Such is Life

Opera House, Brigade Road with the Utility Building in the background.

Only yesterday when I was at the bus stop beside Opera House, waiting for my 335E to Domlur that I noticed something very peculiar. I could hear an ambulance siren from a little far away, snaking its way through the mild evening Bangalore traffic and racing towards the nearest hospital, probably. But alas, there was a jam ahead and ambulance stopped a little away from where I was standing. The driver was tense and began making frantic calls from his mobile phone, loud enough to make it sound abusive. Maybe he was abusing in Kannada or something, I don't know. Only a few people in the bus stop could make out what he was saying and frowned oddly.

Through the glass, I could see a woman looking down to the stretcher with a deep gaze. She felt lost as tears rolled down her cheeks. She lifted a hand and held it tight. It was dark, the fingers were frail, a needle ran through the veins and it seemed masculine. Could be her husband, could be her son. I couldn't help but think.

Life is shorter than you can imagine. You might sleep as a content man one night and never probably wake up at all. You might be the happiest person in the world one moment, and lose it all in the very next. But then again, losing it all is not really important. Learning to let go is important. Only when to learn to give up things you love, you make space for better things to be a part your life. And If you don't, you carry regrets with you to the cemetery, incomplete and discontented. You certainly wouldn't want it that ways.

It took the horn of an approaching bus and the subsequent whistle of the conductor to break my chain of thoughts and only a few moments later, I realized that it was not my bus. I had to wait a little more. I looked up and could see a helicopter with a marked red cross on its body (that must have taken off from UB City or ITC Gardenia), fly past the Utility building to an obscure super-specialty hospital in the far-off suburbs of the city, probably.
Irony like God, certainly has beautiful ways to make its presence felt.

PS- To the person that the air ambulance ferried last evening, whoever you are - you are one lucky basterd.
It is not only your fortunes and riches that you have at your disposal. You are a fortunate person too, in a world populated with bearers of misfortunes. Have a good life, you!

PPS- +bhanu prakash, after this happened; I got home, read your blog and called you.