The Randomness of Life
A month or so ago, my father told me that his opthalmologist had diagnosed in one eye, the beginnings of a cataract formation. “Cataract?” I said, “but that’s only for old people, isn’t it?” My dad was quite amused. “How young do you think I am?” He asked me, pointing out that he had turned 63 this year.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that this came as a bit of a shock to me. I knew of course how old he was. But, my dad, old. Somehow that didn’t gel. It just didn’t seem right. In my mind, my dad is still the same person who came back from a tour and hid behind the door to give us a surprise when we came back from school. In class three.
In a sense, sixty-three isn’t that old these days. Many people in their sixties, including my dad, lead pretty active lives. Yet, acknowledging that my dad is growing old, would also mean admitting the fact of my own ageing. Some months ago, when I turned thirty, I felt it passing by me lightly. Now I wonder if I’m guilty of some ostrich-like behaviour.
Because, the truth is, that the people I love, and me, are not going to be here forever. I don’t know if it is the terror and trauma of the Mumbai attacks that is suddenly leading me to think in directions where my mind usually doesn’t wander. In some sense, it feels sacrilegious to write, or even think about death. I started writing this post, two days ago, but left it hanging as a draft. Don’t say it, don’t call its name. Inspite of being resolutely opposed to superstition, I felt somewhat guilty.
And yet, the one thing that the attacks have shown is that death isn’t all that far away. When the people we know grow old and pass away, we have some time to prepare ourselves. For those who are religious, there is the consolation of meeting again in an afterlife. But, sometimes, there isn’t that time, that luxury of preparation. The impulse to eat out at a fancy restaurent. The decision to have that meeting today instead of tomorrow. What a difference these made to those who landed up on the intersection of death’s coordinates.
More than a year ago, I read Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’, a book that she wrote in an attempt to come to terms with the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, also a writer. It is a profoundly moving work on the nature of grief and what it means for someone to not ‘be around’. Didion recalls the first words that she was able to write after her husband’s death.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.
For the survivors, that’s what it is. Life as you know it ends. Even those of us not directly affected, cannot but help feel atleast a little changed.
* Though this blog rarely gets into very personal territory, I felt compelled to put down these words, as a way of making some sense of the ambiguity and vague sense of depression that I’ve been feeling.