One Crazy Thing

A friend of mine recently asked me if there was one crazy thing in my life that I wanted to do. I was sitting on a balcony. I gave her a stock reply saying there was no such thing. Frankly, I am in the business of looking smart. There was nothing else I could have said. Well, actually I did say something.

I gave away my real answer by looking at the ledge for the briefest instance.

The craziest thing I have ever wanted to do – was jump from that ledge, 4 floors above the ground. It seems crazy in most human senses. All I wanted was to feel the soft, sweet wind kissing me gently, leaving them tousled, moving towards the Earth to rest in her loving embrace. An embrace that has such a finality that there is no adjective to describe it other than dead. And then there is death herself. Cold as a ice, waiting like a temptress. Indeed, alluring to some.

Man’s fixation with the Lady in Black is legendary. Many great literary works and artistic endeavours have been inspired by The Great Unknown. Be it John Donne’s timeless Divine Sonnet X that boldly drags Death from its pedestal to Longfellow’s The Reaper and the Flowers that tries optimism.  Death inspired In Memoriam by Tennyson, one of the finest pieces of English literature of times bygone. More recently, W.H. Auden produced ‘Funeral Blues’, one of the contemporary classics and my personal favourite. Another interesting poem is The Ballade of Suicide by G.K. Chesterton which takes a rather unconventional view to Death.

Death fascinates us. The idea of an unknown surely must tempt people (or is it just me?). We fear it. Most of us do. Death can have a pretty polarizing effect on people. Admittedly, I haven’t seen my share of the world as yet. But, I have had three light brushes. Not entirely satisfying for forming impressions. After all isn’t it just another experience? The fact that it is invariably the last one adds to the allure.

On November 22, 1963, along with Aldous Huxley, John F. Kennedy and C. S. Lewis arrived at the end of their life. The only reason for the euphemism is what Lewis said regarding Death.

Personally, I admire Aldous Huxley. On his deathbed, unable to speak, Huxley made a written request to his wife for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular".

He famously said once, “A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor”.

“If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ''wandering to find home,'' why should we not look forward to the arrival?”

Both the above quotes capture humankind’s general attitude towards Death – to get over it believing that there is better to come.

But the third guy, John F. Kennedy, said it better, “The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of the final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy”.

There are many more experiences to be had. Many more crazy things to do. Miles to go before I slip on some banana peel.

Maybe, I won’t go over the ledge, after all.