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Life And Death - Sandhya Acharya Sandhya, 21, lives in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai. She works with Siemens at Worli, which happens to be a long way from her home. The grind of a 6 hours daily commute to and from work do not deter her from finding time to pursue her other interests - reading, writing and music. She has studied German and is quite conversant with the language. She explains her view of life with - "My friends call me Dream Girl, not because I look like one (As you can see I am hardly a looker), but because I dream a lot. I believe that dreams sustain your today and build your tomorrow." As is evident, besides being talented Sandhya is also modest!

It is in life's saddest moments that we gain insight.

Death always has a humbling effect on man. It reminds us of how small we are and there is still so much unexplained. There is still so much insecurity and fear of the unexpected. It throws the best of rails off the track, It brings a void a vacuum into our midst that unsettles our consciences. Our struggles, our ambitions, our wants, our desires seem eclipsed, seem so useless, so aimless.

It is difficult to spend even a single day without a purpose, an agenda for the day. Yet we must spend our whole lives in the nada of purpose. Like the earth needs gravity and the ship needs an anchor and the tree needs roots: humans need answers. And when our best efforts do not give us answers we make them or we simply stop questioning. Indeed god, religion, patriotism, marriage all are human attempts to give direction in the darkness. We try and build us a make-believe world where all questions have premeditated answers each could be so widely different yet both trying to still the ravaged soul. Science and religion each like two different siblings have throughout human history tried to protect us from the fear of nothingness- Nichtigkeit.

Yet every time there is a death our myth is broken and the temporary peace in our lives is blown away by a sudden storm. There are wars, there are widows, there are young and youth orphaned, there are sickness, there is misery. Every day we read stories of an entire village routed by floods or an earthquake. We then read next to it about the brutal murder of an old pensioner or a young woman raped and then stabbed to death. Whether it is the vagaries of nature or our own viciousness playing havoc the result is the same.

Is death really the end? How we hate to see stories with distasteful endings. We would always prefer a fairy tale ending. Are we just kidding ourselves? How old were you when you learnt that there was no Santa Claus? How many of our beliefs have we negated throughout our lives and how many of our beliefs would translate into reality. When a myth is broken it brings tears, disappointment and sometimes just resignation. But when the truth is never revealed it brings a lot more insecurity and confusion. So we must sometimes keep our myths alive to survive whatever we understand of life. Or perhaps embrace whatever little truth we know. So what is truth? That the sun shall rise each day and set too is the truth. That the night shall bring the stars to the sky is the truth.

We do not know what happens after death to the deceased. But the truth is that those who are left behind must pull themselves up and go on. We do not know if the dead shall watch upon us but we do know that we shall always cherish their memories and keep them alive in our hearts. And life must go on.

Until we connect again....

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