It was my first diwali away from home, in NYC, so I was miserable. Especially since hurricane sandy had left us without power for a week, and I had no heat at home.

My friends put me in touch with this girl who seemed pretty nice. We went out for diwali dinner, and she brought along this colleague of hers, who was also miserable at being alone over the festival.

Not ten minutes into dinner, we were swapping hurricane sandy stories, which for the most part just involved whining about being alone and scared in our respective apartments, trying to follow the news, making sure we didn't have to evacuate.

Then this guy's story took a drastic turn. He lived in this shared apartment where the landlady lived downstairs, and he and a Chinese man had rooms upstairs, and a common kitchen. He'd just moved there a week before Sandy and hadn't really talked to this man much.

During the hurricane, he'd knock on this guy's door to update him on the hurricane (they were close to the water). He'd also call out saying he's made a meal and the Chinese guy was welcome to join. He got no response and thought that the housemate was rather rude.

At some point there was some flooding and the safety inspectors came to check if the building was safe. And they wanted to check for leaks in the Chinese guy's room as well.

They knocked and knocked, got no answer, and the landlady opened it with her key.

The Chinese man had died from some illness. He'd been dead for a week.

This guy felt very messed up, that his house mate had been dead for a week and he hadn't even noticed. The rest of the evening was spent soothing him and telling him it wasn't his fault and he couldn't have done anything to change it, and in convincing him to move.

The fucked up part was, as much as he was dying of guilt and feeling trauma, he didn't want to move because the rent was cheap and it was a great location.