The final truth, the only indisputable truth hasn’t ever struck me as something I should waste some precious minutes pondering upon. Even if I was no Superman, there was no harm in believing the fact that fearing and thinking and apprehending death is as bad, if not worse, than the mighty five-letter word itself. Its scariness lies in its inevitability… But I never gave it too many thoughts, even though I guess I can say I have experience of death’s wrath first-hand… an experience no one should have, but everyone ultimately ends up having!
So when a friend of mine sent me a midnight SMS (product of an unsatisfying result, a girl-related problem and the world around him) saying he was suddenly scared of (the uncertainty of life and the certainty of) death and wary of the futility of everything we do, or achieve, in a lifetime… I didn’t even pay that SMS the slightest bit of regard and, in a polite way, advised him to live his life to the fullest and not pay any heed to his stray and momentary worries.
And quite suddenly, almost out of the blue, the death of two dear pets and of course, the incident in Mumbai. Frankly, death has never perturbed me as much as few other things in life: like man’s vicious nature, for instance… or some glaring injustice that I can do nothing about… The only time death should have perturbed me the most, I guess I was kinda prepared for the inevitable, at least in my mind… and compared to the slow, grinding, painful feeling that comes with the realization that death ‘will most certainly’ steal someone precious away from you anytime… and the helplessness that you can practically do nothing about it… this pain and helplessness and realization and that denial lingering somewhere beneath, all acts as sort of a cushion when the dreaded event actually occurs…
But then, the aftermath of a sudden death… something without prior notice… some say it’s better than waiting for it to happen… I don’t know… and I’m quite sure I don’t want to know! The death of the two pets has pushed mom into way more grief that it has done to me. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad… it kinda puts a question mark on your own emotional capability… and that sucks! And that thing in Mumbai left me thinking about death, something I absolutely hate to do. Maybe that friend of mine was right when he was blabbing about that ‘uncertainty and futility of life’ thing! Maybe not the futility part, at least the uncertainty…
For all I know, this could very well be the last time I’m typing something on my keyboard. Everytime we meet someone, who knows… it could be the very last time we meet! It’s not that that hasn’t happened before. I can remember many a last conversation… which has been followed by the news of the abrupt demise of that person. But mostly, those people have been casual acquaintances, a reason I have never pondered over them before… a neighbor, or a shop-owner maybe, a priest… or maybe I am indeed emotionally challenged or something… how could I have not thought about it before?? The very thought of it now is kinda unsettling…
But then again, what is the use… where is the logic… of pondering over something that’s not in our hands? And yet, we can’t control our every thought, our every emotion, can we? If we could’ve, mankind would’ve been the happiest race of all!
So I guess, everything considered, I was right when I told my friend not to think about death. If we started devoting all our thoughts to everything that’s uncertain in our life, when do we appreciate the ‘certain’ things?? The tangible things… this moment, NOW! If we don’t live the moment we’re in, and live in fear of the moment when we will cease to be… that isn’t life…
Death isn’t life… we shouldn’t make it our life!
Signing Off,
-Jagannath (Jesse)
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