As strong as you were, tender you go...

I was just listening to this song , "Carry you home" by James Blunt. While I was lost in the lyrics of this song, the first thing that came into my mind was death ; a death owing to cancer, to be precise. I had been sitting quietly, staring at my laptop for practically no reason (all the windows were minimized and I realized this a little later) when I became conscious of my tearful eyes. There was something so appealing about this beautiful yet sad song that before I could realize even this bare truth, I had its video playing in front of me ( as if my fingers magically ran over the keyboard. Okay, I am exaggerating now!)  It turned out to be a little different from what I had expected ( Indian cinemas have ruined my imagination!). The video was indeed associated with death but it portrayed a soldier's death and not a young damsel dying of a terrible disease.

I remember, when I was a kid, I used to have these creepy dreams about snakes and deaths. I had dreams about my mom's death, snakes taking her away etc. which literally scared the hell out of me. The very thought still takes life out of me. I also had dreams about my own death (and I still do) but that doesn't bother me at all. I know that the cycle of life has to continue and blah blah blah but lets face it. Who doesn't freak out at such a point of time? For some, it's the end of their lives and for some others it is as obvious as the other side of a coin. But whatever may be the case, it's always grievous to hear about anyone's demise, your newspaper vendor, your maid's child, the peon in your school, the clerk in your office, the poor rikshaw puller who once stood on the other side of the road, the teacher you once hated, the classmate you once fought with or some random person's father. You may not know the name of the soul that now rests in peace, you may have loathed somebody from the day you met him or called him names behind his back but as soon as you hear the news of his death, all the hard feelings vanish wondrously and you suddenly remember a few good things about him which should have come to your mind in the interim of his existence. Unfortunately, he's not present anymore to hear you. He has flown away without having the slightest idea that you could ever think about him in this manner. If you were thoughtful enough, he would have left this world with one enemy less.

Death is sudden, agonizing and irreversible but that's the climax, picture abhi baaki hai mere dost. Leave all the melodramas and tragedies for the end and live your life in a way that rules out the existence of any kind of regret by the time you reach it's end. Hatred may make you strong but love makes you way stronger and most importantly, peaceful. Your life becomes worth when someone desperately wishes to add breaths to your life when you are running out of them and not the other  way round. I am sure you wouldn't like to learn that someone somewhere wishes every breath of yours to be your last one! As strong as you were, tender you go when you or somebody else is at the Exit. The million dollar question is, Why wait to reach the exit when the road, leading to the same, is long and there are so many on the way to get along?