DEATH....

An old fellow had once complained about his dead friends…”I do not find these disappearing acts of theirs’ at all amusing!”…Pardon me if my words sound unpleasantly pregnant with cynicism but I do find Death pretty amusing…in an age when Man has victoriously answered to Nature’s call on the brazen face of the Moon and entrapped the world in a constricting web of red, green and brown wires, Death still rejoices in the deep dark vortex of the Unknown…Bewildered, astounded, stupefied Man continues to drill through but victory is elusive…it sprints gleefully about…chuckles at street corners….scoffs at them all as they, bearing the halogen lamp, march onwards…and thus, the quest continues…..
Death is indeed cynically, sadistically amusing….very few living souls can digest this bit of grim humor without a strong dose of isabgol….and yet we all have to gulp it down one fine insipid, uneventful morning…gulp it down like an unsuspicious cup of black tea…and eureka! Our hackneyed journey on earth is done!
I wonder on my idle vagabond days, who invites Death? A flamboyant purple parchment embellished with sparkling gold vines and creepers, encasing verbose, formal words of invitation….is that how Death creeps in through life’s wide-open gates?….I have never been able to bring my imagination to believe that Death just might be a hunchback beggar in tattered rags…extending out its gnarled wrists, shaking a disfigured aluminium bowl, begging for life itself…and Man is too much attached to this brick and mortal world to give it away in charity. So Death just bulldozes through the carefully constructed walls…spreads its hooked tentacles and sweeps its victim off…off…far far away into the diabolic world of clandestine existence….
So be it…Death is a Chameleon, agreed !…but it is amusing all the same…it amuses me…it amuses my pupils that, having been accustomed to the presence of a living soul around its line of vision suddenly finds that soul living no more! There lies my friend, a smug little smile plastered on her face that will only be wiped away by the unmerciful hellish flames of the electric chullah …there she lies in a state of irritating complacency, not twitching an eyebrow, not scratching her slightly perspiring temple with her long nails…there she lies, yet another tenant of Death....