Dumped

DUMPED you do get. The g-chat message said DND. I thought the standard do-not-disturb it must be. As it turned out the explanation was did-not-dump. Took it with a pinch of salt though.

Was flipping through the morning papers. Steve Apple Jobs has six more weeks to live. I-Steve has given more to the world than has taken of it. Yet he gets dumped. And brutally so. Am no gadget freak but have followed Jobs’ trajectory rather interestedly. This is unfair.

Morning papers again a few days ago. Page one anchor: K Subramanyam is no more. The grandpa of Indian strategic environment studies gave in after fighting a cancer for ten years at age 82. Had followed him for over 10 years, sometimes seeing him under the flash bulbs carrying a report in hand, or, at other times, trudging a lonely furrow in newspaper columns. Very consistent. Very prolific. His bespectacled face in the mug shot reflecting the crux of all sincerity carried in each word of the article. He would only state the lesson, leaving it to his audience take it or leave it. Without slightest pontification, littler possession.

And even as I was going through the article, sipping hot water from my Al Capone cup, images flitted through the television screen that was on. It was BBC. The quick movement of frames showed US presidents of past 30 years in succession. Only one constant in the pictures – Hosni Mubarak. Now dumped.

If there’s one person over past four decades who played sheet-anchor to United States in the Arab world, it was Mubarak. Yet one accident and he is dumped. No apology for the Egyptian dictator but comeuppance is one thing, getting dumped another.

Ultimately, we all get dumped. It sounds dramatic. But that’s what happens. Life dumps you without exception.

On way to office a copy of Valmiki's Ramayana is in car. Bharat has gone to Chitrakoot to get Ram back from his forced forest exile. Ram’s reply: “My dear Bharat, under the control of eternal Time, everything ultimately meets with defeat. Thus, no wise man should lament for life’s reversals. Union ends in separation, for as pieces of driftwood flat together and then disperse, family and society meet briefly and then depart for their separate destinations. As solid pillars gradually decay, causing a house to collapse, a man totters into old age and finally meets death. As a river cannot return to its source, everyone must follow the path of his father and forefathers. Why should one mourn for others when he himself is dying? A man’s skin becomes wrinkled and his hair turns gray. What can he do? He rejoices when the sun rises and rejoices when it sets, not thinking he has died a little.”

In other times it could have been dismissed as caramelized pontification. Not when such somber headlines hit in the morning.