Friday, March 27, 2009

Broken strings

In the beginning of this year, we lost one of our classmates.

Today, on the last day of college, as we stood teary-eyed, taking pictures while our professors surprised us with cake, reaching out to one another in a kind of desperation, a kind of wistfulness of having wasted three years of not getting to know each other better, today we lost a junior of ours to another bike accident.

It doesn't feel like so long ago when our classmate passed away. I still remember the disbelief and shock. The fact that someone you took for granted, who was supposed to be part of the background picture , familiar and present is never going to be seen again. It hits you that you should've waved at him when you had the chance. You could've spared a second of a 'Hello'. Isn't it strange that you end up having a lot to say when you realise you can't say it?

When someone you know leaves the face of the earth, you expect the earth to stop turning atleast for a bit. You expect the news to talk about him, you expect life to take a pause. When your world has a lost its sense of normalcy, how does it continue for everyone else? Shouldn't it take on a shade of grey? Is it inappropriate to think of exams, food and routine? Everything seems much more cloudier.

But the world continues to turn. And you, the one who's been left behind, have to turn along with it.

It's easy to say 'Be strong, move on'. You will, eventually. But how does that assuage the pain?

You will have to remember that while you shed tears and lament the cutting short of a young life, he is on another plane right now. He is tranquil and he is far from suffering and all the bondages of the human body. He is free.

It doesn't help your loneliness and the sense of absence that you feel. But do not mourn for him, for his loss. Because he is beyond any definition of loss. Beyond all these boundaries and barriers that condition our fragile existence that we take so seriously. He is with the true reality now and we continue in the illusion, till the time we join him.

And as abstract as I sound, it does make me feel better.

3 comments:

Tharini said...

i agree. totally.

Odette Bautista Mikolai said...

oh you will encounter pain - lots of it - and you will wonder why you arent taught in scholl pain management.
well there is no perfect anything. life is flawed and despite your effort, you won't always win.
you know you will always struggle against cynicism and bitterness, but then you will survive because life has a lot to look forward to.

congratulation! you have made it thru college..HUGS!

now you can go out beyond your comfort zone, armed with what your parents, teachers and friend had taught you.
just remember that you are not alone, and you will never be. there is always someone who had gone before you, someone walking behind you, and yet many other's walking beside you...

so, have no fear. rather feel free to take the world!!!

Mithali said...

I know. Sometimes a death seems to make everything else so pointless. And it is very scary when the world doesn't stop, it goes on just like it normally world, it makes you wonder whether anything matters at all. But I don't think I'm helping, sigh :/