Death , are you rightly proud !

It is rightly said-death keeps no calendar. For no particular reason, I am taken some twenty years back in timeline , when my father passed away after being bed ridden for a few months due to painless kidney infection, the only sign of illness being swollen feet and the difficulty he had in moving even indoors due to this. On leave from my workplace in connection with the last rites as per prevailing custom, it was a drab routine with not much to do except meeting and sitting with relatives and other people who came visiting to offer their condolences. During one of these days, while going through a Hindi newspaper, in the In Memoriam column my eyes suddenly caught sight of the small photograph of a familiar face. On reading the lines below the photograph, it was a rude shock to find that it was Rajesh, my classmate in school who had passed away some 3-4 years back. Only I had not known about it due to my postings out of Shimla.

I was lamenting on the death of my father who was well into his seventies at that time and here was not-the -less shocking news of a buddy having been cut in the early thirties, i.e. prime of his life. It was only after some months that Ravinder , another member of the trio told me that Rajesh had died of a motor vehicle accident .Rajesh, Ravinder and I – the three Rs became bench fellows in Class 9 in a school in Shimla and remained so during the entire academic year. While I was an introvert, through and through, these two fellows were , jolly, jovial, always cutting and cracking jokes and it took me quite some days to adjust myself in the new company and the bond became stronger and stronger, as I was able to understand them.

Even earlier, death had laid its icy hand on three other classmates of mine, Biren, Rajinder and Nihal, of course at different times, but would write of them later

But, why am I writing all this, I do not know !