Thoughts of Death

Death is a painful thought, a thought which for a very long time in life seems like a distant data. But there comes a time, when it comes to be a very real thought. Evenings are hounded by shades of dark obstructing a vivid vision as you are not very sure of surviving the evening. Some evenings are heavier than others, just as the last one was, in which dark shadow of death slowly descends down on the windows, like dark, huge vultures on the windows, and hotel rooms, feels unfriendlier and stranger than their inherent unfreindliness and strangeness. Suddenly an innocent headache which creeps in silently, feels like a devil with ugly teeth, smilingly pronouncing the impending doom.
For some reason, death has always grabbed my attention, even in the days, when such matters seem to unreal to attract the intention of a young mind. A death pushed me to my own impending death, which sent me back from the very edge, as I stayed put on the course of life with life itself held casually as a cigarette limping lazily in my fingers. An arrogance jumping at every opportunity to challenge death, kind of welcoming gesture to the possibility of death. It never came, and seemed almost impossible, till the time it hit hard with the limply held cigarette falling off the fingers as I struggled out of the hospital room with unsteady feet.
Slowly the steps regained steadiness, and once again death became nothing more than musings of an sometime idle mind. A decade or more down the line, it bared its hidden fangs once again when once again and show its realness, too close for comfort. Now, well, the thought in itself does not scare me, not any more than it did in the earlier days of youthful rebellion , neigh even in today's time of mindful subservience it does not scare me. But as I look at the little, pink bundle of joy which made my life once more liveable and things started making sense. Death can not be a walkover competitor. Only way to be a worthy fighter in a losing fight, which is an eventual truth,  a hopelessly real and unsurmountable fact, is to give your own self the priority you truly deserve. It is common to find people complaining about some people that they think themselves to be "God's gift to mankind".
Well, to think of it, what could be wrong with that idea, what else should we think of ourselves instead, God's mistake (or nature's, for the atheists). I wish I could have thought so about myself and treated myself around one year back and treated myself that way, without being subservient to a tendency to prove my usefulness to people whose love and approval I sought. Instead the looming darkness of the shadows of death, I could have played under the sunshine of glory of life. Well, is it all lost, no, I think. But than every day, every minute is a lost day. Every day that I relegate myself to the second priority, I loose an opportunity to give anyone the first priority. That is the whole complexity of the idea, it is an Idea which need not be turned on its head, it already stands on its head. You can not love anyone, if you deny a true and pure love to your own self. You might need to be unkind to yourself, as unyielding as love is. You have to do all that to rise upto the glory of true love that you have locked in your heart to offer to other. Does it make sense? I do not know, but to me it does, whether I will remember it when I get back from the bed and a new dawn descends is another question. I wish the message, stays with its taste in my mouth, with its freshening tinginess. Will let you know.