Death

Guess what? It's Saturday! Perfect timing for another of my posts...

This time, it's about death.

Various dictionaries define death as the following:
"the event of dying or departure from life", "the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism", "the absence of life or state of being dead", "the time when something ends" and "the time at which life ends"

The ideas for this post were thought up on a train journey (Mumbai-Goa or vice-versa) when I was discussing the concept of death with Vigi. We had quite a discussion about the same then...

I always thought of putting down what I thought as a blog post, but kept procrastinating, as it is my habit, till now, when certain events made me realize that I just simply had to write this post in the near future.

The idea of death isn't new to me. I had known it to be the inevitable end right since middle school. In first or second grade (don't remember which) I lost a classmate. I think his name was Varun. I may not remember most other details because my memories about school have grown quite blurry. Then again in high school, I lost another fellow student, this time a girl. She wasn't a classmate, but my mother told me what we had been in nursery school together. It's very unfortunate that I never had the opportunity to know them better. I only wish I had invested more time in interacting with them a bit more when I had the chance.

Then again, in BITS the trend continued.... Lost a person almost every year... Fellow students, director, what not... It's been very sad, but inevitable none the less. In fact, one of the students who passed away at BITS had been the immediate neighbour of one of my close friends. I know he was quite shaken knowing that he would never be able to see his neighbour's friendly face at BITS ever again.

So, back to the discussion we had. What is death? Death seems to be the ceasing of the existence of a living being, for any reason. But yea... I'm living, I experience myself inside me. Pain, pleasure, relief, anger... the entire gamut of 'feelings' and also memories and experiences I have gained through the process of 'living'. It's baffling that I am inside me, and not observing myself as a third person. That feels weird sometimes, especially when I think about it. It brings me to the question, what happens when I die? What happens to my 'self', my so-called 'feelings', 'memories'? Do they just disappear? Whoosh??? Or are they stored somewhere? What happens of my 'awareness' and my unwritten and unshared ideas?

All these questions bring me to a newer, and a more fundamental question...
We start 'living', grow up, learn, start earning, make a family, and then finally die. So what is the purpose of life? Is it just doing the above? All humans do that (I hope). So what makes me different from the rest? Am I just a tool in the propagation of the human race (and hopefully improving its genetic code through evolution) and nothing else? If so, life seems quite pointless, actually. These questions have been troubling me since a really long time, and unfortunately, I haven't found their answers yet. Maybe the answers lie in death itself. Maybe I will find out eventually (after I die?)

What I am more curious about is that have other people (my contemporaries, friends, whatever...) thought about these above questions themselves? Has it occurred to them that these questions are worth thinking about? If so, what are their views? I would really like to hear/read them. Maybe the reason I think about this so much is because I read certain books, mainly "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" both by Richard Bach when I was quite young. These books actually gave me quite a lot of new ideas and made me think deeper. I definitely recommend that you read these books when you do have the time. They're fairly simple to follow, and I believe they'll get you thinking at once.

These made me more 'comfortable' with the idea of death, and made me realize that even if people die (leave?), my life does go on, and new experiences and ideas will still be born (will they be of any importance?)

And so, I keep living my life, trying to hold on to people precious to me, spending as much time as I can with them, lest I lose them and have regrets later on...

Hope you do the same...

Rest in peace, all those who have moved on...

Later!

People Always Leave

Hi all,

I've been watching loads of "One Tree Hill" recently. I really like Peyton's drawings and comic strips. One I specifically admire is "People Always Leave" because I'm somehow able to associate it with my life. Here it is...

Where do I go from here?

Warning: This might just be the most random post I've written till today.

It's been 21 years. A long 21 years. I've had moments good and bad, joys and sorrows, dreams... fulfilled and procrastinated. Seen times both good and bad. Made friends, lost them, gotten out of touch, back in touch, lost touch...

I really don't know the purpose of this post. Just putting thoughts down as they come to my mind. As you may have read, I'm currently in Bangalore. Bangalore brought it's own share of joys and sorrows. Brought me closer to friends from college, re-discovered the joy of spending time with older friends with whom I had lost touch.

But there's always been this thought at the back of my mind. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? At this point of time, I really envy the people who have a life plan, or who atleast have courage enough to tread unknown ground. As I was discussing with my professors from college about what they would write in my recommendations for application to graduate schools, one of them actually went on to describe my strengths and weaknesses. He called me methodical and said that I was extremely cautious about my approach to problem solving. There was nothing wrong with his observations . However, I realised that this quality was both a boon and a curse. It enabled me to employ the scientific method in all my decisions. However, when there was uncertainty, I would be left in a complete mess.

I have always wanted to be happy and successful like everyone else. However, even after 21 years, I haven't been able to find out what makes me happy and what success is to me. I have always wanted to be anything, but ordinary. But as my life continues, I realise that I'm becoming just another person who did what others do. I seriously do not see the point of pursuing such a monotonous lifestyle. I want to make a difference. To myself, to others.

I used to live life a day at a time, still do. I need to find a goal in life. Looking back joining BITS has given me an opportunity to taste real life while pursuing an internship in my fourth year. It's shown me that I need to take action, and fast. Otherwise it may just be a slide to the melancholy for me. I see no satisfaction living life as I have been living it in Bangalore for the last two months. There's a need for change, a need to achieve something higher in life than just doing what others do day after day, month after month, year after year.

What I've done these 21 years has been a script handwritten by me and executed to perfection with help from everyone who's been associated with me. Now comes the challenge. The script ends here. Time to make a fresh start, a new beginning. So long all!

As a final note, this post made me realise that I had named my blog aptly back when I started writing it in 2007. This post defines the theme of my blog.....

PS: Most of my Saturdays are spent brewing up this sort of crap... Sad really...