More on life and death ...

Perhaps it is only natural that as the days get shorter and cooler, well, I think of my own mortality too.  Like how Hollywood waits for autumn to start releasing its dramas, after all the fluffy movies from mid-spring through the summer.

Thus, here I am continuing with the ramblings on life and death, as if yesterday's was merely the beginning!

When my thoughts head in this direction, I am often reminded of John Updike's Requiem:

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!"

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
"I thought he died a while ago."

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

So wonderfully has Updike captured a great deal of emotions in such a lovely little simple poem.

We are all mortals, engaged in a battle with that ultimate champion of all--death.  A tiny miniscule are remembered for a while after they are gone, but a great majority of us will be lucky to be remembered by a handful for even a few days.  With many of us, it is, as Updike writes, "I thought he died a while ago"--even when we are alive!

But, it doesn't mean that we merely sit around waiting for the grim reaper to make his presence known.  Kalidasa--yes, that Kalidasa--advises that we ought to be reap that profit of being alive. The following couplet is from Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha via Subhashitani...

मरणं प्रकृतिः शरीरिणां विकृतिर्जीवितमुच्यते बुधैः ।
क्षणमप्यवतिष्ठते श्वसन् यदि जन्तुर्ननु लाभावानसौ ॥

- रघुवंश

Death is the natural steady state of nature. Life is an aberration. Wise men realize this.
Even if one is alive for just a second, he must consider himself in profit.

- Raghuvamsha

Yes, go ahead and celebrate the fact that you are alive. Kalidasa said so.

My celebration, yesterday, included making this: