Death and I

I had gone to attend a Kriya of my Vice Principal’s daughter who had passed away. All deaths are unfortunate, no one wants to face the reality and the certainty of Death but it is the one and only truth. I went there, shocked, shamed that I had not been in touch with my teacher who had taught me a lot of core values plus math. Mr. Bakshi with his dark jet-black flick hair and his bent finger was always on the look out for the backbenchers that tried to evade his questions. I cannot here debate his teaching or whether he played favorites…

I just remember him as a towering imposing disciplinarian who struck fear in our hearts. And today I saw this man, broken a mere shadow of his previous self. His only child had lost her battle and had passed on.

What shocked me was the absence of students who should have come to pay their respects or homage or give support to him. It was a weekday, some said. Some said they had visited him personally at home. I was just taken aback.

Am I being sanctimonious? Was I being overly correct just because I had gone there and the others hadn’t? Why have we lost our humane self ? It is as if all has been replaced by an equation that just translates into money and materialism.

I just realized one eternal truth, when I die no one will be there. All these platitudes of being friends and being there for life and till you die are false. When one dies, who has turned and got up form the grave and marked attendance and said, well so many are present. Good, Now I can die!

Life indeed is cruel and it teaches one at every step.

For me, I am a sentimental fool and these incidents make me lose my faith in humanity and I know no one will be there to cry at my bier.