Chapter IX: The Inevitable

The alarm tone kills your REM sleep, you wake up and head-dive into monotony. Everything seems same. Stagnant. It’s a new old-day. But has nothing really changed? Do you really sense no difference? Think harder. Don’t you realize that there are no new mornings for him, or he won’t see the sun rising and flooding the Earth with light again? The sun of his life has set forever. There’s never going to be another time you hear that voice. He’s been snatched. No more of his gifts, and no more blessings.

Death is that untamed lion. Nobody can control it, no whips work. It takes lives away. In a fraction of a second. Life, that we relentlessly work towards making better every passing day, seems so fragile. One blow from death and there’s nothing that you have earned in your lifetime that can save you.

Given the number of Cancer cases in my family, losing another life to it does not make it any easier. It is just as grisly as earlier was. It’s not just the end of an existence, the death knells serve as a reminder of responsibility the next generation has got dumped with, it’s the slaughter of those iridescent visions that have now gone monochrome, an adieu to memories that now stand marred.

Death strips you off all your laurels, of all your prized possessions. These distinctions plague only the living. You may have duped a million but there’s no escaping death, not a mortal clever enough. It sees no good or bad. You may be a prince or a pauper, a scholar or a libertine, an epitome of nobility or an ignoble quack. Nobody escapes it. It’s like a black-hole that swallows light. When your time is up, your time is up. It doesn’t come knocking or seeking approval. It just hits, then devastates. It leaves us lamenting. Such is its rage. Leonine. It leaves us with questions, with tears. Parting peacefully is what we have not been conditioned for, have we?

We read books about death, about people on borrowed time embracing their remaining life. Reading those poignant words we feel enlightened; like we know the meaning of life, like we now guard a secret. Tell that to someone who plays the lead in real life. Tell it to someone who has spent his years upping his game, who has been through the crests and troughs of his folks, walked that extra mile for his children and been somebody’s better-half through thick and thin. Don’t these bonds make it harder? Yes. They pull you back and you want to hold on. You yearn for the unusual to occur. You challenge His prowess.

When death corners us mortals, we get down on our knees with folded hands hoping for a miracle. But miracles work mysteriously, don’t they? What is not arcane about the functioning of nature? It’s one tortuous track and miracles are such marvels that keep us hung up on them till  the very last, till that jaded sliver of hope decides to give in, till those bated breaths finally run out.

Death arrives with a gamut of reasons, reasons to take us away; reasons that cut the umbilical cord off for a rebirth into another world for a new life. All because your time here has elapsed and another place in this cosmos awaits your presence.

So is there life after death? Do you believe in afterlife? I certainly don’t. There’s only one life. One life either to live in fear of that unconquerable force or to make the most out of. Only one life to learn from all follies and only one life to thoroughly relish in. One life is sufficient for the bad karma to reciprocate and all your good virtues to repay. Sooner or later. Perhaps sooner than later. There’s always hope.