 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
Life
after fifty Published on December 05, 2006
When I was in the school we read a short story of Sanjeeb Chatterji where the writer said, "Manush briddho Na hoiley sundar hoi na". At that time it was contrast thinking for me. Now I understand what the writer really wanted to mean. In fact life shows it�s real color when we are in a certain age. To fathom the hidden message of life we need experience, a professional experience of life. How this realization comes may differ from person to person. A true perception of life depends on how we take life in our real lives. The day my dear history professor Narayan Chandra Shaha died at the age of 78, I was at his bedside. I was a young man of 22 years and it was my experience to see a man dying. It was around 3 am in the morning I was seating beside his, everything was quiet and serene. Suddenly he raised his right hand and called me closer to him. He came out of his comma and smiling. He told me, don�t call the doctor, my time is almost over. I can see an endless road before me and want to take that journey. Besides that I see everything in a void. All my life, all my efforts to learn more and all my endeavors to make me immortal are just evaporated into the thin air. I am free, I am emancipated�. He closed his eyes. His grip on my hand eased and fell off. Such was the memory of his death and such was the beauty of life I saw in death. My personal experience of life is that memory plays a great role in solidifying the meaning of life. In fact life is nothing but a bed of memory. Many carry them in their hearts and many share them with others. Life itself is a solitary experience unless we give company to it. There is a speed in life which can be measured in our life spans. The very big questions of life such as to be successful, to achieve fame and gather wealth and above all how to surpass the barrier of time and space are answered by our understanding of life. A time comes when we all realize our limitations and gather enough power to come to terms with the realities. For that we don�t need a chartered accountants help to find out where we have failed and where we have been successful. This is amazing because it�s all about our lives, the most important sensation of being in the world, but still we can come to a conclusion by ourselves. This is what I call the eternal power of life. Many years before in Singapore I was passing through a house and saw small child seating on the lap of a very old woman. It was a very normal and ordinary scene. Now after so many years I don�t take that scene as an ordinary one. In this scene I saw a rupture and a unity in the endless journey of time. A huge gap of time made peace in a very forceful way. The eternity showed its beauty through this rapprochement. Despite the fact that I am a very devoted fan of Shakespeare, I don�t take everything he said about life. Many people have a tendency to quote Shakespeare to interpret life. They are true if we put them in a personal perspective but I find them too philosophical. I do accept their poetic and emotional beauty but not in the general terms. For example when Macbeth says, �Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow,a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. This interpretation of life is nothing but a personal one and that also a product of Macbeth�s actions. There is a tremendous mixture of beauty and pain in our lives. The roars, the ups and downs and finally the endless silence, all make life a matter of great importance. There is a message of integrity, a message of reality and among all these variations there is a message of unity.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
||
|
|
||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |