9

The meeting with Arjun was an awakening from a slumber. I decided to write a letter to Arjun to describe to him what I was thinking and I put in the letter my thoughts that existed at that point of time.

“Dear Arjun,

After meeting you the other day, I have been forced to introspect a lot about life.

I realized that the ultimate truth about life is death and doesn’t matter how you have lived your life, when you face a death situation, your real character will be revealed. In a way it is also important how one has lived his life, because if it has been a life which has been well lived and one has been able to accomplish one’s dreams, it is easy to comprehend the end of life in a satisfied way. Arjun, your situation has opened up for me a new way to look at life, although it is ironic and probably unfair in a way. I suddenly have an urge to fulfill things which I always wanted to do, but was too busy or lazy to push it to another day. It could be things as simple as wanting to play the guitar or writing a book; yes Arjun writing a book. I realized I always had that urge in me to write a book, but never really got down to writing it, just too lazy. And you became a reason for me to put my pen down on a paper and start to write. I realized that once I started writing, words flowed like water in a stream. I was destined to write. Whether your story gets published or no, but I promise you, it will surely become a book.

And so it is with our dreams, we push them for another day, whereas we should be taking them on, at this moment, and taking steps to achieve them. And in the daily pressures of life and solving our problems, we forget that we have buried our dreams below layers of dust and let our procrastination kill them. I read a book by Robin Sharma titled ‘Who will cry when you die’, and I realized after reading the book, then when it is time to die, the layers of dust suddenly evaporates and our unfulfilled dreams surface to mock us in the end. It is too late then to do anything about them. It becomes difficult to meet death as we forgot to live and now want to fulfill the dreams and live a life that we wanted to live but there is not time left. We earned money and forgot to spend it on our dreams and realize that when we die we will not be able to take a single penny with us. Not that we don’t know about this fact, but we forget it when we are living.

Arjun, I need to thank you for enlightening this thought in me, and making me realize that from now on I should live for myself, I should do what I want to do and not what others think is right for me to do. I am going to go out there and achieve every single dream of mine, big or small, so that when I face death, I can tell it that I am ready to die; I am ready to die because I lived my life and am a satisfied soul, so take me with you. You have written a lot of letters to me, this is my first letter to you, and it’s a letter of gratitude, a letter of thanks for waking me up. The first thing I have done is I have taken a long leave from my job, and my immediate two priorities are to learn to play the guitar (which I have already bought) and to write your story. It is my promise to you, that you will be able to read your story before you go; and I won’t let you go, till you read your story.

And I also want you to live your life from now on till you die, and who knows when death sees you living, it will delay its plans to take you away.

As a proof that I have started writing, I send this poem to you, a dedication to you, which is my first writing, and which is to motivate you to live.

Live to Die

Born to the solitude of mystery

Lies below the ground is the history

The history of life which is known to all

But each hides it unseen behind an invisible wall.

It comes to us sooner or later

Wrapped in a blanket of eternity

A scared animal a man that he is

Hides in sand, eyes closed till infinity.

Open your eyes to the truth of time

Life is but a short companion in the journey

Know that Death is romantic which will keep you forever

That is the ultimate love, your ultimate honey.

Rather than embracing

With a two outstretched hand

One forgets to live when living

Fearing of the end.

So live a life full of fun

Live every moment as if it were the last

Prepare to welcome death when it comes

It’s excited to meet you and is on its way, very fast.

That’s it Arjun, from me, as my first letter. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed reading your letters over the years.

You take care, my brother, and keep living till you die.

Yours,

Rahul.”