Few And Far Between

My head is spinning.
Maybe it's the effect of a two hour flight with a running nose and blocked sinuses, which gave me the impression that someone had carelessly left an electric saw switched on inside my brain.
Or maybe, I'm in the middle of an important realization here, and I can't exactly figure out what.

I've just made the all-too familiar return trip from Kerala, my native place, having bid goodbye to my grandmother, who's 84 years old, and insists on living alone in our big ancestral home there, when she could easily have chosen to stay with us in Mumbai, or atleast bought an apartment of her own in any city of her choice. She says it's because someone has to look after that old place, and keep it in habitable condition, so that when her children and grandchildren visit Kerala, which is once every 3 - 4 months, they'll have a home to go to. I hate this idea everytime I have to leave from there, seeing her alone at the gate. But then a few months later when I go back there, I'm secretly thankful that our home still stands; and that I can still walk around the place I used to spend all my summers as a child. And sit in the shade of the mango tree that I had planted when I was four.


A friend of a friend of a friend died in an accident a few days back. I don't know him, I've never met him, only heard of him a few times. And right now, I can't stop thinking about his life. About his family and friends. He must be around my age, in his twenties, at any rate. And the fact that it was a train accident just brings everything closer home. I draw two half formed conclusions. One, it's not just the suddenness of an event that shocks everyone around it; rather, it's like a firecracker burst, it's the proximity of it that is scary. I mean, I'd always known that dogs can bite you, but it wasn't until Smriti got bit a few years back that I seriously imagined going through the ordeal. That's the moment when it actually clicks in your head that this could happen to you.
Second, as human beings, we have an insurmountable instinctive urge to understand our environment, and to have an explanation as to why things happen as they do. Some people turn to science for answers, some to religion, yet others to drugs and alcohol, which seems to make things simpler to get. And those who are still unable to assimilate the world as it is, must invent their own theories and perceptions for it all to make sense, and then they get classified as schizophrenics.
My point is, throughout our life, we subconsciously explain everything around us, however bizarre, with some logic or the other. Except death. Death has no logic. It is inevitable, that much we've always been told, and that is what we've always believed. Even as a doctor, when we treat patients, we're not so much saving their lives, as postponing death. But when it happens around you, and Death touches you in a personal way, your instinct rebels and struggles to find a hint of an explanation, something that would help make sense out of what would otherwise be a cruel and meaningless joke. "Someone I loved just died...please tell me why!!". But there is never an answer, even after years of waiting. Perhaps you then talk of there being a grander plan, or you maybe you hope there is. And deep inside, you fear it's all random and truly meaningless.

Some consider death as the opposite of life, others say it's merely the continuation of life in another form and experience. I don't know the answer, so I won't even pretend to speculate. All I know is that life exists. And that it can be beautiful. And like all things beautiful, it is fleeting and unsteady. Sadly, realizations of this beauty are too few and far between. Which makes it absolutely imperative that we enjoy the moments we can, and remember such moments during the ones we can't.