there is nothing to say. That one day, the chai will no longer be hot and it will be a long time before you can make another pot.