Death

Death comes knocking
Odd hours, odd places
For some it arrives before birth
While for some its long lonesome paralytic wait
Unpredictable
Death comes knocking at odd Time

It hits young and old
even while crossing road
Its even an internal malignant growth

For dictators and leaders
Its powerful weapon of war
But for plenty its a humble means of livelihood

Sometimes Death wears fierce mask and shakes Earth
Buries, drowns people, animals in sleep
Sometimes it even makes a smart move
It forces mad self to plunge dagger into self

Death, death, death
Stalks Life
Spares no one
Erases all
But leaves us with metaphors for poetry, epitaph
Unavoidable, unpredictable and inevitable death

Milan Kundera and Being

After many days I found a book which I read through day and night without a wink of sleep or sense of fatigue. Milan Kundera has that ability to take readers on an imaginative trip while keeping them rooted in the reality of human existence. Immortality is a novel, but through it he has explored many philosophical questions which are unavoidable.

What I liked about the book is his ability to create characters and give them a modern life full of modern dilemmas. It is a novel within novel which is created out of one single gesture of a woman. So we see birth of Agnes, a very real but fictional character and her life journey becomes our own. People created around Agnes are interesting too because they are so real with real eccentricities, obsessions and fixations. This book is a meditation about life, death, being, love, sex, immortality, human memory, human mind and manipulations and human indulgences like music, literature, art and even war.

What I simply enjoyed reading was the conversation between Hemingway and Goethe in the other world. They are taking a walk in the other world long after their deaths and they discuss the images they have left behind. Images, which have made them immortal but over which they no longer have any control. We actually see a flip side of immortality.

Milan Kundera reduces great men and art to images and even imitations of themselves. All philosophy, literature, music, art is a mirror to view the human world but he also questions the validity of that very mirror and what it reflects. At one point, all the past understanding of human nature and life by great men actually looks like a baggage we can do without because it hardly comes to any aid when we face real existential dilemmas.

I also believe in what he says about importance of chance and coincidence. Isn't it a coincidence that when I was thinking about death and immortality I came across Immortality and Milan Kundera's reflections on the subject? The book made me laugh, wonder, ponder and observe human life from a happy distance.

It is also a happy coincidence and chance that I can share my ramblings without any inhibitions with some friends and strangers who chance upon it.Yes, please forgive me for my imperfect English, I am a bad editor with a lazy brain. I know, it is no excuse, but right now I want to ramble for no particular reason, maybe a time will come when I will start editing my sentences before hitting 'Publish Post'. Right now, the state of mind I am in, each blog is my momentary death, I have no wish to become immortal.

Facebook and Immortality

Recently I re-activated my facebook account after a gap of few months. This was the second time I was doing so. I like this control option of facebook because it lets me disappear from public eye and what I like more is every time I re-activate I hardly notice any change. Some 'friends' and their wall updates just remain the same which almost implies our social behaviour and the image we project to the world by sharing links, views hardly ever changes. This gives me a sense of permanency in the world where everything is so fleeting and transient.

Social media has made it possible to live out our lives in open. We can choose any mask to hide our ugly spots and create an illusion that we are what we project to be. But there are many brazen and bold people who just let their thoughts and ideas flow freely in public domain. I had one such 'friend' on facebook. A New York based blogger shared even little moments of his routine life on facebook. I was a not keen follower of his blog, website nor an active friend on facebook or twitter. I don't think i ever interacted with him except for accepting his friend request. But still through his regular updates he let me have  a glimpse of his life, his thoughts and his amazing essays. It was extremely generous of him. His social media skills were awesome because he had more than 2000 friends and followers on facebook and blogs. He was one of the friends whose updates I subconsciously expected but didnt really look forward to. His presence was so distant that when I re-activated my facebook I really didn't miss his updates for few days, but someone really seemed missing from my facebook.

Two days ago I was 'editing' my friends list and I saw his name. Even when I clicked on his name I was thinking he must have put up link of his new essay on art, literature or an update about his daily walk to bookstore to read New York Times. But what I saw on his profile page numbed me. His wall was full of condolence messages and obituary links. It took me a while to comprehend that he had died. I went back in time to look for his last update and it was indeed about his regular walk for coffee and New York Times. After that there were messages confirming his death. It was so unexpected and I really wanted to reach out to know what had happened and I had no other option but to send a message to his facebook account itself. I really hoped someone had access to his account but now it seems highly unlikely.

It is a new reality that our virtual personas and identities will outlive all of us. There is no way to know about death in advance and we won't even get time to de-activate our accounts or put up a farewell note. These social media accounts and walls will be our tombstone and epitaphs, which we will not be around to see or read.  Ofcourse human memory is short and a person does get erased but still we can leave behind our virtual footprint if we want to.

Now I have a non-existent person on my friends list and it really seems absurd to delete him. His virtual footprints on social media sites and most importantly his thoughts, ideas, writings have remained and they have made him immortal. I admire his family, friends and colleagues efforts to maintain his websites. Everything is there except him.