मौत तू एक कविता है,
मुझसे एक कविता का वादा है मिलेगी मुझको
डूबती नब्ज़ों में जब दर्द को नींद आने लगे
ज़र्द सा चेहरा लिये जब चांद उफक तक पहुचे
दिन अभी पानी में हो, रात किनारे के करीब
ना अंधेरा ना उजाला हो, ना अभी रात ना दिन
जिस्म जब ख़त्म हो और रूह को जब साँस आऐ
मुझसे एक कविता का वादा है मिलेगी मुझको
Death you are a poem..
A poem has made pact with me that I shall meet her .
When drowning pulse will bring on painful sleep
When Moon carrying her yellow face will reach horizon
When days still in water and night close to shore
There is not yet darkness, neither light, not night not day
When body is gone and soul still breaths.
A poem has made pact with me that I shall meet her ..
These epic words of Gulzar from the movie Anand, come to my mind, as I sit 'comfortably numb' at this time in the college library, ya that's right comfortable but numb. Thoughts and ideas, tasks and accomplishments in life are something which are unending in nature. But on somedays, they also take a backseat and allow you to ponder upon your own self and your life. They give you a break to just allow you and ensure that you don't get unluckily exhausted, way before the finish line. Today is one such day. I call it unluckily exhausted and extinct as I mourn the death of two fellow law schoolites like me. The post is just an attempt to drive the grief away and pay a silent tribute.
They were not at all related to me. I have hardly had any interaction with them. Before things could take a right turn and relationships could deepen further, both of them shockingly said us goodbye as they left for their heavenly abode. One of them was my junior in college in the first semester. He newly enrolled in the same college committee of which I was also a member. I had received an informal word that all first years including him were the most enthusiastic to work for it. The message indeed was inspiring and exciting to have such a nice fresh lot. But I could never see his face even once. While performing the annual rituals and ceremonies of his deceased father like every year at a river bank, one would have never wanted death be the medium to cut short the delay between the meeting of the father and the son. Narmada swallowed him. The other was the one of the coordinators of the moot which I went for in the last semester. We used to call her quite often to enquire about all those petty things, registration, submissions, deadlines extensions etc. The moot happened. She was busy organizing. We mooted hastily and came back without meeting even once. Ten days ago, I got the news that she died of dengue. Both of them left me with short memories, so short and faded that even though I write this post, all I can do is to contemplate, how meeting them and working with them, sharing commonalities with them would have been like and so on. The purpose here is not to reveal further the reason for the mysterious happenings.
All it is, that we learn and realize that life is too short to make regrets or all you would be left with are death bed confessions. Often, it happens that we spend days, months and sometimes years together in thinking about 'what could have been' instead of what is happening. But as Robert Frost had put it very rightly more than a hundred years back,
"In three words, I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on."
And indeed it does. Even John Lenon says, "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans". As far as the narrower context of our law school lives is concerned, life will indeed go on. Even if it does not, amidst endless breakups and lost friendships, we and no one else shall have the individual responsibility to carry it forward. That is what the rule of nature says, something which is far more pious and stringent than the rule of law. Sometimes, these friendship-losses occur due to unavoidable or avoidable communication gaps, sometimes due to our hesitation to interact with strangers, even though all of them are our batchmates, and sometimes we just put too much trust into ourselves that we are as good as a one man army and stop caring about the world at large. Such a approach is good once in a while, but when such untimely losses of permanent nature happen, they make us realize how temporary everything is around us, including the very existence of our ownselves. The person of whom we always talk ill-will about is equally temporary. The person of whose success we are jealous off is temporary too. The recurring memories of the one sided love which just could not become mutual as the other person found someone better than us, is temporary too. And then accordingly, so should be our jealousy and hatred related to all these things, just temporary and not something which keeps our mind occupied ever and forever. Love will happen at the right time. Success and fame will come. Popularity will follow. But it is only when we are doing our job in the utmost best possible manner. That is when things and life will start making altogether great sense.
All we have in our hand is this day, that is today. We cannot predict the future and we cannot change the past, all we have is this moment and we must treat it as our last.
This post is not to make someone cry or suffer from emotional dogmas or create a sentimental aura but comes out of a result of mixed, vague and uncontrolled emotions. It comes out of the helplessness one feels when somethings which are just not in our control happen to leave us shell shocked, not just superficially but very properly deep down the heart. I'll end it with these words from the same movie,
Zindagi aur maut upar wale ke haath hain jahapanah,
use naa aap badal sakte hain na main,
Hum sab toh rang-manch kee katputliya hain,
jinki dor uparwale ki ungliyon mein bandhi hain
