In the present situation when a sombre event such as death has been reduced to mere statistics, the musings of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami ring true: “Death is not the opposite of life but a part of it.”
With the Covid-19 crisis taking its toll on relatives, friends, acquaintances and colleagues and reading their obituaries day in and day out, one is forced to take a step back from life and ponder over it in its entirety and thereby its culmination or corollary, which of course is the endgame for each one of us.
We mortal beings presume that our journey ends with the last breath. Is that so? The persona continues to live far and beyond. The first gush of thoughts that deluge the mind on hearing of someone’s demise is the overarching personality traits of the departed one – protagonist for some and antagonist for others.
Our cognitive senses are wired to judge and evaluate and then follow the emotive response. While the first response till a few years ago was sadness and mourning, in later years it has graduated and even post-graduated to that of objective evaluation instead of experiencing an overarching sense of subjective grief. This may have precursors in the collective wisdom gathered over the years as one approaches middle age.
What one has begun to realise now is that while each of us comes with a stamped expiry date, what makes us unique and different is the way we navigate through this journey. Our personality type and behaviour patterns are woven uniquely through the warp and weft of our psychosocial and socio-economic threads enmeshed with a dash of our genetic composition. These finally determine our unique goals, hopes and aspirations and the journey of life we traverse – either meandering or racing towards the self-designated goals. Also, the means adopted towards achieving these goals count. How many people whose lives we touched were hurt by our actions-inactions or how many people we trampled upon to script our moments of glory?
{{/usCountry}}What one has begun to realise now is that while each of us comes with a stamped expiry date, what makes us unique and different is the way we navigate through this journey. Our personality type and behaviour patterns are woven uniquely through the warp and weft of our psychosocial and socio-economic threads enmeshed with a dash of our genetic composition. These finally determine our unique goals, hopes and aspirations and the journey of life we traverse – either meandering or racing towards the self-designated goals. Also, the means adopted towards achieving these goals count. How many people whose lives we touched were hurt by our actions-inactions or how many people we trampled upon to script our moments of glory?
{{/usCountry}}What the pandemic has taught us is that man revels in his invincibility but forgets the harshest teaching by the brutal duo of time and experience. That all of us may not make it to the pages of history books but those whose lives we touch in this sojourn are sure to remember us for reasons both good and bad. While we may be showered with praise and words of affection on our eternal departure, our darker side will sooner or later come up for discussion, albeit in hushed tones.
There are bound to be outpourings of exaggerated accounts of our professional achievements, success and qualifications, but we will also be remembered for our shades of grey.
The choice is clear for us to make. As Majrooh Sultanpuri aptly and prophetically puts it:
Ik din bik jaayega, maati ke mol
Jag mein reh jayenge, pyaare tere bol ….
The writer, a senior bureaucrat, is resident commissioner, Punjab, in New Delhi. She can be reached at rarabhandari@gmail.com