My father’s friend died too

When I heard the news that a dear relative and friend of my father’s, who incidentally shares my father’s birthday, died last week, I was reminded of a famous Malayalam poem “Innu jyan, naale nee”, meaning “Today it is me, tomorrow it will be you”. In the poem, the poet, who is also the protagonist, happens to see a funeral cortege passing by. He notices that the head of the dead body is moving from side to side. On looking closely, the poet imagines that the head is telling him, “If today it is my turn, tomorrow it will be yours”. This is the theme of the beautiful poem, which has a lot more in it than these opening lines.
Is it not hauntingly true?
This friend had visited us a couple of months back to mourn the death of my father and had spoken nostalgically about many a moments they had spent together in their youth: playing cricket, traveling, studying and watching movies. He was very disturbed and said he did not expect him to die so young and so unexpectedly.
Young and unexpectedly? In our present age and times, 64 may be regarded as young. However, does death discriminate based on age, caste, creed, wealth, goodness, education, position, clout, beauty and so on? Anyway, now this uncle too has died at the age of 64 and his death was very sudden. He was actively taking part in the annual temple festivities of his hometown when he collapsed and had a cardiac arrest. Now it is our turn to console the bereaved family. Role reversal!
I spoke to this uncle’s son yesterday. Although he was very upset, being the brave man he is, he put it philosophically as “It is inevitable and whatever has to happen will happen, etc;” I secretly thought, the intensity might indeed reduce with the passage of time but the numbing reminder of loss will remain as long as one who has lost a dear one remains. Moreover, although sad but true, the sense of loss will compound as days, months and years pass by, for there are so many little things to remind us of a person who was with us until a breath earlier and never again for eternity. However, I did not tell him that.
I told him, “Yes, this too shall pass”.

I laught at myself....

Click, click, click, click………the only music I seem to hear these days, need I say what that is? Any of you and all of you worth something (or nothing) will know what that monotonous non-stop sound is.
A typical day in my life starts with the obsession of beginning to play this music myself, to honour my deadlines of course (are they called deadlines because we are supposed to be dead by the time we crawl towards that line?). I rush through the morning chores dragging my little daughter to the bathroom, getting her dressed and shoving her into the school bus (with help from my family, no doubt) without paying any attention to what she is trying to say (is that a protest I hear from her or some news about her dreams, I have no time to listen). Then, I get dressed in a jiffy and swallow something just to silence my rumbling tummy before I take two steps at a time towards the waiting car and my glaring husband; in the background, I can hear my mother reminding me about some undone chore, which I conveniently postpone to the end of the week (needless to say, a lot of ‘postponed’ chores have piled up over the past months).
I catch my breath when I reach office, that is until the deadlines return to torment!!
Occasionally, I pause to think, is this mad rush worth the trouble? I know it is not, it can never be. Because we were not created to sit in an air-conditioned office from dawn to dusk and click endlessly but to give sufficient movements to our hands, feet and body, get some fresh air and revel under the energizing rays of the Sun (now when was the last time I looked at the sky?) Sadly here we are, ensconced in artificial environs where everybody starts sneezing and sniffing if one amongst the lot happens to have an infection; oblivious to the rain, sun or snow falling just outside the boundaries of our existence.
I wonder how I, who had always abhorred technology, preferring something more real and creative instead, landed up in the same profession; the IT bug (greed) must have bitten me too sometime, somewhere….sigh!!!
When will I muster enough courage to chuck everything, go to some obscure, uninhabited land, and venture into organic farming or the like, at least to fulfill the basic needs of experiencing clean water, food and air? Will that day ever come or will I keep postponing even that to the end of time? Hope not!! I do have some illustrious cousins to draw inspiration from (and to remind myself) that it is not impossible to give up lucrative careers in exciting cities for a simple but satisfying life in beautiful, unpolluted virgin lands.
I am reminded of Frost’s poignant poem, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”, now now... before I sleep dreaming of being anywhere but clicking, let me get back to fulfilling my promises (deadlines).