Chances
The slow fading away of light, is a metaphor for the way our breaths go slow and somewhere the flicker of life undulates and negotiates with providence if it should remain steadfast or burn away. The mortal coil that we consign to a daily wear and tear is our constant companion even if we are not always aware of its fragility. We take things for granted as if they shall be there forever and in unplanned and rash moments day in and day out we spread ourselves thin like a fabric washed and brushed again and again till it spread thin for want of a living. In our reckless pursuits of all excesses we never even stop to think that this body is but a receptacle of a finite quantity and the more we evaporate its essence the less potent it shall remain. It is not a ferris wheel that one can sit on and just watch life go on and imagine that we never need to get down from that high perch from where it all looks so impressive but we are actually stuck mid air as the fuse has got burnt. So we are in a sort of stillness then, not planned for, in rarefied air, one moment it seems so pleasant that we wouldn't ever want to escape or exchange anything for this, and next we are stranded in limbo, neither prepared for the next world or ready to die.
Asset management can help sustain those we leave behind but who shall make sure in our absence how they are looked after or what life shall be like for them. This weak connection had to snap and it does, but what if we had not succumbed to the immediate and stood our ground and cared enough to sustain the project we had commissioned.
As a close known person is almost in a critical state, these thoughts hang heavy on the mind. Over the years one had avoided confronting him for the way he was living his life, without a care for the responsibility of looking after himself to be able to take care of his family for the longer haul and now when he is hanging on the wings of a prayer with a surgical procedure that could go either way it all seems to have unraveled badly with no chance for a preparatory round or familiarization with the associated trauma. He has to enter the arena all by himself with a sinking stamina and a rapid drop in the vitals. It is staggering and at times it stops me at odd hours, and as if covered in cold sweat as I cannot for the life of me fathom what can happen and if any of the dire warnings due to the underlying conditions comes true.
It also takes me back to the times when one had told his parents to admonish him for his excessive drinking and wasting away his nights with freeloader friends at seedy clubs. And once when he had dashed his car against another car in an inebriated state it was a time when one had taken it upon oneself to read the riot act and chided him and made him apologize to his wife as well for the reckless behaviour, as she was almost on the verge of leaving him for good, if not for the kids that made a weak common ground to stay put in this uninspiring arrangement. And he sheepishly agreed to everything he was told to do. But that reformation hardly lasted for long. And as time went one despaired of these encounters and gave up explaining things to him. And as it seems now, he went back to his usual ways, albeit more surreptitiously, being one thing outside and another at home. And no one quite realized the damage that had been done to his body by the constant alcoholism.
Though it all seems pointless now why one had been so strict and severe with him when there isn't much time to take it back from there and set him free from the guilt with a word of approbation, even if he had brought it all on himself. Yet to not have a chance to express those things that one had buried deep inside, that hid behind our anger, the torment our conflicted heart faced while doing the tongue lashing, all of these as of now seem to have lost an outlet. And we seek some redemptive possibility within the narrow confines of our uncomfortable settlement with this arrangement, wishing upon life to grant us a chance to make it up to each other and to see a world tinted in brighter and better colours.
As many loose ends as we keep tying. A life never is an easy thing to come to terms with, account for or be able to define in strictly concrete terms. It's always happening as we see it unfolding before us, ever changing, difficult to size up, elusive, reclusive, may be it's a mixed baggage made up of mostly unsorted goods. Here today, gone tomorrow.
As I look at the familiar faces, one can see traces of him in each of them, if not as a physical similarity at least as a common bond and the paleness as well, that comes from staying awake nights on end, in a vigil, one after the other, biding the inexorable time, and almost like a last strand keeps it all from unspooling into something that cannot be put back together again. Last I spoke to him, it was about catching up soon. Now as we await the results, we wish that some battles are not dragged but truced to a proper safe passage. A life lived well or short is an objective lesson in negotiations and the onus is on us to carry it through with a pure or a shattered resolve, at best we leave something monumental for whomsoever came in touch with us close enough, if it matters to them that is or can sink without much of a trace or without giving others a chance to bid adieu or make amends.
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