Birth & Death, Part 1

When I was a kid, I never even thought about change. Everything was forever as far as I knew. Even if it wasn't, next year was always decades away. Time used to walk a slow walk then. Even later on when I was out of home to earn a living, the vigor of youth was flowing through the veins, and I always felt that I had all the time in the world to accomplish my goals. Then people 2 generations up start falling down, and I did notice death to some extent, but still didn't feel it.

But there came a point when I couldn't anymore escape realizing that time was really passing very fast and before I would realize I might very well be bed-ridden praying to god to give me a decent death. Over the last few months, I have been going sort of through a half mid-life crisis, with my mind continuously occupied with birth and death, and the purpose of any worldy actions at all especially the greed, stress and tension involved while doing them. More so as my dad turns 70 this december, I have come to realization that I can't postpone anymore the 'agenda' of spending as much time as possible with him while he still has traces of youth in him. During my recent trip to India, I came across a few sights that generated sadness in my heart and comforted me at the same time with my nightmares about aging (that I am not alone). I came face to face with change and aging. All the people that I looked up to as I was growing up - my aunts and uncles had visibly become old. In fact, many of them looked oddly disfigured - fatness, wrinkles, arched bodies, limped walk, rotten teeth, are to name some. On the same day, 2 of our older acquaintances bid their final adieu - one from my dad's generation, and the other from his immediate generation up. The most saddening of all was my naniji's state that I wanted to specifically talk about here. Stay tuned ...