Almost Dead

Six months, a year at the most. That’s what the doctors said. After a period of general disbelief the enormity of his situation kicked in, and people wasted no time informing him of his next course of action: A class he could attend; Manali; Goa; Kerala; Some place warm; Some place cold; some one had the audacity to suggest ‘Art of Living’ classes. Okay, that did it. Enough was enough. He’d spent his entire life considering his ‘next option’, his goal towards the next goal, almost like a never-ending staircase of goals. That clearly didn’t help given no tomorrow readily available to him. He recalled a French class where the professor spoke of the word ‘pour’ as always preceding some goal. Well no more ‘pour’ followed by a goal for him. His last few days amongst the living would be spent taking one day at a time, lamenting over his ‘condition’.

Bus rides to nowhere seemed a good idea. Every day for about 10 rupees one could watch a variety of people lead their dreary, dull lives and derive satisfaction through this. See, all wasn’t bad. ‘Haha! Good bye existentialism!’ How was that for pop-psychology? But at least they had lives, at least they had tomorrows and the days after that, summers and winters and then some other seasons in between to enjoy. The moping could go on forever. He was, after all, almost dead.

His favorite route was the one from Mall road to AIIMS; reliving college rides, beautiful shapes and sizes, assignment deadlines, attendance problems and loud, paunchy forty somethings staring at not-quite twenty somethings. One ride was particularly eventful. Apart from the usual passengers one little girl of about four years seemed incredibly striking as she played with her mother’s glass bangles. The myriad of colors, the look of intense concentration as she twirled a bangle followed by one of total glee as it caused a tinkle hitting another such bangle brought a smile on his face; “Dekho, taarey jaisey hai!”; she told her mother. His interest in this girl abruptly ended when a man motioned him to shift to a side.

This man looked about twenty-two, was kind of tall, well built, wore decent clothes and was newly employed judging by the hard-to-miss sheen from his well polished shoes. ‘Man, the lengths people go to impress’, he wondered. This man seemed worth talking to. Was he being elitist? ‘Give me a break, I’m dying, lets leave class issues to the living!’ “Hello, how are you? Me, I’m dying”. He was greeted by a meaningless stare. ‘Oh come on, maybe that wasn’t the best opening line, but at least it did warrant some sort of a reaction! Sympathy; pain; laughter; pity maybe’. It struck him how he hated pity, yet felt it his right to demand it. Pity that usually gave sentences like ‘ Death is the end to all suffering’, lines on moksha, re-birth, heaven. The truth was, nobody knew what death really was and so nobody had to right to talk of any end of any kind-How would you know if it didn’t happen to you? How were you supposed to feel brave if you had no idea what lay ahead? He kept taking breaks from his thoughts to look at the man next to him stare out of the window and from time to time look straight ahead at the other end of the bus-into what? Nothingness? Anyhow, the law of probability wouldn’t help because his dying was no longer a probability, it was more like a given and how it should happen was also known. He had heard it too many times-“…incurable disease, doctors have tried, something for the pain?”He felt caught in the middle of a fog, one he couldn’t see through, it had a definite end, yet he needed to hold on to it because he didn’t really want to see what lay ahead. He looked at the man next to him, decided to call him ‘Ramu’, because he had ears that stuck out slightly, like Ramu, the gardener at home. Yeah, Ramu goes to work; Ramu makes money; Ramu has dreams, promotions, fights at work, fights at home; Ramu goes through the age of thirty, and then forty and retires a happily married man with two successful children and four adorable grand children. He probably will have idols of Ganesha and Lakshmi in the drawing room and talk of good family morals and values. He felt sick, but sad too. He too wanted a slice of this dreary, dull life. The bus halted at the next stop. Ramu got up to get off, and then looked down and said, “Good luck with your life” almost like he too knew the anger and the fear, yet there was a steely determination coupled with a strange sense of peace in his words. He walked off.

The news was on. He was about to change the channel when a familiar face flashed on the screen. What was Ramu, his prototype for decent middle class man doing on television? That too in an unflattering, unsmiling shot? A familiar nine o’ clock voice then said, “ The police have identified the suicide bomber involved in the Parliament Square attack on Tuesday as ‘Rahim’, resident of Lahore, Pakistan. No statement form the Pakistani Government has been made so far”. ‘ Tuesday, that was when I met Ramu, I mean ‘Rahim’ ’…the coincidence seemed mind numbing. ‘That means he did know, he knew how it felt, how his end would come…’ Ramu chose his life and his death. It dawned on him; maybe there were no promises of a better after-life made to him, maybe he didn’t believe in embracing death, but he did have a choice, and he knew right then that embracing life would be his decision. True, he was almost dead, but right now, he was almost living, and that was no good. Maybe sunrises and sunsets would be beautiful to watch, maybe an ‘ Art of living’ class would help. Maybe Manali was not such a bad idea after all. He decided to check the travel brochures. “ June is the best time of year to visit the historic Manali”- the scorching heat of June that had just caused a visit to the shower didn’t seem quite so bad anymore. ‘ Maybe my luck is changing!’ He smiled.