Letting go isn’t the problem,
It’s the empty space they’ve left behind.
These people who’re so full of life,
the way they fill up your life..
And suddenly they’re not there.
In some cases, it’s not been a surprise. In other cases, it has.
Our lil’ brother came with us to the cemetery.
exactly 2 months ago he was in the cemetery…for his mom.
He’s seen quite a bit by now.
After a while, when the flames got higher,
We all broke up into smaller groups
Akka in one corner
Dad and Peddanana in another.
Abhishek and I in huddled in another.
Abhishek is 17.
Raj babai and Krishna babai in another corner.
Our brother Pratyush in another.
Suddenly it was like..
What’s the point.
Of fighting with people
criticizing.
arguing.
All the negativity
What’s the point really
If it all anyway comes down to this?
What matters is what you do with the time you’re given
Be good
Do good.
Be more than u can do.
No regrets.
Peace.
Nothing else matters.
**
I took some pictures today.
At the ghat.
Of Ammamma’s.
In a matka.
And others. Of other things. Of things at the same time.
Then we went in a padhava..towards the deeper end of River Krishna.
Peddanana utters ‘Narayana Narayana’ Narayana’
and throws the matka over his shoulder.
Around the same place,
there’s pond fishing happening, boating and jaunting too.
Typical Indian life.
Life in an instant means so many different things to so many people.
That one instant, we’re crying.
That one instant a fisherman is upset that there’s no fish where he is.
The other fisherman is bagging the big ones.
Some are begging, saying “Only if you give, will we survive”.
Others can’t wait to dip in for the heck of it.
Too much contradiction.
And too real.
And too unreal
And too suffocating.
And liberating too.
I told my friend Akhil about this. How an instant means so many different things, he said,
“It’s a life experience.
Life is just passing by
The randomness of the universe bared in front of you.
At this very moment
So many might be experiencing such losses.”
I agree with him. So many came in while we were at the funeral pyre.
To me our grief is more than theirs.
Yet in that we are so inconsequential,
So are the ones that are gone.
And yet……not really.
Akhil again offers, “The illusion a mind builds for you. That’s what keeps us going despite the inconsequence of our existence to the universe”
I felt, to be forever in the state of epistemic ambivalence, is perhaps the best way forward. You love enough for an eternity. Consequential or not.
Ramya Ravi 