The Playlist My Brother Left Me

I’m sorting through Aarav’s apartment three days after he dies when I find the note. His handwriting, addressed to me: “You’ll want my Spotify login. Don’t judge my music taste. But do listen to the playlists. Especially the private ones. They’re for you.”

Photo by yadunandlal on Unsplash

Aarav dies on a Tuesday in April. Motorcycle accident. Quick, they tell me. He didn’t suffer, they promise.

I suffer enough for both of us.

We were twins. Not identical, but close. People who didn’t know us thought we were the same person. People who knew us understood we were halves of a whole.

When he dies, I feel it. Like a limb being amputated without anesthesia. I’m suddenly incomplete. Walking around with a vital piece missing.

At his apartment, while packing his things, I find a note. His handwriting, addressed to me.

“Adi, you’ll want my Spotify login. Username: AaravParallelLives. Password: brothersforever. Don’t judge my music taste. But do listen to the playlists. Especially the private ones. They’re for you.”

I don’t cry. I’m all cried out. I just add his account to my phone.

He has hundreds of playlists. Public ones with names like “Gym Pump” and “Coding Flow” and “Sunday Morning Vibes.”

But the private ones have different names. Names that make no sense.

“The Life Where We Opened a Café”

“The Life Where You Became a Doctor”

“The Life Where We Traveled Europe”

“The Life Where I Saved You”

I click on the first one. The Life Where We Opened a Café.

It’s forty-seven songs. I hit play, expecting his usual indie rock.

Instead, it’s jazz. French café music. Background chatter sounds woven between tracks. And in those chatter sounds, I hear it. My voice. Aarav’s voice. Having a conversation.

“Table four needs more napkins,” my voice says.

“Got it. Can you handle the espresso machine? I’m terrible at latte art,” Aarav responds.

“You’re terrible at all art,” I joke.

We’re laughing. Working together. Running a café that doesn’t exist. Has never existed. We’re both in tech. Neither of us has ever worked in food service.

But listening to this playlist, I can see it. A small café in Bombay. Red walls. Mismatched furniture. Aarav handling customers while I perfect the coffee. Us, together, building something.

Photo by Lawrence Krowdeed on Unsplash

A life we never lived. But somehow he made a soundtrack for it.

I listen to the next playlist. The Life Where You Became a Doctor.

This one has hospital sounds between songs. And a conversation where I’m telling Aarav about a surgery. Explaining medical procedures. Talking about patients. I’m a doctor in this playlist. I sound confident, passionate, alive.

In real life, I’m a software engineer. I code databases. I’ve never been to medical school.

But in this playlist, I am. And Aarav is so proud of me. I can hear it in his voice during the interludes.

“You saved another life today, Adi. You’re amazing.”

“Just doing my job, bhai.”

“No, really. You’re incredible. I’m so proud to be your brother.”

I’m crying again. Because he was always proud of me. Even in this life. The real one. But hearing him say it about a version of me that doesn’t exist? It breaks something open.

I binge the playlists over the next week. Each one is a different parallel life. Different choices we made at various forks in the road.

In one, we’re musicians. In another, we never left our hometown. In another, I’m married with kids and he’s their favorite uncle. In another, he’s married and I’m the best man at his wedding.

Each playlist is meticulously crafted. The right songs for the right moments. And between tracks, these audio snippets. Us, living lives we never lived. Having conversations that never happened. Being versions of ourselves we never became.

How did he make these? How did he know what we’d sound like if we’d chosen differently?

Then I find the last playlist. The one titled “The Life Where I Saved You.”

I’m scared to play it. But I do.

The first song is sad. A piano piece I don’t recognize. Then I hear my voice. Younger. Teenage me.

“I can’t do this anymore, Aarav. I’m so tired.”

“Then rest. But don’t quit. Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not strong enough.”

“You are. You just don’t see it yet. But I see it. I see you. And I’m not letting you go.”

I remember this. Age sixteen. Depression hit me like a train. I wanted to end it. Planned it out. Had the pills ready.

Aarav found me. Stopped me. Sat with me all night. Got me help.

He saved my life. In this universe and apparently several others.

The playlist continues. More songs. More moments. Different versions of the same intervention. Different parallel lives where I was struggling and he was there.

Every single time, he saved me. In every universe. In every possibility. In every version of reality where I existed, he existed too, keeping me alive.

The last song plays. And then his voice, clear and present, not from a memory.

“Adi, if you’re listening to this, I’m gone. And I’m so sorry. I tried to save you in every life. Tried to keep you safe. But I couldn’t save myself in this one. The accident happened too fast.”

I’m sobbing now. Full body shaking.

“But here’s what I need you to know. In all these parallel lives, in all these versions of us, we’re always brothers. We always find each other. We always matter to each other. Distance, time, death, none of it breaks us. We’re connected across every reality.”

“So even though I’m gone from this one, I’m still with you in all the others. And you need to live, Adi. Live all the lives we didn’t get to live together. Open that café. Become that doctor. Travel Europe. Do everything we dreamed about in all these parallel worlds.”

“Because I can’t anymore. But you can. And if you do it, if you live fully, then in some way, I’m still living too. Through you. With you.”

“I love you, brother. In this life and all the others. Don’t forget me. But more importantly, don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget all the versions of you that could still exist. All the choices you haven’t made yet. All the roads still open to you.”

“Live. Please. Live enough for both of us.”

The playlist ends. I’m sitting on my floor, destroyed and rebuilt at the same time.

Aarav made these playlists to show me possibility. To show me that life isn’t one path. It’s infinite paths. And even though we’re on different paths now, him in death and me in life, we’re still connected.

I listen to the playlists on repeat for months. And slowly, I start living differently.

I take a sabbatical from work. I travel. I take a cooking class. I volunteer at a hospital. I try things. Explore paths. Become different versions of myself.

I don’t open a café. But I host dinner parties. Cook for friends. Create community around food the way that playlist suggested.

I don’t become a doctor. But I take a first aid course. Volunteer with an NGO. Help people in small ways.

I live multiple lives within this one life. Because Aarav showed me how. Because he’s still saving me, even now. Still keeping me alive by showing me all the ways I can exist.

I make my own playlists now. “The Life Where Aarav Lived” “The Life Where We Grew Old Together” “The Life Where I Said Thank You Enough Times”

I fill them with songs and imagined conversations. I build parallel realities where he’s still here. Not to torture myself. But to keep him alive in possibility. In imagination. In love.

Because if he exists in my playlists, if I can hear his laugh and his voice and his pride in me, then he’s not fully gone.

He’s just living in a different frequency. A parallel track. Still my brother. Still my twin. Still the person who knows all my versions across all realities.

Still saving me, one song at a time.

-Abhishek Banerjee