Contemplation on Death
A Srinivas Rao Feb 2010
This essay was written more than a year ago in Feb 2010. I am posting it here to have some of my earlier writing in one place.
“Where o death is thy sting and where o grave is thy victory” Corinthians 15:55
She was walking in her measured pace at that evening hour when the large flocks of crows returned to roost and the fewer sparrows chirped in chorus in a nearby tree. She was treading cautiously along the beaten track on the hem of a large playground where scores of walkers, the elderly and fitness enthusiasts trod in uneven pace. Slight of frame, dressed in an earthy brown, a tiny bag slung across her shoulder like a satchel, bespectacled and greying with an air of quiet dignity she walked. Little would one suspect that she was being treated for colon cancer, and had gone through a battery of therapies over the past year that left her slightly battered and darkened and with unseen scars of suffering and possibly loneliness.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into a conversation. My MP3 player was beckoning an evening raga and the prospect of a slow paced walk didn’t seem to be an attractive physical exercise. Yet I couldn’t resist wishing her and attempted in vain a reason to depart soon at my own pace and to the refuge of my own solitary observation ‘tower’. Amiable as she usually was we kept exchanging inconsequential remarks and pleasantries. She was genial to talk to and always did intrigue me with her ways of looking at things though I at times did seem dismissive at what seemed like an NGO worldview, slightly Left, slightly anarchic, slightly confusing. As the conversation ambled we unwittingly discovered that we were discussing death. In particular her own feelings that she had been experiencing and what she called ‘lived experience’ and her narration stopped my inappropriate academic chatter around the question.
A Srinivas Rao Feb 2010
This essay was written more than a year ago in Feb 2010. I am posting it here to have some of my earlier writing in one place.
“Where o death is thy sting and where o grave is thy victory” Corinthians 15:55
She was walking in her measured pace at that evening hour when the large flocks of crows returned to roost and the fewer sparrows chirped in chorus in a nearby tree. She was treading cautiously along the beaten track on the hem of a large playground where scores of walkers, the elderly and fitness enthusiasts trod in uneven pace. Slight of frame, dressed in an earthy brown, a tiny bag slung across her shoulder like a satchel, bespectacled and greying with an air of quiet dignity she walked. Little would one suspect that she was being treated for colon cancer, and had gone through a battery of therapies over the past year that left her slightly battered and darkened and with unseen scars of suffering and possibly loneliness.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into a conversation. My MP3 player was beckoning an evening raga and the prospect of a slow paced walk didn’t seem to be an attractive physical exercise. Yet I couldn’t resist wishing her and attempted in vain a reason to depart soon at my own pace and to the refuge of my own solitary observation ‘tower’. Amiable as she usually was we kept exchanging inconsequential remarks and pleasantries. She was genial to talk to and always did intrigue me with her ways of looking at things though I at times did seem dismissive at what seemed like an NGO worldview, slightly Left, slightly anarchic, slightly confusing. As the conversation ambled we unwittingly discovered that we were discussing death. In particular her own feelings that she had been experiencing and what she called ‘lived experience’ and her narration stopped my inappropriate academic chatter around the question.
