There is no grief bigger than personal grief.
It took me a death to realise this. The country was holding its breath for the landmark judgement, a judgement that may change the course of history. But I was not holding my breath. I was not thinking about what would happen to my country, my people if for Ram people take up arms against each other once again. All I was thinking about was how my untimely widower friend would be able to restart his life after a short circuit burnt the CPU.
The biggest issue in my life right then was not the settlement of Ayodhya but the reality that my closest friend’s wife, to whom I owe a lot of my current happiness, is not there to help us out next time around. Even in death, she did me a favour. She taught me to control my emotions. I had to hold back my tears for a long time so that my friend could shed his. For the first time in my life, I realised Gautam Buddha was right. There is no grief unique, no pain biggest.
Death, this was not my first brush with you. I have seen you from closer quarters, taking my beloved uncle away bit by bit. I have slept in peace when you took away a dear grandma in the middle of the night without the slightest warning. But I never felt you lurking by my side with a silent threat of crushing my carefully built universe. That’s what you did to my friend.
“I was dreaming of becoming three from two. I ended up being one,” was what the hurt heart could say. At that very moment, I realised I didn’t lose anything paying least attention to maths lessons. Those lessons would have taught me 2+1 is always 3, without any exception. But life is exceptional, life is one and only. Death is what makes it exceptional, and he who doesn’t know the exception, is ignorant. However, this ignorance is, as usual, bliss.
