Jlt!

// Hume tumse pyaar kitna, yeh hum nahi jaante..

Magar jee nahi sakte tumhare bina…. //

There are times when I go on listening to the same playlist again and again for weeks. This time it’s the Old Hindi Classics playlist on my iPod that’s been playing iteratively for quite some time. As I sit here listening to this old classic, stupid thoughts and interpretations swarm my mind.

I guess the singer is talking about true love. How it’s impossible to live without the beloved! And isn’t that what most of us keep telling each other, our loved ones that is. Not just telling, but also believing so in our sub-conscious mind. A belief that simply rejects the idea of life without a particular person or a specific environment or something of that effect.

The irony is this: Our beliefs, interpretations and plans seldom coincide with the truths of life. No matter how much emotionally or socially attached we might be to any person living, death is what makes all the difference. In that manner, death is more of an eye-opener, for the people who are left behind, destined to live on, for better or for worse. When death arrives, it sweeps away with itself just the person, and no matter how much we request, plead, cry, it won’t act otherwise. It won’t leave that person. It won’t take you either. It just does what it does. It kills. It liberates.

I hope it hasn’t happened with you. But that’s what happens with most of the people. Loved ones die. You pray madly, frantically to die with them. Life seems to be meaningless. Light seems to be nowhere. For days, you curse your own existence. And then time does the trick. It gives you strength. It gives you life. It elucidates you. It introduces you to the truth. And the truth is harsh.

The truth is that nobody dies with the dead. Nobody WANTS to die with the dead. It is just the moment of death, its enormity, its awe, that we begin to feel that all we wish to do is to die with the dead. There is hope of converging with the lost. At that moment, love becomes greater than fear. But that is just a moment.

The moment passes by, and we come face-to-face with the truth. Life goes on. And no matter what, it goes on and on and on. We get busy, there are new people to meet, new milestones to achieve, new love to find. There are new attachments to be made, new missions to be accomplished, new races to run. And then one fine day, death strikes again. Life comes a full circle. And the circle never stops. Probably that is the beauty of life. Or is it the ugliness?