Of Birth and Passing
Earlier this month, I officially set foot into my fiftieth year of life on this earth. I've been waiting to emphatically state my age as fifty! when asked. (Though technically, I still have a year before I can do that..) Why? It's just something I've been wanting to, for a while now. Being fifty seems like having reached a milestone, feeling really grown up and wise. It feels loaded. So I was really looking forward to my forty-ninth birthday. But the passing of two ex-colleagues within a month of each other – one, just the day before my birthday and the other, exactly a month before my birthday – left me very dejected and low-spirited. It was unlike any birthday before. Suddenly, the frailty of life seemed so much more clearer. It also drove home the fact that I've already lived more than half my life. As the day moved on, I was caught up in answering WhatsApp birthday messages and taking phone calls, as is the case with all of us on our birthdays, these days. But m...