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Of Death and of Life

Life sometime seems like a walk through the desert with little change in the scenarios, deaths are only punctuations sewed on an otherwise plain, uneventful story as someone called it "a tedious story twice told".
Last week I lost some one who was once very close to me, who in older days of joint families would have been termed as head of the family in Indian context. My paternal uncle, the oldest among the brothers, my father had passed away. Why I say once close is because the present has a nasty way of messing up with the past. I still remember the love that he showered on me when I used to visit him as a child. A child has great capacity of love, unhindered by other considerations and I would love him with same vigour and enthusiasm as I would my own parents. Families grow, larger and apart, and so did we as the distances found a way into the closely knit relation till the time we came to a point that whenever we both families looked at each other, we would look as if gazing across a glass pane in cold morning with fog playing with the vision.
Slowly, as lives move in a direction of unlove, we look at our pasts with fondness. I sometime wonder if those blessed with siblings realize the loneliness and futile attempts to fight that which an only child grows up.
In spite of the distances which seeped in, it was his persona as a neat, tall and upright figure, who would always speak in a chaste and kind language with some hidden undercurrent warmth of oneness, and in the memories of the past. For some reason the love that he carried, could not transcend to the following generations, each individual busy in analysing the equivalence of relationship and bitterly fighting his or her own summary battle everyday. We fought, and hurt and ignored everybody, safe and secure in the knowledge of the anchor which he represented, holding the family together, even in a notional, feeble way. As he follows his wife, who was always very kind to me as well, in to the heavenly abode of existence or non-existence which I am not wise enough to know of, the world around him seems lost trying to make sense of the loss of balance which his demise presents. Hope those next in order will rise to the occasion to take charge and hold the family as a glue connecting it all together till we can. Passing away of a generation in a family marks great transformation, and no one can guess how we are going to come out of it, better or worse. It also remind one of the infallibility of those still around and gives a sense of velocity with which time moves, amidst the waves of which we float helplessly. While I bid farewell to him, I do think how important it is to embrace forgiveness, as we do not know if time will grant me another Sunday, another movie and another cricket match in the green park stadium.He did however lived a full life, marred in between with some undeserved misfortune, basking in the warmth of love of his children and grand-children. Hope those after him would srtive for same warmth and love. Every death around us bring a similar set of thoughts which we would do well to heed to, is it important to be right than to be loved, shouldn't we forgive more and judge less and shouldn't we actively try to extract utter joy and happiness from our otherwise banal existence.

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