Life - enough of it!

Life is the most precious endowment of mankind and man's dearest possession on earth.  It is a gift of nature.  "Life" can be viewed from two different perspectives.  The pessimistic and optimistic. When I attempted to search what great people quoted, I found only of the likes of: "Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale", wrote Shakespeare in King John;  "Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating." said O.Henry in the Gift of Magi; "Don't try to live forever, you will not succeed." wrote GB Shaw;  "It is a misery to be born, a pain to live, a trouble to die." said St. Bernard.  All of which seem to be of the pessimistic nature.

When people sometimes ask, (when there is nothing else to ask) "how is life treating you?"  I find it very tricky to answer the truth!  Because the sort of life provided so graciously by our city/country administration first comes to mind.  I am tempted to answer "as a citizen, very badly."   After much pondering, I discover, negatives predominating positives.  So I asked myself whether living a citizen's life, I emphasize "citizen's life", is worth at all, in this present world?  And you can add "Indian conditions."  The resultant thoughts and the proposition that arose led me to this: "take leave from the world.  Enough of this citizen's life!"  So, if I ever, ever decide to take that leave and have enough time to leave behind a letter with reasons, that letter would probably run something like this:

I thank Mother Nature for having given me a life; my family for nurturing me physically and morally to the best of ability and resource.  I hold only myself responsible, because, true to someone's famous quote, I have felt that life has been a long headache in a noisy street and it has neither been a spectacle nor a feast, but a predicament.

Having seen the golden days of the 1960s and 70s, the decades that followed were simply not what a Mysorean dreamt or desired of and I have become incapable of facing vicious challenges as a common ctiizen.  I cannot do enough to compete or comprehend the intentions of the present-day people's chameleon-like attitudes.  My natural optimism was tested to its hilt and my crystal ball predicts that the city/country administration will do more harm but nothing to the welfare of the common man in the years to come.

I am convinced that truth, sincerity, honesty, charity and compassion are not beginning inside homes which are reflected conspicuously in public behaviour.  I am disgusted to watch from a distance, cheating, stealing, corruption, lie-telling, violence, cruelty, getting the better of everything.  Selfishness, both in words and deeds, is becoming too evident and rampant.  Peace is going to pieces.

I am fed up of paying undue taxes to the government - the breeding centre for corruption which has spread like parthenium (with its ability to freely reseed itself), from politics to the medical profession, to the judiciary, not even sparing education, sports, crematoria and of all places, places of worship!  I have no belief that this dirty evil can ever be rooted out.

I am afraid of falling sick and being hospitalized, swindled and left in the lurch with a living physical body and a drained out bank balance as I have lost all trust and faith in the so-called 'health-restorers' and 'life-savers'. Medical ethics have gone to dogs, or so it appears.

I am fed up of noticing headlines about crime and terrorism which keep appearing only on front-pages and not as a low importance item in the inner pages.  I am unhappy with the way criminals are left unpunished - bribery/political interference doing its job, while the honest are harassed.

I can no longer tolerate the way people look at somebody who follows the rules nor can I think of the day when law-makers themselves do not break the laws.

I dread the day when water, not gossip, becomes the cause of neighbours' everyday war.  I can no longer endure to inhale polluted air and I have no hope that the fast-deteriorating situation will be saved.  We get more air in our taps than water and plenty of load-shedding in our electrical wires - free.

I am sick of riding on our ill-maintained roads that are getting wider and wider and having to ride amidst ill-cultured motorists. I am anguished the way money and materialistic values are being glorified,  human value being nullified. My crystal ball neither has the faculty to foresee the police treating the politician as just another citizen nor politicians getting frightened of the police.

Animals are being brutally killed in captivity and in the wild, trees in the avenues and in the forests are being mercilessly chopped down, new diseases are cropping up, eco-balance is in jeopardy, pollution is let off carelessly into the sacred environment, prices are soaring, Mother Earth is drilled with holes to suck up water from the water table without taking any measures to recharge the table.

In fact, the so-called intelligent man is killing Nature and Nature will surely collect its toll in its own way and I am not prepared to pay this toll for no fault of mine!  Of course, there have been many amazing technological marvels emerging but I reckon it has been speeding too quickly for mankind to handle wisely.

Optimism helps only when things are in our hands, but when too many things are in others' hands controlled by wretched minds, I see the dead end.  My last wish: Let wisdom, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, compassion, peace, harmony and unselfishness prevail the human minds.

I will be gone where I belong - to Mother Earth - without a trace of the physical.  I am fully aware of the travails near and dear ones would face if traces are left!

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." quoted  G.Santayana.  In this Kaliyuga, even if one wants to enjoy that interval, 'others' will try to prevent.  This common human citizen do not foresee tables to turn around and so 'goodbye' to the most precious endowment of mankind.
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