Short Life

I have heard the oft repeated statement ‘life is like this, take it the way it comes’, but nothing had prepared me for the shock that I got on the afternoon of 30th august. Exams currently being ubiquitous in my life I was so taken in by it that I didn’t stop for a moment to see what was taking place around me, till I received a rude awakening. In college while preparing for the afternoon exam we were informed that one junior had passed away due to fever. What shocked me the most was not the cause of death which otherwise is common place till death reared its ugly head on the poor unsuspecting victim, but the abruptness of life. The unexpectedness of life was too much to handle, the thought that there was so much of uncertainty attached to everything was unnerving. I didn’t know her personally nor do I remember seeing her, but the fact that we shared the same sphere for two years, shared the common joys, sorrows and frustrations attached with college and suddenly her being ripped away from this shared environment was overwhelming. My heart went out to her parents who had nothing more left but to wait for their daughter’s arrival in Kashmir, that too in a state which they would have never expected even in their wildest nightmares. But as they say, ‘this is life’; outsiders will mourn for a day or two and then forget to move on with their lives but the real losers and sufferers are her parents and siblings.
There are many things which we postpone for tomorrow little realizing that tomorrow is uncertain and we don’t know what is going to happen when and where. At such times its not the bigger things but the little things in life which matter the most and among those your family gets top priority. We never realize the times in our life we have ever stopped to tell our parents how much they mean to us, that we love them more than anything in this world and we are grateful for all that they have done to help us survive in this world are few and far placed. We always postpone resolving a quarrel but when something happens we regret not acting on our intuitions. I remember reading a poem somewhere which called for attention to such overlooked aspects of life and also asked the reader to rethink his lifestyle. What are we getting by this mad scramble for life? In this mad rush to be successful we are not enjoying the inner aspects of life. There is hardly anytime spent with family members which is the support system, rather more time is spent trying to acquire ephemera. When I read that poem today I wondered, apart from the family how much time do we give to nature? Rather we spend time trying to destroy it. Think about it, how many times have you stopped to enjoy the rains or the gorgeous weather bestowed along with it rather than cursing the potholes and horrendous traffic jams that accompany it. How many times have you gone for a vacation to the hills for time away from the city but after sometime craved to get back online and to your mobile blissfully stuck to your ear? It has been more frequent than we ever imagine it to be and later in life when we think we have fulfilled all our duties towards our parents and then our children, we sit back and realize that in the mad scramble we never actually enjoyed life. We never enjoyed it in the joys nor sorrows nor in the pain associated with the efforts of achieving everything and in old age there is no use complaining, so enjoy while you have the time or the sheer lack of it.