Kacche Dhaage

I don’t know if I’ve told you about this guy who keeps sending unsolicited forwards, but here’s a very interesting thought he sent the other day – It's a wise man who lives with money in the bank; it's a fool who dies that way...


My neighbor expired on Friday . I wouldn’t have been too shaken if the circumstances hadn’t been so dramatic.


He was a lovable chap, roughly around 56-58 years old. Always dressed in his long chaddis and a white banian, he sat watching TV with the door wide open in the evenings. Whenever we used to walk up to our flat, he used to smile and say hello, not bothered about his attire or posture. I also remember him as he returned from work, straddling his daughter’s rickety yellow scooter. Quite a merry man...


The circumstances I’m talking about are this... He and his wife have two daughters, both married off happily, one abroad and the other right here. While the daughters have a few years between them, both of them happened to get pregnant and deliver a baby girl on the exact same day, a few hours apart on different parts of the globe. While the mother went to tend to the elder one in Canada, the dad stayed with the other daughter and her grandma in Delhi.


Thanks to the internet, they shared experiences, feelings and pictures, and were due to meet soon as both new mothers had completed their interlude. His wife landed on Saturday dawn, but she was a few hours late to say a final goodbye to her husband who departed Friday evening. Massive heart attack. His local daughter says he was over excited to see his wife and other daughter. I wonder what his thoughts and emotions were...

Life is so unpredictable. Senior folks past 80 continue to live like death has forsaken them, while youth and middle-aged people have their lives cut short by fate. Is this fair? Is this how it was always meant to be? That while we are anxious about road mishaps, people die at home without a flutter?


I've heard so much bad news last year related to babies and pregnancies... I wonder why destiny is playing such games. Have people really erred so much??


(Just like I do whenever I hear “Hey Ram, Hey Ram... Tu hi mata tu hi pita hai...” That was the song that was going on when I went to offer condolences at a family friend’s demise. How things get associated...)


Blood relations are sometimes not as strong as relations of the heart, which is often why friends and neighbors rank higher in the priority list versus relatives. Maybe that's why their misfortune and deaths affect us more...


Also a Dad, who doesn’t let his teenage son walk 1 kilometer to the school alone. The car plies up and down to lug the brat, even as the Dad orders another’s child to ride alone 20 kilometers in the dense traffic all week for some work.


Even if the family is bickering away day and night, one cannot bear even a finger raised by a stranger on his/her family member. And that’s what makes it all the more special... (I don't quite know how a spouse who comes in a few weeks ago can be obeyed meekly by the guy who yells incessantly at his concerned parents, but that's how it's meant to be, I guess...)


Well, I don’t know where I’m heading, but now that this post is so all over the place, I might as well put all my thoughts in...


Each person is a different individual, with his unique temperament, ambitions and principles. That is why we end up in conflicts. Coz one’s laziness is another’s concern, and one’s life is voluntarily not his own to live and direct...


Thank you for reading.