Weird blog title huh? But I just got the news in an email that ”Blue Saphire” passed away. The ‘crazy’ girl of 16 was playing/cooking at the stove and it burst, giving her serious burn injuries. She was hospitalized and died in the hospital on the third day. Strangely, she kept talking crazy and funny/wise things on her death bed to the relatives, family friends and other visitors.
Flashback (About 17 years back in Asia) I was around 10! I have a stunningly accurate memory for most days of my childhood. I remember a lot from the age of 3 or 4! So, I remember. I was 10 and with my mother, in the kitchen of some distant family friends. A very poor family, in the countryside. A woman in that family was pregnant for the 3rd time and had two daughters already. All these women were talking about her pregnancy and I was lost in my own daydreams. I always have had the talent for making unwelcome, out of the blue remarks. I wonder what struck me that day but cutting everyone’s conversation I yelped, ”Mom!!! This time when the baby girl comes out we’re gonna name her ”Blue Saphire!” 
Before I could see a stinging slap burned my cheek. ”What the fuck!” I thought and almost whispered it (yep I was a precocious swearer). The pregnant woman was laughing and said, ”O please leave him alone, he didn’t mean it.”. My mother had slapped me out of extreme embarrassment I caused her. In that culture and countryside region, during that time, a girl child was considered a curse and a burden: a misfortune for the family. People only wanted a son , not daughter…not the third one, in any case! So, I had actually said something like a bad curse. (What the fuck???, I wonder even now)
But…well, God vindicated me as a baby girl was born within next few months. As a further vindication, she was named ”Blue Saphire”. I was always proud of the fact that even at the age of 10 I was able to suggest a pretty name that was happily accepted by a family as the name of their kid. But this girl was different. She was born with mental abnormalities which made her ”crazy”. She was always doing goofus things and giggling and cackling. She was a great entertainment for us kids. She always did loony things: played in the mud when her mom had just changed her into newly washed clothes, wore her clothes inside out or backside forward, she always broke the pencils when she wanted to sharpen them and then throw them away and cackle. A crazy girl with dirt on her clothes and smile on her face. She loved it so much when people called her crazy. She laughed.
I never had any personal relation with her but only noticed her as I used to play with other kids. One day her family visited our house in the city. And there she was: the crazy girl with a couple of other kids. I was 17 and she was about 7 or 8. I was really into watching WWF (Wrestling) and I loved slamming (on the bed) all the little kids I could get my hands on. I grabbed Blue Saphire and slammed her. She pleaded, ”Brother don’t slam me, it hurts.” I grabbed her again and slammed her on the bed imitating a baddie. She said, ”Please please don’t hurt me.” I grabbed her on her shoulders and mockingly stared at her. Her nose was running and she had all this gooey snot oozing out. Suddenly, she had some kind of power over me. I felt this great affection for her. I gently patted her cheeks and got a handkerchief and carefully wiped her nose and face. She smiled at me. I have never done this for a kid all my life to this day!
Blue Saphire was also capable of extreme affection for her other sisters and one younger brother and heaps of cousins. She cared deeply. I think she understood love better than many of ’sane’ folks. She had a goofy mind but talked like a 50 or 60 year old because she was always memorizing the conversations of these old women she used to play around. In the email my mother wrote, ”She was talking crazy but sweet even on her death bed. She said to your brother who spent considerable time in her hospital room, ‘God will give you a long life dear brother because you have taken such good care of me.”’And then she died on the third day.
Call me crazy too, but just 4 or 5 days back I was thinking of her! Not for any particular reason. I never had any contact with her (or any interest in her really) for years and years. Last time I saw her was when I was a kid myself playing with other kids. That’s all. But still she popped into my mind and I remembered her sweet smiling face and thought, ”Mmmmm…. Blue Saphire..So, weird I named her, ehhh… She was crazy but so HAPPY unlike me.”
But she ended up doing yet another powerful thing for me today. For some reason, I was (and am) thinking of God (having grown quite ‘Agnostic’ lately) and Jesus, who I am sure (if he was walking through that countryside) would lift Blue Saphire up in his arms and play with her. They would both laugh like crazy.
)” ?) 
